Posted on 10/13/2011 7:35:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In 1972, Brazilian biologist Francisco Varela introduced the concept of “autopoiesis,” which explains the process by which cells regenerate and replace themselves. According to the theory, human cells die and are replaced; so every ten years or so, you are literally an entirely different person than you were before. So if you called your car-insurance company to tell them the speeding ticket you got in 1998 wasn’t you, you’d actually be right.
Seeing as how I’m reaching the end of my 30s, I figure I’m due a new body. I hope model 4.0 will be taller and skinnier; if it’s 4G capable, that would be awesome, too. Yet there’s one thing I find problematic about my impending new self: It will be supporting Mitt Romney for president.
This galls Current Me. My dissatisfaction with Romney mirrors that of many conservatives who recognize his long history as a political chameleon. As a kid, I remember the cartoon He-Man confusing me; He-Man and his alter-ego, Prince Adam, looked exactly alike, just wearing different clothes. And yet none of the citizens of Eternia figured it out. Apparently, Mitt Romney thinks in order to disassociate himself from his past political life, he just has to wear a different suit and say the word “Reagan” enough.
But we’ve figured it out. The list is well traveled: This Mitt is the same one who supported TARP; the same one who instituted an Obama-style individual mandate requiring Massachusetts residents to purchase health care; who supported “cap and trade,” assault-weapons bans, and Roe v. Wade.
His puerile attacks on Rick Perry for asserting that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” were as confusing as Perry’s awkward attempts to explain his position. Romney slammed Perry for allowing the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition, despite Latinos’ making up 38 percent of Texas’s population — yet all of Romney’s erstwhile liberal positions clearly represented naked political opportunism of an equal order.
Yet Romney is almost a lead-pipe lock to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2012. His titanium chin has plowed its way through the Republican presidential field, making otherwise good candidates occasionally seem amateurish.
And while many of Romney’s positions have “evolved” based on the office for which he is running, many of them have stayed strong throughout. In their 2007 endorsement of Romney, the National Review editors pointed out that in 1994, when he tried to unseat Ted Kennedy, “he ran against higher taxes and government-run health care, and for school choice, a balanced budget amendment, welfare reform, and ‘tougher measures to stop illegal immigration.’”
Romney’s campaigning skills have improved markedly from his first presidential run in 2008; he is currently the only candidate plausible enough to share the stage with Barack Obama in 2012. Not only are his currently held convictions right; if he were actually to make it through the primary, his past liberal positions could make him more appealing to out-of-work Democrats who are looking for a safe home.
And while Romney may not be the ideal candidate, he may just be ideal enough to win. As the old saying goes, when being chased by a bear, you don’t have to necessarily be fast — you just have to be faster than one other guy. The good news for Romney is that he’d be running against an incumbent whose approval rating is slightly lower than that of paper cuts. And this bear economy may just devour Obama as Romney jogs across the finish line.
In 2011, Republicans are sitting at the end of the bar, and it’s 2 a.m. Ryan and Christie have already gone home, and the GOP is looking for someone to keep it company. As Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself for Loving You” plays, Mitt winks at them from the other end of the bar. Right now, he’s the best the GOP has; how the night turns out is yet to be seen.
In 2012, I will be writing breathlessly about how America will be engulfed in flames should Mitt Romney not be elected president. I will write endlessly about his infallibility and his impeccable conservative credentials. But thanks to science, I can be forgiven. It won’t be me.
— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
***According to the theory, human cells die and are replaced; so every ten years or so, you are literally an entirely different person than you were before. So if you called your car-insurance company to tell them the speeding ticket you got in 1998 wasn’t you, you’d actually be right.***
That was such a superb beginning. Should have stopped reading right there.
Brain cells are not renewable however, so he has no excuse!
This conservative will NOT settle for Mitt.
Barky will win by pointing out that Mitt is just plain weird, which is true. Mitt is not a narcissist like Barky but there is something really off with him. He wants it too bad. Vanity is probably at the core, a nerd wants to win the Presidency like winning a competitive game, but it could be blind ambition, an evil greed. He will do anything, anything, to win. I’d hate to watch Mitt try to win voters in an SF bath house.
As Eddie Murphy would say, "That just nasty, man!!!
I will crawl over broken glass to vote against this distinction without a difference.
I am assuming you prefer Zero then?
For you to say that is an insult and you should know better.
I want someone who will do what he/she can to reverse 0bama’s damage and get this country back on track.
