I wonder how many FReepers remember how aggressively pro-Romney you were on these boards back in '07-08?
Newt has a lot of flaws, deep ones -- but he's admitted he was wrong on the global warming hooey with Pelosi, and IIRC, the Scozzafava fiasco.
On the other hand, Newt HAS A TRACK RECORD of success with the Contract for America, he authored and fought for quite a lot of constructive change through Congress, and on the whole, has done more good than not in the cause of advancing conservatism.
Your guy Romney, on the other hand, has FAILED UTTERLY TO EVER ADVANCE CONSERVATISM. Romney CONTINUES to brag about RomneyCare. He has flip-flopped on all kinds of issues, whereas Newt, as far as I can see, has ADMITTED THAT HE'D BEEN WRONG and was correcting course.
Reagan wisely said it's better to vote for someone who agrees with you 75 or 80 percent of the time than hold-out for someone you can agree with 100 percent. Gingrich passes that test; Romney fails spectacularly; Romney has always betrayed conservative principle 100 percent of the time, whereas Newt has betrayed it maybe 25 percent of the time.
There's a chance with Newt. With Romney, it's GAME OVER. Romney FLUNKS Reagan's test, and Gingrich passes -- maybe with a C-, but he still passes, and he passes with a hell of a lot higher score than McCain ever could have.
I can’t imagine anybody fails to remember 2008, when I agreed with Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Jim DeMint that Romney was preferable to McCain. That was then.
I’ve spent this entire election cycle arguing that we needed to stop tearing down every conservative candidate in the hopes that our “preferred” candidate would enter the race, or would be the last one standing in the burned-down village. We needed to build up all the conservatives, so one of them would be able to beat Romney. Instead, every conservative was atttacked, every possible avenue of victory was shuttered.
Eventually, I gave up, and just started attacking those I thought were bad choices, like everybody else. That happened to be Herman Cain, who while sufficiently conservative, was clearly unable to mount an effective political campaign, and showed no indication of being ready to be President of this country. I took flak for that, but it was just my personal opinion, it’s not like I have a “following”.
And it all became moot when he dropped out over stupid allegations that he should have easily been able to handle, but didn’t because he was an amateur when it came to politics, and he surrounded himself with an ineffective support team.
I always hoped that momentum would swing back to one of the electable conservatives, Bachmann/Perry/Santorum. Instead, and in part because the Cain folks built up Gingrich because Cain/Gingrich did a debate together, a lot of Cain folks jumped to Gingrich, something I never expected after years of seeing how we really felt about him.
I don’t consider Gingrich a conservative in this century. The Gingrich of 2011 isn’t the Gingrich of 1994. Of course, Gingrich will be better than Romney, and better than McCain. BTW, I’d support McCain over Romney this time around, just because I’ve lost that much interest in Romney.
As I explained to my daughter — I supported Romney first for the same reason I expressed above, to counter negatives so all possible conservatives remained viable. I wasn’t a “Romney supporter” in the sense that he was my candidate — I was a Duncan supporter, and then a Fred Thompson supporter (that’s where I sent my money). Duncan was a non-starter, as was Tancredo (another guy I could have supported).
Eventually I had a choice of 4 candidates — Romney, McCain, Huckabee, and Giuliani. I supported Romney out of those 4, as did many here, following the lead of Limbaugh and others. Didn’t matter — by that time Romney was not winning anything, and by the time I got to actually VOTE, McCain was our nominee.
But it was all based on a “hope” that Romney would be what he claimed in his campaign. Since that time, he has done almost nothing to burnish his conservative credentials. If anything, he has moved back to the left. And his defense of RomneyCare has been dissapointing to say the least.
It’s not that Gingrich doesn’t admit he’s wrong, btw, it’s that he gives no good reason WHY he was wrong that would suggest he won’t be equally as wrong in the future. Won’t do us much good if President Gingrich apologizes in 2015 for signing a disastrous bill in 2014.
I would much rather take my chances with Santorum, or Perry. Perry looks dead, but I’ll defend him anyway, because I believe in the ressurection. Seriously though, it doesn’t cost me anything, and at the moment I can’t vote for ANY of these three candidates. I have to choose between Romney and Ron Paul. Hopefully that will change.
BTW, before I was pro-Romney, I had a brief stint strongly defending Rudy Giuliani for attacks on his record that I believed were false. I tend to defend against false attacks without regard to what candidate is being attacked.
I’ve tried not to jump too much into this argument, because it’s the same problem — I wouldn’t defend Romney for what he actually DID at Bain Capital, I just don’t like the use of leftist tactics by our “conservatives”. But I’m not going to get into a fight where i’m perceived as defending Romney. That’s against site rules, and frankly against my own personal interest in this race — all conservatives benefit if Romney is torn down, so long as we don’t destroy conservative principles in the process.
BTW, do you disagree with my contention that Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, and Cain were all solid conservatives? It’s OK, lots of people have rejected one or more of them, but those are my four.