I am not expecting ANY candidate to measure up to Reagan's standards. Each candidate is a person who, among other things, is a product of his/her background and experience in life. Reagan never stopped learning. Reagan was more than a generation older than Myth Romney and understood the value in life, much less in public life, of the idea that a man should say what he means and mean what he says. That elemental level of morality is not a monopoly of conservatives. Russ Feingold and the late Paul Wellstone were honest men on that level even if their policies were not those of conservatives. I think the last honest "moderate Republican" in the House was Pete McCloskey who retired in 1983 and the last in the Senate was Mark Hatfield who retired in 1997. McCloskey was such an honest liberal Republican that he eventually became a Democrat, being antiwar, pro-abortion. an environmentalist whacko and a wide variety of other things.
The ever-present temptation to ideological heresy in the Republican Party is the worship of money and money issues as though money was the one and only thing that ever counted. Romney runs a serious risk of being identified exclusively with that heresy. His parents were anti-military pro-aborts but very devoted to piling up the wealth in business. There are plenty of Dem,onrats who do well in business. It is not an ideological qualification. If business success were a GOP qualification, then we would be whoring after the likes of Fortney Pete Stark, Howard Dean (Dean Witter), George Soros, Warren Planned Barrenhood Buffett (whose father had been a GOP Congresscritter in the Mesozoic Era, William Planned Barrenhood Gates, et al.
Myth, like all known Romneys (including his five sons) never served in the US military. He has had a despicable track record as a pro-abort himself. He crammed perversion posing as marriage down Massachusetts' throat and then tried to make it look like he was obeying a court order which he was not. He has been on every side of just about every issue other than $$$.
I get it that many conservatives are horrified at the goings on of the last four years and some of us (not so much the $$$ folks) were also horrified by Slick Willie even though the stock market soared under both of these Marxist disgraces. Slick Willy was a bit more pragmatic but a horror nonetheless. The sleaze, the corruption, the mass baby-killing, the attack on every moral value known to this society and the facility with which both Obozo and Slick Willy lust shamelessly after every nickel earned by any American. Then there was the joy of having to explain to the children in euphemisms what all those stories on the radio and TV meant having to do with Slick and Monica.
The answer to such despicable behavior on the part of the scandalously anti-constitution Marxist Demonrats has been to surrender on as many issues as possible lest the GOP face, well, CRITICISM from the leftist elites or from the GOP-E's brainwashed wives and brainless children. Best to go back to the safe haven, the tried and true path of worshiping at the altar of $$$. The GOP-E are a group who collectively despise intellect, favoring instead a craven form of social elegance in which knowing when not to offend (that would be ever) is the primary virtue. Manners to them are far more important than "morals" whatever "morals" may be. Their view of Bibles and guns is on a par with Comrade Obozo's and their contempt for the owners and regular users of Bibles or guns is as well. They certainly know well enough not to rub elbows with any but the absolutely tamest Catholics. Those of us who believe what the Deposit of the Faith provides are downright frightening to them.
It is not a question of "hating on Romney." As Edith Stein once wrote in another context before I was born, "There is no there there." How can one hate such a nothing as Myth? OTOH, honesty and a certain integrity regarding conservative principle requires that we not lie to ourselves by making believe that Romney is anything vaguely resembling an acceptable candidate for public office, much less as a "conservative" whatever that may wind up meaning after his pom pom girls get done playing make believe.
The bottom line is the claim that it is sooooooooo vitally important to dispose of Obozo and the radical Manichean Demons who are coming to get Muffie's trust fund, the SCOTUS, or whatever else. It was vitally important that we elect Richard Nixon twice or Hubert Humphrey or Geiorge McGovern would make the US part of the USSR, to elect Gerald (Leslie King) Ford lest Jimmuh Cahtuh break Betty Ford's abortion-loving heart, to elect and re-elect George Herbert Walker Bush because he was neither Michael Dukakis nor Slick Willy (although he was ever gushing for a New World Order instead of that boring old American Independence and sovereignty) and even though his lips moved, to elect Robert Dole whom Jack Kemp had previously and accurately called "the tax collector for the welfare state, and John Mushmouth McCain who has not a principle to his name as a Senator and specializes in selling out to the other side as he "reaches across the aisle" rather than launching on target, and now Myth Romney. The only exceptions in my adult life have been the incomparable Ronaldus Maximus and the halfway acceptable George W. Bush who at least saved us from another round of his daddy's elitist business monger $$$ corruptocrat advisors (at least until TARP).
