If Republicans were conservative, there’d be no contest and Fred would be on top.
Let’s examine a few arguments from the thread and note the degree to which they cannot be consistent.
“Romney is a panderer and will say anything to get elected and he doesn’t believe in anything.”
“Romney will govern as a liberal, regardless of what he says.”
Note the problem with this? How can someone you feel has no values at all be presumed to govern as a liberal?
Why does anyone run for president? A consuming personal ambition and ego to the exclusion of all else? A consuming personal desire to serve the country’s best interests to the exclusion of all else? A consuming personal desire to drive the country in the philosophical direction personally held to the exclusion of all else?
Or a combination? You see the issue? If it was only 2 of those three possibilities, motivations are easy to analyze and it’s easy to plug someone into a category of admirable or distasteful. A 100 - 0 - 0 mixture could be called distasteful, but because of that final 0 a person would get points for not being overbearing.
So all candidates probably are a mixture of the three in terms of motivation. Remember Hillary’s cry, and how she instinctively babbled words to conceal that the crying was about item 1 and tried to transform it into item 2?
With Romney, and people wanting to claim he has no values, then they also can’t call him a liberal. He’s probably somewhere around 40 - 30 - 30. With the failed Thompson candidacy, the FR presumption is 0 - 50 - 50, which is, of course, profoundly arrogant to be forcing his values onto people. With McCain, the perpetual candidate, we see something like 80 - 10 - 10, with that final 10 being a sort of perverse set of values where he takes great pride in championing liberal causes as a Republican. Huckabee comes to the table at 50 - 0 - 50. A bizarre combo.