One has nothing to do with the other, taking out or weakening Palin is the biggest service that could be done for Mitt Romney on freerepublic, as far as you and Romney, you have a well earned reputation as one of the most dedicated defenders of Mitt Romney here.
Hopefully it’s because I was so good at defending him against false or spurious attacks, of which there were more than a few.
But as I said repeatedly, my “support” for Romney was not based on my feelings for Romney, but on my analysis of his campaign platform relative to other viable candidates. Sure, I was counting on him doing something different than he had in the past, but we all have to put some level of trust in candidates that they will do what they say they will do, and contrary to some of the attacks, in my opinion Romney was pretty good at keeping whatever promises he had made to get elected to an office, even if some of those promises were different than the promises he made later for another office.
Would I rather have a candidate who had been consistant all along? Sure, which is one of the positives I see in Sarah Palin. Fred Thompson looked good on that point as well, which is why I supported him until it was clear he had waited to long and didn’t have the heart for the battle, and was losing all the primaries (remember the few heady days when he was polling first? unfortunately, it didn’t last). Huckabee, Giuliani, McCain, Romney — of those four, I STILL say that Romney had the best campaign platform, and was the most trustworthy of the bunch.
I know people violently disagree with me on that point. Which is fine. I always said that if you didn’t trust him to keep his word, you should not vote for him, because his record wasn’t consistant.
But it was absurd for people to try to put me in a category with those who connected with a candidate and then tried to justify what they did. And that hurt those who argued against me, and in a few cases still does, although most who argue against Romney now are just going through the motions, and aren’t seriously trying to win people over.
I don’t think Romney has a chance this time — Romneycare is too big a weight around his ankles. But I won’t write him off — people really don’t like Obama, and if Palin doesn’t run, and we can’t find a candidate who looks like they can beat Obama, and Romney has the same platform as last time, I think he would be a better candidate than McCain was in 2008.
But that’s a ways off, and I am quite hopeful that we will have a candidate most of us can rally around, like Thompson in 2008, but who will get into the race early enough to actually win the primary.
As for Palin, I think her biggest damage at FR is done by her most avid supporters, who constantly claim that she is being devious, deceptive, lying, or clueless when she says things they don’t like.