The basic argument for Myth Romney is that it is just soooooo important to elect him because it is soooooo important to elect him and he is not Obozo and aren't we just embarrassed to have Obozo in office and, and, and well there's other stuff but we just can't remember right now since we are sooooooo mad at that usurper in the White House and the way he hands out OUR contracts, and OUR money and OUR privileges to all his lowlife friends.
AND then there are those crazy "principled" types who go around threatening OUR financial future over a few million babies who probably don't deserve to live anyway. After all, how many abortees would have the talent to be investment bankers like ordinary folks in OUR circles. They threaten OUR financial futre over their guns and Bibles and their resistance to Bruce "marrying" Lance or whomever or whatever he damn well pleases to "marry." Besides, Bruce and Lance need favorable tax treatment too. Some of them want us to be prepared for future "wars" with Nowheristan instead of being good prudent men of business like Ebenezer Scrooge before the ghosts showed up. Small wonder they are not investment bankers like normal people when their priorities are so screwed up that they favor innocent human lives, marriage as commonly understood, GUNS!!!, all this military stuff, and just about anything other than our Muffie's trust fund and the really important things in life.
If Myth Romney is elected, as I suspect he will be, trust me that you are going to miss the Republican Party AND you are going to miss the USA as we have known it to date. Electing Obozo will have precisely the same result for the country and maybe for the GOP as well but at least the GOP will be united in opposition to him.
If Myth Romney is defeated, then the long-overdue bloodletting in the GOP will follow immediately. No more buying nominations by using corruptocrat elitist oceans of $$$ to carpetbomb the airwaves with vicious lies, slanders, libels, etc. against worthwhile candidates. That shameful behavior (the hallmark of the GOP-E sliver of the party) will have a certain cachet comparable to having a track record as a child molester.
I don't think Myth as POTUS would EVER be a social conservative. a military conservative, a gun conservative, a moral conservative, a judicial conservative, an "environmental" conservative, or even an across the board fiscal conservative (since he will ever favor the interests of those whose lives are most like his own on the business side over rank and file citizens of modest means).
WE (i.e. conservatives) lost this election the day that Romney secured the nomination. That was the point when there were only third party candidates left. Fortunately, we have several and my choice is FR's own Tom Hoefling. One way or another, the election of either major party candidate is a disaster for this country. One way or another, we Americans, ever resilient, will survive to fight another day. No matter which major party POS is elected, conservatives, actual conservatives, will be reunited in opposition to the "winner" in short order. If Obozo, on election night. If Romney, probably within three minutes of his inauguration speech or announcement of cabinet members whichever comes first. Renominating Herbert Hoover was a smidgeon smarter than nominating Myth Romney especially if he "wins."
We will have red meat candidates. We will have candidates who are credible in their principles. We will have candidates who say what they mean and mean what they say. We will have candidates who aim to re-construct our nation as the fortress (on all issues) it was meant to be. OR we will NOT have a GOP. This paragraph is MY patriotic duty. The fratricide ends when conservatives re-unite against the "winner" and not before. If we don't, then the country will end. It does not matter if Myth temporarily boosts the economy. It won't last. Conservatism without social conservatism is NOT conservatism. Money is only money.
You saved your best sentence in a wonderful post for the very last, friend. Well done.
-- The Declaration of Independence
"[T]he Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny...The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to...its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight." -- Frederick Douglass, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July speech, July 5, 1852 "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
Amen.