Friend, you are right on target. I actually discount all the blabber, hate, dislike, bad mouthing on this site by Freepers, etc. against Mitt Romney. I always thought this wonderful site was the vioce of conservatism, freedom, liberty and individual effort. To me, there is no difference between the hate and venom of the left or the right, period.
The good news is, these folks that spew hate on this site are in reality, a distinct and tiny minority and mean absolutely nothing in the upcoming election. This real issue in my mind is not Mitt Romney. It is Barack Hussein Obama. Simple, Obama must be defeated for many clearly obvious reasons. End of story. ABO!!!
I don't hate Romney. I oppose him. There is a difference.
You're right that the anti-Romney-under-any-circumstances people are a small minority of the electorate. However, I strongly disagree that they "mean absolutely nothing in the upcoming election."
When combined with the people who won't publicly attack Romney but won't work aggressively for him, the anti-Romney and the don't-like-Romney groups are a significant part of the Republican base. You don't need to take my word for it. Even Chuck Norris warned in a recent column that he doesn't think Mitt Romney understands the depth of the problem he has among conservatives.
Will this affect the fall election? The problem is that while Obama has successfully motivated his grassroots Democrats, Romney has been mowing down his Republican grassroots. Dole did the same thing in 1996. It wasn't a winning strategy then, and it's even worse now.
Here's a big part of why Romney's method to win the primary doesn't translate into a November victory.
Romney used his personal money and that of close friends and business colleagues to defeat fellow Republicans, but he won't have anywhere near enough to do that against Obama.
Getting grassroots support was important for Dole and Clinton in 1996, but it's far more important today due to campaign financing and the de facto end of the public presidential campaign financing system. To win a national presidential campaign today takes hundreds of millions of dollars, not the tens of millions that Romney has at his disposal, and raising that kind of money requires grassroots support that Romney simply does not have and has actually been alienating. His current goal seems to be to say, "Okay, I know you don't like me, but I'm better than the other guy." Fine, maybe that will get people to vote for him rather than Obama, but it won't get them to pull out checkbooks and write numbers with lots of zeros after them, or to aggressively campaign.
I do believe that the anti-Romney wing of the Republican Party is going to be a significant contributing factor to Romney's defeat this fall, in an election that Republicans should have won by a blowout with any reasonably good candidate.
Obama is so bad that Romney may win anyway, but I don't see it with current polling data, either nationally or in key states. Obama hasn't even begun to use his war chest of finances, and he's still polling well compared to Romney. Yes, I know it's early, and yes, I know it's true that anything can happen between now and November, but I am not happy at all with what I see.
I think conservatives have to come up with a plan for what to do after November, whether Romney wins or loses, since either outcome will be a loss for conservative principles. We can debate which is worse, and that's a legitimate debate, but what's not debatable is that we have two bad candidates, and either of them will do bad things if they're in the White House.
It still is. It's Romney who isn't.
Listen again, JLA: Romney is not now nor has he ever been a conservative. That means it is beyond fair for conservatives to conclude: He WILL NOT be.
And then to oppose him.
Do I care whether uber-liberal A or uber-liberal B has the White House?
Not really. My goal is to see both of them defeated.
Vote GOODE not Evil (the lesser of 2 evils is still evil!)