VIVA LA REAGAN REVOLUCION!
Posted on 04/16/2007 9:23:04 AM PDT by areafiftyone
That is the sad story of Mitt Romney, the movie-star handsome former governor of Massachusetts. Romney registers a dismal fourth in Republican opinion polls. Yesterday's LAT/Bloomberg poll put him at 8% approval among Republicans.
A year ago, Romney looked like an emerging Republic star. He had rescued Massachusetts from a large budget deficit without raising taxes. And he had engineered a state-wide health insurance plan that delivered universal health insurance coverage to all of Massachusetts' residents--again without raising taxes. A hugely successful businessman, he had rescued the 2002 Olympic games from a corruption scandal.
In small-group sessions in 2005 and 2006, Romney dazzled elite audiences with his command of fact and easy, humorous speaking style.
He would begin by talking about the importance of data--of checking your assumptions--and of keeping the discussion open to dissenters. He was talking about state governance of course. But everybody heard the implied criticism of President Bush's management style. And after he left, his audiences would nod their heads over their coffee cups and say, "If only somebody like that had been running this war ? "
But sometime in the summer or fall of 2006, Romney reached a strategic decision. He would not run as a pragmatic problem solver. He would run as the conservative in the race: the tax-cutting, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-traditional-marriage heir to George W. Bush.
He even dropped hints that if nominated, he would choose Florida governor Jeb Bush as his running mate.
And this past week, he chose the George H. W. Bush presidential library as the site of his first major foreign policy address.
At the same time, he has given short shrift to his breakthrough health-care achievement. In fact, he rarely refers to it in his speeches, apparently fearing that one ingredient of his plan--a requirement that every non-poor state resident buy a health insurance policy or face a tax penalty--will offend the antigovernment sensibilities of Republican primary voters. None of this is working.
In part, Romney's difficulty in gaining early traction can be traced to his own vulnerabilities: He has become more conservative since his first political race, and (as I noted in last week's column) YouTube is now crowded with clips of him saying one thing in 1994 and very different things in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
But it seems to me that something bigger is going on.
Had you asked a shrewd Republican observer in, say, 2004 to guess who the party's next nominee would be, he or she would probably have named George Allen, the senator from Virginia--a popular former governor, son of a legendary football coach, famous for his cowboy boots and chewing tobacco. Allen was a solid, down-the-line conservative on everything from taxes to guns to abortion. He was hiring all the top consultants, raising money, making friends and seemingly cruising to an easy re-election win in 2006.
Instead, he lost. Lost in Virginia, where Bush had beat Kerry by nine points! If Allen could lose in Virginia, then no conservative was safe anywhere.
In some shrewd instinctive way, the Republican party is sensing that the United States has changed. And just as the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Grant eventually ran out of Civil War generals to nominate to the presidency, so perhaps time has run out for the old Nixon-Reagan coalition that came together to vote against the social upheavals of the 1960s and the 1970s. The 1960s and 1970s were, after all, a very, very long time ago.
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In some shrewd instinctive way, the Republican party is sensing that the United States has changed. |
Romney seized on Allen's defeat as an opportunity to position himself as the authentic Reagan conservative in the race--in a year when the Republican party may for the first time in a generation be looking for something other than a Reagan conservative.
Rudy Giuliani, the Republican frontrunner, is not exactly a moderate, of course. But he's not a traditional conservative either. He appeals to Republicans, not by running against government but precisely because of his record in making government work. Above all, his success in fighting crime recommends him. Under Mayor Giuliani, the number of murders in New York declined from over 2,000 per year to under 700. With government again providing safety to the people, the city recovered its economic strength.
Mitt Romney had an equally compelling story of executive leadership to tell. He chose not to. He chose to run as Bush's heir in a year when even Republicans are looking for Bush's opposite. That choice is looking more and more misguided. It may soon look fatal.
David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.
This guy should be banned from broadcasting and all media, but what the hell. let's post his tripe on FR and clap to it like he's the new Ronald Reagan.
VIVA LA REAGAN REVOLUCION!
If that were to be true, then what you are saying is that Conservatives of the so called "true" type, did not vote or voted for democrats to punish the party?
To my knowledge, the only historical stay at home conservative voters are not really part of the "base", but are mostly religious swing voters who when energized sufficiently, will go to the polls.
What happened, is that we lost all the swing voters for a variety of reasons, stemming from the war to Terry Shiavo when non religious swingers decided the Pubbies were far to dangerous to the health and welfare of the Republic, because of a kneejerk disregard of States rights. There were a half dozen other reasons, like stem cells, Internet gambling idiocy and bad reputations caused by everything from ineptitude to felony activities.
This can all be summed up with the comment that we did a bad job in the majority and were appropriately punished. We let the Dem's convince the planet that we oversold the war, and we had a bunch of bad luck as well. Can't blame ourselves too much for that.
Now it seems we (the base) could not warm up to each other unless we are cremated together, and so it will likely be, in 2008.
