I think Frum makes some good points. In the end, there isn’t a candidate that I am particularly crazy about, and I want the one that can win by the most and get the most favorable Congress.
Frum’s best point is that the Dems will go negative early, often and hard since they can’t run on their record. So we need a candidate that the Dems and their allies in the media cannot caricature.
It is basically a 3-way race at this point. They all have pros and cons. Romney is not ideal, and will be caricatured as an unprincipled Gordon Gekko type Wall Streeter. Perry will be caricatured as a stupid, wild-eyed radical. They will break out the racism hard on Cain, and portray his as a crazy black man.
Of the three, Romney is the hardest to caricature, IMO. The Dems/media will Palinize the other two and make them look crazy to moderates. But with Romney, the Gordon Gekko attacks will only work with the hardcore class warriors who are going to vote for the Dems anyway.
I preferred Romney to McCain last time, and think he would have fared a lot better as he wouldn’t have freaked out regarding the financial crisis.
A Romney/Daniels or Romney/Rubio ticket would give us the biggest majorities to make the hard changes that need to be made, IMO. Romney is too liberal for my liking, but he is a problem solver that has a proven ability to increase efficiency and put things on better financial footing...
But it is still early and I haven’t made up my mind yet.
No Romney Period.
Mittens is a fellow who learned much from his dad who ended his political career whining about having been brainwashed on Vietnam. Most folks observing George Romney wondered just what on earth did the brain laundry find to wash. Mitt is just a bit more careful than Dad but not much brighter.
George Herbert Walker Bush who appointed Swish Souter to SCOTUS, and Planned Barrenhood Babs are pushing Christy at the moment but you can count on them to back Mittens when push comes to shove. They are only trying Christy because even they know Mittens has a glass jaw but, at the end, they will hope on behalf of the witless elitists that he might get lucky. If Dorothy Parker were still with us, she would observe as to Mittens' brain pan and backbone that there is no there there.
Daniels told CPAC this year that we should put aside social issues altogether because of the money, money, money obsession. That ended his POTUS chances and he does absolutely nothing to balance a ticket with Mittens. Rubio is another story. Hopefully, if Mittens calls, he will have the dignity to laugh in derision.
BTW, early in his career, Frum wrote a deep root canal book advocating sharp tax increases. He is sooooo obviously Canadian and loves Obamacare. He is just another David Brooks.
Has the conservative movement degenerated to the point that what counts is the ability to make the trains run on time???? Can the name Romney EVER be attached to anything legitimately labeled conservative? No. The GOP is the GOP of Ronald Reagan, substantially enhanced by the social and military conservative "Reagan Democrats." May it never again be the party of Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, Charles Mathias, Herbert Hoover, UpChuck Percy, or Lowell Weicker. Also, may it soon not be the party of Robert Dole, Gerald Ford, George Herbert Walker Bush (the elder one), Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, etc.
Reagan was supposed to be just too, too, well, extreme, to be elected but somehow, he took close 90 states out of 100 in two elections by ignoring the elite in favor of the Reagan Democrats. He took Bush the Elder on board to shut him up and to keep an eye on him. That was his method for choosing Robert Finch as his first Lt. Governor in California. Trust but verify but, when trust is just impossible, at least verify.