We're now seeing the shunning of anyone who has decided to endorse Romney (or the more generic "whomever the GOP nominates) at this point as not being "real" conservatives either. So Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Newt Gingrich (who has said he'll support Romney as the nominee), and even Sarah Palin are all out too. Fools and/or traitors all!
So, uh, who is left at this point?
Nobody is under any illusions here that Romney is a conservative dream candidate. He's not. But on most issues, he's clearly to the right of Obama, even if he's not as far right as we'd like. And I can't think of any issue on which he is to Obama's left. He still at least gives us the rhetoric of capitalism, opposes Obama's plan to massively hike taxes, wants to reduce regulation, supports the Keystone pipeline, opposes ObamaCare as a federal program, etc. He's not perfect, but he's significantly better than Obama. According to Palin, "infinitely better".
RomneyCare is a terrible, and if Romney was running for governor in my state, I'd fight as hard as I could. But he's not. And as long as he opposes ObamaCare, even on the grounds of federalism, that still makes him much, much better than Obama on that.
It's not that he's conservative. He is, as Gingrich as accurately labelled him, a "Massachusetts Moderate". But that is still significantly better than being a Chicago Socialist.