Posted on 11/08/2011 5:05:57 AM PST by IbJensen
Mit Romney will not go on Special Report with Brett Baier to answer the tough questions as the other candidates have done. No worries. Conservatives will bitch and moan for a few days and Romney will claim it was a scheduling issue, hed always meant to go on, and he will go on.
Should Mitt Romney win the Presidency, conservatives will find this pattern play out repeated. Romney will head in a direction conservatives do not like and they will bitch and moan repeatedly and maybe, just maybe, hell part his hair in their direction.
Weve seen this play out over and over. Jon Huntsman comes up with the best economic plan of all the candidates, Herman Cain follows up with 999, Perry comes out with a flat tax, and Romney refuses to do anything. Until he does something.
Mitt Romney is not the George W. Bush of 2012 he is the Harriet Miers of 2012, only conservative because a few conservative grand pooh-bahs tell us Mitt Romney is conservative and for no other reason.
That is precisely why Mitt Romney will not win in 2012. But no worry, once he loses, Republican establishment types will blame conservatives for not doing enough for Mitt Romney, never mind that Mitt Romney has never been able to sell himself to more than 25% of the GOP voters. Its not his fault though, it is the 75%s fault.
Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. And his general election campaign will be an utter disaster for conservatives as he takes the GOP down with him and burns up what it means to be a conservative in the process.
Why Romney Will Be The Nominee
Mitt Romney will be the nominee because the other candidates, right now, are a pretty pathetic lot.
The base will not forgive Rick Perry his immigration sins. In fact, that has hurt him far more than his debate performances, but his debate performances have hurt him badly. Perry, who came out principled and fiery with a record others could only envy, has left others with the impression that hes a poor mans version of the village idiot, which in the SEC we call Aggies. Maybe he can turn it around.
Newt Gingrich will not be the nominee because, despite his daughters rebuttals to the horror stories of how Gingrich divorced his first of three wives, Jackie Gingrich told the Washington Post on January 3, 1985, He walked out in the spring of 1980 and I returned to Georgia. By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said Daddy is downstairs and could he come up? When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from the surgery.
Gingrich went on to cheat on the second wife with the third. Regardless of the actual facts or even the spin, he wont win women.
Herman Cain wont be the nominee because he cant win women either. Regardless of what you think of the Politico story, Cains handling of the story has been an epic disaster. Hes down at least 10 points with women in Iowa. Hes falling even further and doesnt even realize it. Hes largely been emboldened by a conservative media that is so used to standing by its men that too few are telling Herman that he is now at the point where he must actually sit and answer questions whether he wants to or not and whether he feels maligned or not and whether I think he should have to or not. If he loses women by as big as he is starting to lose the women, he cannot win.
So Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Conservatives will not rally together with the least of the bad alternatives and Romney, like John McCain before him, will run up the middle to the nomination. But, just like McCain, Romney will not beat Barack Obama. Why Mitt Romney Will Not Beat Barack Obama
Youd think that given the economy, jobs, and the present angst about the direction of the country that the GOP would have an easy path to victory. You would be wrong.
You forget the electoral college. The vote is coming down to a handful of states and Barack Obama still maintains the advantage of incumbency and not terribly terrible polling in those swing states.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.
Ive been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled. The man has no core beliefs other than in himself. You want him to be tough? Hell be tough. You want him to be sensitive? Hell be sensitive. You want him to be for killing the unborn? Hell go all in on abortion rights until he wants to run for an office where it is not in his advantage.
Along the way, hell drop lots of coin to grease the skids for himself. Mitt Romney is the silly putty of politicians press on him real hard and hell take on whatever image you press into him until the next group starts pressing.
Republican billionaires have a fantastic track record of getting Republican opinion leaders to support them and an even better track record at losing elections. Mitt Romney will be no different.
To beat Barack Obama, a candidate must paint a bold contrast with the Democrats on their policies. When Mitt Romney tries, Barack Obama will be able to show that just the other day Mitt Romney held exactly the opposite position as the one he holds today.
Voters may not like Barack Obama, but by the time Obama is done with Romney they will not trust Mitt Romney. And voters would rather the guy they dont like than they guy they dont trust. Why Conservatism Will Die
Conservatism is already dying. Republicans on Capitol Hill are about to raise taxes on the American people with this Super Committee, but theyll say they are just raising revenue, not taxes. Conservatives will give them a pass as they have on virtually every other major issue. Conservatives keep giving passes to people who shouldnt be given passes because conservative in Washington have been there so long, theyd much rather get invited to the cocktail parties and avoid awkward encounters.
Washington, D.C. conservatives will also rally around Mitt Romney, just as they kept doing over and over and over with George W. Bush even after steel tariffs in Pennsylvania, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, the GM Bailout, and TARP. At some point the public will cease taking conservatives seriously when the most prominent conservatives those in Washington who pose as the faces, voices, and writers of the conservative movement at large, keep throwing their lot in with a guy who keeps selling out the very principles conservatives claim to hold dear.
Some conservatives, of course, will not go all in for Romney. These conservatives will be blamed by major Republican and conservative mouth pieces for not doing enough to help Mitt Romney. They will be alienated, blamed, and made the scapegoat for the failures of the establishment GOP.
