Leader Romney Will Pay Price For Pragmatism

IBD Editorials ^ | June 13, 2011 | Left wing lunatic EUGENE ROBINSON

[Kaslin]

Poor Mitt Romney. With every poll showing him in the lead for the Republican presidential nomination, his heart must sink. Like Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and quite a few others who never got to be president, Romney has the misfortune of being an early front-runner.

Normally, we'd expect the rest of the field to make an issue of every crazy, intemperate thing the leading candidate has ever said or done. This year, however, the pack is assailing Romney with documented examples of chronic, blatant, incorrigible moderation. Even — shudder — pragmatism.

Oh, the humanity.

The truth is that Romney is basically an ideological conservative who believes in tax cuts as a panacea and is content to watch the American middle class continue its long, sad decline. But in today's Republican Party, merely positioning oneself to the right of Ronald Reagan isn't enough. Apparently, it's also necessary to eschew all reason.

Hence the young campaign's most unfortunate new coinage, courtesy of Tim Pawlenty: "ObamneyCare." That's the word he used Sunday to describe President Obama's health care law, which borrowed ideas from the reform package Romney devised and implemented when he was governor of Massachusetts. ObamaCare plus RomneyCare equals .. . OK, we get it, we get it.

Flying Pigs

T-Paw clearly received the stop-making-sense memo and perhaps took it a bit too seriously. Last week he released an economic "plan" — I'm stretching the word here — meant to showcase his boldness and optimism. Instead, he drew near-universal skepticism, along with quite a bit of laughter.

[Elsie]

Well Hello! Mr. Robinson; where is your It's Bushes fault! rubber stamp these days?

[Graybeard58]

The article you linked me up with, saying Romney leads in Utah was in Feb. Just wondering if Huntsman has made any inroads since? He's possibly, "Not Mormon enough".

Even if Romney and Huntsman split the Utah vote, one of them would still win the Mormon primary though because all others would be splitting that 2%-4%.

By the way, I read an interesting article about Huntsman's father in the print edition of Forbes. It seems that he is a very generous man, he gives the obligatory tithe to Mormon Inc., in addition to funding cancer hospitals, to the tune of Billions. Gates and Soros had invited him to join their philanthropy circle and it turns out that he is already giving proportionally more than they are. Plus Huntsman Sr. is a Navy vet.

[ansel12]

I don’t know, Huntsman isn’t on my radar yet, I just don’t see him becoming a top level threat like Romney is.

I think that Romney was able to create a national political presence at a time when conservatives were not so much a national force, and his political growth was allowed to percolate in the partly hidden remoteness of Massachusetts, Huntsman will not have that luxury, we will be on him from the very beginning.

[NH_Repub]

As much as I agree with you, I am not sure that will happen. The establishment will make sure their guy Romney gets the node, and most of us will vote for him to hold Obama back.