Perhaps that is just as it should be, as a instructive teaching aid.
“If that were to be true, then what you are saying is that Conservatives of the so called “true” type, did not vote or voted for democrats to punish the party?”
Answer is “stayed at home”
You forgot pro amnesty which I believe hurt us more than the war.
You don't seem to understand, that these issues are not traditional conservative issues. They are dangerous and often cut both ways, and we usually don't run on divisive social crap in National elections. For the first time in recent memory, these issue even lost locally. In Arizona....East coast and even Missouri. It's been over hyped, over done, and over the top! This stuff loses voters in a national election, not the other way around.
But hell no! You guys want more of it, more often and louder!
Go ahead, make Hillary's day!
“And he had engineered a state-wide health insurance plan that delivered universal health insurance coverage to all of Massachusetts’ residents—again without raising taxes.”
It’s really depressing to hear educated conservatives spout lines like this. This plan is going to be a disaster, despite how the news hypes it. The average health care policy is still 50% higher than the original target amount (and this already with substantial restrictions as to what it covers).
Here’s a quote from a newspaper one month ago about “RomneyCare”:
“The first signs of trouble appeared last August. In a filing to support general obligation bonds, officials projected that the new plan would increase state government health-care spending by $276.4 million in 2007. That’s $151 million more than what the public had been told the plan would cost. Meanwhile, the state’s new bureaucracy, busily signing up people for free care, has run into trouble finding affordable plans for those who have to pay. The premiums for subsidized plans would consume up to 6% of a person’s income — prompting calls from activists and echoes from politicians that they should be exempted from the individual mandate. So much for universal coverage.”
I’m looking over the field of top-three Republican Candidates and my heart is crying, “A Conservative! A Conservative! My kingdom for a Conservative!”
Two points:
1. One election does not prove and is not even evidence in favor of the notion that the country has changed. The Republicans lost seats in 2006 because Republican voters were complacent and Democrat voters were energetic. Just in my area, some Republican precincts lost thirty percent of their turnout between 2004 and 2006. The Democrats won some precincts that Republicans had won in 2004, but the Democrats didn't win more votes. They simply lost fewer votes. The people who delivered those precincts to the GOP didn't change their minds about the issues. They simply refused to make an effort to vote this time. There's been no change in what Americans believe. The last election was simply a change in who made an effort to vote.
2. While I don't believe that the country has changed, I have no doubt that some people want the country to change. What good citizens have to do is decide whether the change is for the better or for the worse. If the change is not for the better, good citizens will fight the change. The kind of policies represented by the likes of Rudy Giuliani are changes for the worse, and good citizens will reject his candidacy for that reason. We've often criticized some politicians by saying that they are wind socks instead of compasses. We need to support candidates who represent a compass. While the liberals would like to blow us to a more liberal course, good conservatives will stand for those who steer us back towards the correct path.
Bill
ONE MORE TIME..........The only candidate currently running that CANNOT beat Hillary is RUDY!
Romney would slaughter her, as an example.
It’s not over till the bald transvestite sings.
Romney is loosing because of any number of reasons and missteps.
Romney creates the perception of a panderer. It also does not help that he was wishy washy about stopping homosexual marriage and he impossed mandatory health insurance on the citizens.
This author is a nothing. He is just another elitist trying to bash the looooooong shadow of reagan’s leadership.
The Reagan revolution was very real and very positive.
Elitist articles like this are about as useful as Pelosi’s efforts to stage a coup over american diplomacy.
Frum’s an idiot and a lying weasel. He and his ilk are the reason Republicans lost Congress and the President’s approval ratings have tanked. What a backstabber...
As for me, I support VICTORY in Iraq and nothing less.
So do I. But you just said it is already one of the greatest victories and yet you will support nothing less than victory. It is either a victory or it isn't.
Let me help you out. It is a boondoggle.
So much different than Kerry!
Excellent post, thank you!
It’s not just the illegals; immigrants tend to register and vote Democrat. That’s just the way it is; if we keep flooding our country with immigrants, we’ll eventually get solid Democrat rule.
McCain invokes strong emotional responses with me, and I am not a loner on this.
Hillary, like her husband, must depend on a situation where a substantial number of voters go to a third party or stay home, or both.
I think she could get around 37=45%, and needs to go up against a weak candidate.
From the statements made on this forum, the RNC candidate will be weak, no matter which one makes it.
Of those, I believe Romney has the gravitas to pull the best number from the swing voters and from the party base.
But that's just me......:-)
Hillary must be defeated. There is no other choice but to field the best general election candidate that we can come up with, and he will not be Mr. Perfect. All he needs to be, is Mr. President.
I don't like what I'm seeing and hearing within the party, and I fear we will screw this up.
Rounding up their relatives in security sweeps by a Republican Administration is not helping much to earn their votes. So complaining about their lack of support is sorta foolish....IMO
What he is doing, is what all politicians do, and one could say that he is moving back to his original positions.
But I guess this does not make much difference to someone who thinks his religion is a cult.
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