Romney would just move us down the track to disaster slower than 0bama.
And I will vote Romney if he’s the nominee. I’ll still be disgusted.
And I will vote Romney if he’s the nominee. I’ll still be disgusted.
Granted given the choice, you'll live longer being starved to death than strangled.
Seems like it would be better to die fighting back while you still have the strength to stand up.
Luckily, American voters outnumber the GOP by somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 1.
If Mitt is the nominee it won’t really matter who wins. One is Pepsi, the other Coke. Mitt would damage the Republican brand for 20 years though. At least with Barky, the Krats are taking the hits. And if Barky got new less-evil puppet masters, his public persona would become completely new. He could act out an FDR character and smoke in public.
Romney’s advisors may be the ones picking who lives and who dies at the hands of Zero’s Death Panels. Wonder if they have all of us listed?
Mitt Romney is Obama-lite.
Let’s look at it this way, if you ask voters what would be the first two things that they would do to turn around the economy, the first would be to repeal Obamacare with all its inherent taxes and onerous regulations.
Romney’s plan is to repeal only the federal mandate and replace it with an optional state mandate, leaving all the taxes and regulations in place. It’s a non-starter.
The second thing that I think that the voters would recommend is a coherent energy policy that maximizes our own natural resources and ends all the excessive regulations by unelected bureaucrats in the EPA. No carbon trade system-no global warming.
Romney fails there too. Romney is straight out of the Al Gore school of AGW and one of his former advisers is now working in Obama’s EPA to put into action the new tougher Clean Air standards and penalties.
RINOs and Democrats for Romney! Yipee! Go Mitt!
Daniel Henninger has an article in the WSJ about Romney and asks, “Why the rush?” Henninger thinks that Romney needs to feel the pressure on his policies from some of the other candidates to move Romney more to the right.
Romney is fatally flawed at this point. Romney wants to repeal Obamacare and give us Obamneycare. Romney supports carbon trading and is an acolyte of Al Gore AGW. Romney wants tariffs on China to force their currency adjustment. (Reid and Schumer already did that, yesterday.)
RINOs and Democrats for Romney! Yipee! Go Mitt!
It should not be forgotten that operation chaos can, and will have a reverse effect this season. The dems have Zero, unless someone tosses their hat in soon. Zero will win the nomination by default.
This frees up all the democrats to vote in the republican open primaries and shove Milt right up our anal cavities. We already know they want to run against Milt..
They’re going to try. My comment “Look for them to quietly make it known that they just won’t fund or support Cain” is being discussed on Rush’s show right now. These establishment scumbags don’t care about saving the Constitution or Republic; they feel the need to protect their phoney-baloney jobs. They did this with Reagan and again in 2008 with several promising conservative candidates. They fight harder against true conservatives than they do against POS liberal democrats like der Fuehrer. $h!tbags all.
Yeah, I’ve heard that, but I’ve also heard from some Democrats that they think that Romney is a great alternative to a flawed and doomed Obama, that they might have a better chance to advance their agenda with Romney at the helm, influencing a Republican Congress.
Romney is simply Obama-lite with an R next to his name.
Yeah heard that line in 88, 92, 96, 00, 04, 08...
If I want to vote for a liberal I will vote for the real thing, not the cheap imitation.
With obama you get the quick toilet flush of the country and we start over. With Romney we get the slow swirling, linger, take for ever flush, but the flush does come.
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I am a Cain man and think he can still pull it out of the hat, I hope so.
If Romney gets the nomination I will not stay at home. I will vote for Romney and stay up all night watching the returns praying that Romney beats Obama. 4 more years of Obama stacking the Supreme Court, the EPA and death panels. Anything, even Romney would be better than that. I actually think that Romney would probably be better than Bush 2. He at least stands up to his criticism and fights back.
I hope I am pulling for the second black president election night but I won't stay home no matter who the GOP puts up.
Good for you, I’m not sure that I can say the same. I know that a third party is self destructive, but I’m so tired of being forced to swallow what feels like a slow a poison that I’m not sure it makes any difference.
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It does make a difference. Supreme Court appointments can last decades. 3rd party won't stop that.
What makes you think that Romney would make conservative supreme court appointments? I don’t see ANY indication of that, none at all. I don’t see any indication that Romney would be one bit better than Obama any issue, and possibly worse.
If we can take back the Senate and hold the house, we might be better off controlling both houses of Congress under Obama, than we would be controlling both houses under a Mitt Romney.
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