But there is something else too Mitt Romney is winning the nomination without conservative help. The only time he pays conservatives any attention is when they cry loud enough that the media takes notice and Romney decides the story needs to go away. Once he is the nominee, it will be all about wooing the independents.
Hell, he can give the base Marco Rubio as the veep nominee, just like McCain did with Palin a token for the base. But dont delude yourself into thinking he will seriously take conservatives seriously. He got the nomination without them and hell only use them when it is opportunistically convenient for him.
Conservatism itself will not really die. But it might as well be dead as even conservatives in the heartland of the country stop taking Washington conservatives seriously.
The Contrast To Be Drawn
It is striking to me that in 2012 there is broad based popular angst against Wall Street and Washington and the Republican Party is on the verge of nominating a multi-millionaire scion of the Rockefeller Wing of the Republican Party whose closest encounters with the common man are accidentally touching one of the many hired hands in one of the many rooms of one of his many mansions. But then many of the DC-NYC Republican conservatives who support Romney are the same, only coming into contact with regular people when they are served their breakfast by a steward in the first class car on the Acela Express.
Neither Romney nor the Washington GOP crowd who loves him have very much at all in common with fly over country conservatives who see the GOP and Democrats both as out to lunch tools of K-Street and Wall Street. The party that could lead a conservative, populist campaign against Wall Street and Barack Obama, the former getting fat off the latter, will instead nominate a guy more at home on Wall Street than Main Street.
And enough conservatives will be cheerleaders and rally around him that by November of 2012 the ideological underpinnings of the modern American conservative movement will be coming apart.
Im starting to think I need to walk it back on my rejection of Jon Huntsman. Because Im starting to think even he would be more faithful in his conservative convictions than Mitt Romney.
Someone once asked the Senate chaplain if he prayed for the senators. He replied, No, I look at the senators and pray for the country. He could now add the House, the White House, the Supreme Court, and state capitals and city halls across this once great land. What a sorry mess we have let ourselves get into.
I now believe if this country is to be saved at all it will be by individuals only. Parties, unions, collectives of all sorts are no longer following a moral, or even a sensible, path. Only by doing what is right as individuals and families can we survive the troubles that are coming. Again, God help us please.
The GOP abandoning conservatism will complete the Left’s takeover of America. A party without passion and without principles is a party no one wants to support.
If Erick Erickson is right, we’re cursed with Obama for another four years.
I fear he is right.
The Republican leadership is all for Romney,because it’s “his turn”.
Of course. Given Republican history, the odds good Romney will be nominated because conservatives are looking for Ronald Reagan. There will never be one again.
If Romney wins the nomination, I will not vote in November, even if that leaves Obama. Maybe that’s a good thing. Obama and his puppetmasters will be exposed for what they are if given another four years. It will be VERY painful, but “no pain, no gain”.
—Of course. Given Republican history, the odds good Romney will be nominated because conservatives are looking for Ronald Reagan. There will never be one again.—
I’m not looking for a Ronald Reagan. But I will never vote for Romney. I’d take even that lunatic, Ron Paul over Romney. Romney cannot be trusted. He changes his beliefs whenever it is politically expedient. Listening to him regarding this election is like listening to a sleazy used car salesman describing a car you are thinking of purchasing: You cannot trust a single word he says.
I’t choose Obama over that, though I could never, EVER vote for that poser. I’ll simply write in my own name.
All that said, I still do not believe Obama will finish his first term, much less run for a second.
If Cain falls. I think we need to give Perry a second look. He could be the only one capable of taking on Romney.
If Conservatives are looking for Reagan they damned sure will not find him in Romneycare the Flip-flopper.
That’s right.
Mark Levin said last night that he would vote for an orange juice can over Obama.
I, for one, will not.
If the only answer that America can produce to a communist revolutionary in the white house is Mitt romney, then America can kiss my ass.
These attacks on Cain are predictable. Sadly, most of us come from small and large town gossip meccas and fall for this sort of thing reliably.
The Democrats can always count on us not to stand by our man; while they keep trotting Bill Clinton out to do press conferences. Ha! In fact, they ENVY him, their beloved Elder Statesman.
The fix is in. The GOP establishment, who are hoping that they can get back to the good old days of serving martinis to the Democrats as they sit poolside at the country club, have determined that Willard is the way back to the days of shoeshine boys Bob Michel and Gerald Ford.
I was hoping for Sarah Palin and am not a big fan of Rick Perry, but he is far more on our side than the TV gameshow host Romney.
God helps those who help themselves.
-----
It's almost a certainty that Romney will be foisted off on us again. I wonder how many conservatives have the guts to do what we always tell the Democrats to do...
Get OFF the fracking Plantation!
There has yet to be a successful write-in candidate that won the Presidency.
I wonder if we could REALLY rock their world and make it happen?
Better to give it a shot than to sit at home on our thumbs, eh?
Yes
Tom Rooney continues to perform like a true Conservative and not a damned RINO Republicrat!
I will never vote for Flip Flopney.....ever.
Boy, what a depressing article.
This statement is absurd. Conservativism is a mindset based on fundamental truths of the universe. It can never be "burned up" by being betrayed by a man or even by all of humanity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.