That's why I will never understand why so many on this forum flocked to Romney after the primary. Even people like myself that could tolerate the idea of Romney as the nominee in 2008 (though not endorsing his candidacy), soured on the idea on the idea after seeing how terrible he did in the primaries after far outspending everyone else and running a slick, super polished campaign. On this forum it was the opposite. Seriously, the stampede was so great that the "Romney for veep" posts were outnumbering any other politician for veep by about 10-to-1. Someone should conduct a study about where all the Romneybots came from. During the primary it was "ANYONE but Rudy McRomney!" after the primary, it was "NOBODY but Rudy McRomney!" on FreeRepublic. It felt like The Twilight Zone for a while here.
Kudos to fieldmarshaldj for sounding the alarm about Romney. I didn't see why he was so outspoken in his warnings during the primary, since Romney didn't have many supporters here, but I'm glad did did once I realized so many conservative Ann Coulter types had been affected by Romneyitis Yes, the Romneybots had a tendency to smear anyone who didn't like him as a nasty, anti-Mormon bigot (and continually insisted the only people who don't like Romney are "Evangelicals" and "Huckabee supporters"), but there were many pulling the same tactics during the primary. Personally I don't think the Romney crowd showed their true colors until they got really bitter and demanded Romney in 2012 because their guy didn't end up on the ticket.
The idea of BOTH candidates on the ticket being wobbly, unprincipled Republicans would have been a disaster. Just imagine what would have happened if a "President McCain" was thinking of going "maverick" against a conservative piece of legislation on his desk because the mainstream media was attacking it 24/7 and turned the general public against it. McCain then had his weekly luncheon with "Vice President Romney" to weigh in on the matter. We all know what Romney's advice would be. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Palin was chosen and not Romney.
I'm totally with Jim Robinson in vehemently opposing another Romney run. I think he did the right thing too, in 2007, when he took a lot of heating for "banning" the Giuliani activists from FreeRepublic (JimRob didn't actually purge the forum of anyone who publicly announced they were for Giuliani, he just took the drastic step of zotting all the Rudybots here that were bullying other posters, attacking conservative principles, and screaming only RINOs can win in this country, therefore the GOP has to gut its values and embrace a left-wing socialist agenda). I agree with JimRob that Rudy was the worst candidate, and would have been more damaging than a McCain nomination. The GOP would have moved considerably left to make Rudy the face of "Republicanism" in 2008, and I think even now we'd be stuck with the remnant of several Rudyites operating the party at a federal level. Rudy would do to the GOP nationally what Arnie did it to it in California.
I personally don't want to see any of the "also-rans" from the 2008 primary try again in 2012. (though Duncan Hunter is welcome to consider a presidential bid again if he ever gets elected to statewide office). In the meantime we need some rising stars in 2012 like Palin and Sanford, so we can forget about the awful mess that 2008 turned out to be.
NO ROMNEY!
I have to admit, I was taken with Romney for a short time. He has presence and likeability. He was very successful in the private sector, and as Governor of Massachusetts, he did have some accomplishments, like getting the state out of debt without raising taxes. In fact, I was hoping for a Thompson/Romney ticket. But it turned out that Romney was a plastic political chameleon. I don’t think he’s evil, but if you look at his record and speeches, it’s obvious that he stands for nothing and his platform has always been telling people what he thinks they want to hear. Maybe this is a good approach for a CEO, but a President has to have vision, and Romney has none of that.
Ann Coulter is still shilling for Romney. Conservative punditry as a whole is under his spell.
Rudy, being ‘pro choice’ (he was considering whether or not to oppose partial birth abortion in 2000 in order to try and get the Conservative party nomination) would have been a disaster. He straight up flip flopped on gun control, throw in his gay friendly history.....good thing his campaign strategy was inept. The social conservative base would have been up in arms. We would have had a third party conservative candidate spring up.
And like Romney and McCain he obviously sports a massive ego. And I haven;t forgotten he endorsed Cuomo, a naked political decision on his part.
Now he’s bailing on running for Governor.
He should run for Mayor again.