Posted on 09/30/2011 7:28:07 AM PDT by freespirited
The Republican primaries have been taking a weird, wrenching turn. The pattern could be described as chaotic, except that it has one consistent theme.
That theme is that Republican voters are searching for someone, anyone, other than Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney ran a large national campaign for the nomination four years ago, so he is well-known to Republican primary voters. Too well known. They know all about his infamous flip-flops on abortion. They know all about RomneyCare, the government-directed health care plan he created as governor of Massachusetts, which he touted as a model for the rest of the nation to follow, and which Barack Obama and congressional Democrats actually did use for their model.
Hence the fact that Romney has never drawn the support of more than 25% of Republicans in the polls, and not the strong support of that group, either. The Rick Perry boom, for example, took away about a third of Romney's supporters.
Now Perry is in trouble, partly because of his stumbling performance in the most recent debate, and partly because of the substance of something he said in that debate ...
But Romney hasn't exactly covered himself in glory in responding to Perry. Faced with a major challenger who stole his lead, Romney panicked and grabbed onto any argument he could to knock Perry down, including singing the praises of Social Security and, in the last debate, insinuating that Perry didn't write his own book. For me, at least, this has reinforced the sense that Romney is the guy who will do anything and say anything to get elected.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Waddya mean anybody but Romney?!?!?!11111(leventy)
What’s not to love about the guy who lost to the guy who lost to 0bama?
(geeeeeeeeze, do I really need a sarcasm tag?)
—Most GOP Voters Saying “Anybody But Romney”—
That is actually pretty close to how I feel. But to be clear, I am “EX” GOP. A lot of us are.
That's why Perry immediately surged to the top when he got into the race. And why he immediately deflated once the curtain was pulled back to reveal yet another RINO.
Of course, the Perrywinkles still aren't convinced and some of them never will be.
For me it’s anybody but Obama.
Would be great if he'd leave us alone.
Almost as bad as the illegal hugging and passing out goodies to illegals by perry.
Anybody but Romney or Christie!
“ABR” pretty much describes me at this point. I like some candidates (and not-candidates) more than others, but whichever of them wins the nomination gets my vote. EXCEPT Romney.
It’s about time we had some honesty on Romney’s core weakness. When your only strength is that your opponents base don’t hate you then you have a problem. Romney has three key things that makes him un-electable for me.
1. Romneycare is a failure by any measure. The subsidized part is exploding in cost and HC care costs in MA have led the nation. Romney says it was an experiment. Well it failed and he just doesn’t get it.
2. Romney has a history of appointing liberals to lower courts. Some have argued that he was being strategic by letting lower court appointments fall to the left while saving his fight for the policy oriented courts. However the fact that 75% of the 36 appointments he made were leftists should bring us all to pause. It is those lower court appointments that set up those judges for future higher court appointments long after those more conservative judges are gone. If we find ourselves with an open Supreme Court pick do you wish to risk getting another Sandra Day O’Conner to replace a Scalia God forbid he or one of the more conservative judges retire or have health problems? I sure don’t. The highlight of the Bush Presidency is that we got two strong conservative judges out of it.
3. Romney wasn’t that good of a Governor. MA ranked near last in job creation while he was Governor. Where this idea that he is some kind of business man genius came from I don’t know. It seems to me he rode a silver spoon to the top and stayed there. His success is great but acting as though he is some kind of job creation policy making genius is just a Mitt Myth.
The biggest thing after these two is that there is absolutely NO reason to want a candidate like Romney. He has never demonstrated that he is a fighter, can any of you remember an inspiring speech from him on even one founding principle? He is a man who had no problem governing from the center left in MA. He didn’t hold the line like Gov Brewer or Walker or even Christie. He isn’t the vanguard we need.
He would operate as if we are the extremists.
We need a candidate that is a full spectrum conservative and knows how to articulate that. Accepting anything less is to say that the left’s dominance is the natural order and that Obama is a mainstream candidate. Neither assertions of course are true. Conservatives represent the biggest chunk of the electorate and in 2010 Conservative turn out exceeded even moderates. Independents increasingly self id as conservative. The biggest tent is one that leads with ashamed Conservatism.
Conservatism is the is real politics of hope,the politics of liberty, & the politics of strength rooted at a basic level in the celebration of the ability of an individual exercising his or her unfettered freedom to rise above to claim the American Dream. The alternative is a dark place ruled by a beast whose tentacles slink and constrict every part of our lives even into what is OK to think, believe, or hold in good conscience. When people say Romney is our best hope they are saying in reality that all hope is gone that we have already lost and might as well just accept the political class as it is unchallenged.
I agree . . . Perry lost my vote after I heard about this "illegal" kiss-ass activity in Texas. There's no way either of these two would get my vote in a primary.
And it really would be a choice between two evils in the general election: Obambi, of course, is a rather ignorant socialist with only textbook knowledge, and the Perry/Romney, I'm afraid, would step into the mess created by Obambi and be afraid to do anything about rolling anything back.
They'd want to "make-nice" with the criminals, and they definitely would not pursue going after Obambi for all the criminal things done these past 3 years.
“Romney has three key things that makes him un-electable for me.”
Don’t forget his egregious pandering lie, direct falsehood, fraud that he was a gun owner.
And a lifelong hunter who traveled alone to states not requiring gun permits or licenses to hunt “rodents” (to be fair he went on a junket with other pols to shoot farmed quail or pheasants or something ONCE).
If by some horrible chance Romney wins there will most certainly be a third party challenge from the right and that is exactly who I will be with if that occurs. I don’t want to elect our own Arnold Schwarzenegger at a national level to replace Obama (Gray Davis). All it would do is set us as a party for a huge mess and resurrection of the Democrat party.
We need Conservative leadership to repair Obama’s mess and the mess of his predecessors.
The consummate politician: all plastic sincerity; smarmy; and altogether, just too nice to be true.
“Most GOP Voters Saying “Anybody But Romney””
and huntsrino
Fixed it!
Excellent post. Thanks so much for taking the time to write it.
We’ll get Obama.
Excellent article ping
Yes I know but I like to stick to the things that strike at the core of his supporter apologists most of whom come from the perspective of battered conservative/republicans in occupied territory. I understand their tendency to acquiesce they are so used to losing and accept msm conventional wisdom as wisdom because it is reality for them. They are brainwashed into thinking that conservatism is the fringe and in many urban areas it may be but not nearly as badly as they believe because even in those areas there is a commonality on the issue level that shows even blue areas aren’t nearly as blue as they seem. When you are used to an environment where your choices are limited to Blue or Purple anything that doesn’t fit that scheme appears strange. Also unfortunately those that tend to run from the right in Blue areas are those who don’t mind being cast as nuts and extremists and often throw fuel on the fire. However when individuals like Gov Donald Carcieri a solid conservative run that have stature and know how to present themselves even states like RI are up for grabs and without compromising. Unfortunately RI now is in the grip of Gov Lincoln Chafee but that aside the idea that the only way to win in the NE is with compromising Republicans is a fiction and more a product of bad convention wisdom and ineffective underfunded gadfly candidates from the right and also a party structure that is hostile to solid conservatives.
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