Posted on 11/15/2011 7:06:48 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Conservatives must unite around one candidate to stop Mitt Romney.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catchphrase could stop thinking for 50 years. One of the often-repeated catchphrases of our time — “It’s the economy, stupid!” — has already stopped thinking in some quarters for a couple of decades.
There is no question that the state of the economy can affect elections. But there is also no iron law that all elections will be decided by the state of the economy.
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected for an unprecedented third term after two terms in which unemployment was in double digits for eight consecutive years.
We may lament the number of people who are unemployed or who are on food stamps today. But those who give the Obama administration credit for coming to their rescue when they didn’t have a job are likely to greatly outnumber those who blame the administration for their not having a job in the first place.
An expansion of the welfare state in hard times seems to have been the secret of FDR’s great political success in the midst of economic disaster. An economic study published in a scholarly journal in 2004 concluded that the Roosevelt administration’s policies prolonged the Great Depression by several years. But few people read economic studies.
This economy has been sputtering along through most of the Obama administration, with the unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent. But none of that means that Barack Obama is going to lose the 2012 election.
Even polls that show “any Republican” with more public support than Obama do not mean that Obama will lose.
The president is not going to run against “any Republican.” He is going to run against some specific Republican, and that Republican can expect to be attacked, denounced, and denigrated for months on end before the November 2012 elections — not only by the Democrats, but also by the media, which is heavily pro-Democrat.
We have already seen how unsubstantiated allegations from women with questionable histories have dropped Herman Cain from front-runner status to third place in just a couple of weeks.
In short, it takes a candidate to beat a candidate, and everything depends on what kind of candidate that is.
The smart money inside the Beltway says that the Republicans need to pick a moderate candidate who can appeal to independent voters, not just to the conservative voters who turn out to vote in Republican primaries. Those who think this way say that you have to “reach out” to Hispanics, the elderly, and other constituencies.
What is remarkable is how seldom the smart-money folks look at what has actually been happening in presidential elections.
Ronald Reagan won two landslide elections when he ran as Ronald Reagan. Vice President George H. W. Bush then won when he ran as if he were another Ronald Reagan, with his famous statement, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
But after Bush 41 was elected and turned “kinder and gentler” — to everyone except the taxpayers — he lost to an unknown governor from a small state.
Other Republican presidential candidates who went the “moderate” route — Bob Dole and John McCain — also came across as neither fish nor fowl and went down to defeat.
Now the smart money inside the Beltway is saying that Mitt Romney, who is nothing if not versatile in his positions, is the Republicans’ best hope for replacing Obama.
If conservative Republicans split their votes among a number of conservative candidates in the primaries, that can mean ending up with a presidential candidate in the Bob Dole–John McCain mold — and risking a Bob Dole–John McCain result in the next election.
The question now is whether the conservative Republican candidates who have enjoyed their successive and short-lived boomlets — Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain — are prepared to stay in the primary race to the bitter end, or whether their conservative principles will move them to withdraw and throw their support to another conservative candidate.
There has probably never been a time in the history of this country when we more urgently needed to get a president out of the White House, before he ruined the country. But will the conservative Republican candidates let that guide them?
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
I am starting to get an uneasy feeling. Would not surprise me if Romney gets it:(
Didn’t these guys endorse Romney in 08?
Do not put it past the demoncrats to use their voter fraud tactics to pick the GOP candidate for us.
Hail the new POTUS - the same as the old POTUS.
Of COURSE they will! (I refuse to call myself a GOPer as I am a Conservative).
They will nominate Romney come Hell or high water. Romney will get slaughtered in the General which will hurt us in all the other races.
It is NOW time for a Third Party. It is time to stop being the useful idiots and saying “well if you vote Third Party, blah, blah, blah” It’s what they want. It’s what they always get.
Ive been voting since Goldwater - Johnson and I have never been so upset about the state of the GOP.
fdr was elected to a 4th term.
Romney, Perry, Newt...all from the same establishment mold will blow it for the GOP.
Third party will be needed and the GOP will have to be seen from here on out as a hostile political party.
RE: Didn’t these guys endorse Romney in 08?
But Thomas Sowell (author of this article ) is a SYNDICATED Columnist, not part of the Editorial Board of NRO.
RE: fdr was elected to a 4th term
That was before TERM LIMITS were put in place.
So Cain, who has the strongest campaign finance and poll position in the early states is supposed to drop out in favor of the some times conservative Newt Gingrich?
I see Dr Sowell's standard isn't who is the best Conservative in the race but who is the most reliably part of the GOP Establishment who can fake it for Conservatives.
Dr Sowell lost a whole lot of stature with this one.
I’m with you RI...but a third Party? Is this going to help defeat Hussein? Our two party system and yes, the flawed GOP is still our best hope.
Everyone needs to rally around Cain.
Mitt was a major failure last time. Nothing has changed.
Dr. Sowell, you are a master of subtlety.
People like you is precisely why Romney will be the nominee and that will be the end of conservatism in this country for a long time.
Cain has ZERO chance. Get real and get over it.
Yeah...and lose in a landslide to Obama. Great idea!!
Then there is NO hope. We will simply continue our slow, pathetic death as a nation, just as we have been doing for over 50 years.
The machine is pleased that sheeple continue to think that our "best hope" is to operate within their system.
Most people might listen to you Cain critics if you didn’t all sound like 12 year olds fighting on a playground.
It is this habitual posting of childish ad homine attacks at Cain, and his supporters, that make thinking people dismiss the Cain critic’s arguments as silly nonsense.
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