The Case Against Romney

I recently heard a local radio host proclaim that he hadn't heard an intelligent reason for conservatives to oppose Romney. After asking myself what hole in the ground his head had been stuck in, I decided I would share the reasons this conservative opposes Romney. I'll try not to ramble on for too long since I could probably write a whole book about it.

To be fair, I'll actually start with what I like about Romney to show that I do give him credit. First of all, he's not Barack Obama. That's all that really needs to be said if you're a real conservative. Obama is so antithetical to the conservative viewpoint that any one of the Republicans would be a better President than him (notice I didn't say a good President, just better than Obama). I also think Mitt is a good speaker who people can see as President. He also has a better understanding of the economy and the importance of reducing spending. I think he truly believes in America's greatness and he would help restore our standing on the national stage. He believes in the free market and knows that too much government hinders the free market. He would be a formidable candidate this fall especially given that the economy isn't likely to be much better than it is now and people think he can fix it because of his business background.

I had to make those points to clarify that I intend to willingly support Romney if he is the Republican candidate this fall. It will take me a lot more space to explain my concerns about Romney and why I don't think he's the best choice for the Republicans and why I'm very concerned that he would lose if he's the nominee. Let me start with my first and biggest concern that I think gets to the heart of what most nags most conservatives about Romney. He's a panderer or perhaps a better word would be a chameleon. He tends to take on the ideals and rhetoric of whatever audience or electorate he's facing. Some people, such as Ann Coulter, have said that just makes him a smart politician. I say that makes him a liar. I don't trust that the conservative Mitt we hear today on the campaign trail is the real Romney any more than the liberal Mitt was when he was running for the Senate or the Progressive Mitt when running for governor. At least with Obama, you know you're getting a liberal. With Mitt, you have to hope you're getting a conservative.

The real fear that I think conservatives have about Romney is not that he's a liberal or even moderate. They fear that he's none of the above because he has no core principles. That's why he's able to so easily change his positions and so hard to nail down on where he really stands. We see this in the way he talks about economic policies. He's uses good conservative phrases like "unleashing the private sector", but then turns around and talks about the 1% versus the middle class and how the rich are doing just fine. He's learned the lingo but not the true conservative principles. He doesn't understand that tax cuts aren't about different classes and who's doing fine or not. It's about returning the power to the people by allowing them to keep more of their own money and distribute it as they see fit through spending or investing or employing people. If I actually thought Romney understood conservatism and meant what he says in his stump speeches, I would be all for him. However, I fully expect a different candidate in the general election who tries to appeal to "the middle". If he does that, I fear he will lose. (See my post "The Myth of Electability" for more about this.)

Another argument that Romney supporters make is that his experience as a businessman proves that he's conservative and makes him strong on the economy. I think this myth spawns from the criticism against Obama for never having a real job in a business or ever running anything. It is definitely true that Obama has no clue how a business works and perhaps having been involved in the business world would have given him a better perspective on the economy. However, to twist that into thinking that everyone in the business world must be a conservative is just plain stupid. A perfect illustration of this is another businessman who reminds me a lot of Romney for the way he has made his fortune through capital investment. In fact, by the reasoning people give to support Romney, this man would be a much better president than Romney because he's been much more successful than Romney. That person is Warren Buffett. I'm guessing there aren't too many of you who have been hoping Warren Buffett would jump in the race. And now that I think about it, Buffett's comments about how the rich should be paying more don't sound too much different from Romney saying the rich are doing fine. This doesn't prove that all businessmen are liberals, but it does show that pointing out Romney's business background has very little to do with any discussions about him being a conservative either.

If Romney's business background doesn't convince his experience with the Olympics or as governor should, right? Frankly, I don't see his experience with Olympics shows anything more than his time at Bain Capital did and the fact that he used federal earmarks to cover the cost of the security further weakens the case for making this out to be anything particularly brilliant. As for his time as governor, this just further illustrates my point earlier that he has no real core principles. He can talk about the things he did to illustrate his conservatism, which is great. But that all pales in comparison to Romneycare. There is not one thing that is conservative about Romneycare. Even his point about advocating "personal responsibility" falls flat because that is not the type of personal responsibility conservatives believe in. We don't believe in enforcing by adding more government. We believe in forcing it by reducing government so that people are responsible for there own actions and own care. He might be able to say that it was more conservative than Obamacare, but that's like saying Hillary Clinton is more conservative Obama.

But Romney's going to appeal Obamacare, right? Not according to Romney advisor and former Senator Norm Coleman. Checkout this article http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/01/25/romney-advisor-no-obamacare-repeal/ or many other places online discussing this. But let's say Romney does repeal Obamacare (as will all of the other candidates, so he really doesn't stand out on this matter). He still clearly doesn't get the point. In a debate earlier this year, he told Rick Santorum that it wasn't worth getting angry about. However, that's exactly what drove the Tea Party and the election in 2010. People were mad as you know what over Obamacare. In the debate this week, Romney listed his reasons for opposing Obamacare. He mentioned that it was too expensive, cut medicare and raised taxes. Those are all definite problems. However, he missed the biggest reason conservatives oppose it, which is it that it is a massive overreach of government intervention in our lives. He may have just forgotten to mention that, but I think someone speaking from true conviction and not just memorized talking points wouldn't forget that.

I think if you really want to know what Romney would be like as president, I think both President Bush's would give you a pretty good idea. They both did some good things and were a lot better than Obama but they abandoned conservatism when things got tough and in the end that cost US dearly. The first time they gave us Bill Clinton after Bush 41 raised taxes. The second time we got Barack Obama because Bush 43 signed TARP (supported by Romney). Of course Romney knows that he can't convince people he's a real conservative. That's why he spends most of his money trashing his opponents to make people thi.k they're not conservative either. It's an interesting tango watching him criticize his opponents (except Ron Paul, of course) from the right while trying to appeal to moderates a sprinkling of class warfare rhetoric. Maybe that's why he has to team up with Ron Paul to attack his opponents since Paul seems more sincere hitting them from the right. (Checkout the various stories online discussing Ron Paul and Romney's relationship if you're not familiar with that already.)

Hopefully this will help convince our local host that there are intelligent reasons for opposing Romney. If not, perhaps he should try listening to another host on his own station, Mark Levin.

Obama Doesn't Care About You

Insert any name or group of people in front of the title of this blog and it would be a true statement. Women, immigrants, students, the poor...Obama does not care about you. He likes to find certain issues where he can entitle you so that he appears to care about you. For immigrants, it's amnesty. For students, its college tuition. For the poor, it's unemployment insurance. One-by-one he ticks off the different constituent groups that he needs to appease to get elected.

This week he has continued this pattern with women. He's standing up for "women's rights" by forcing religious institutions to provide contraception for free. There's no crisis of a lack of birth control, but he has to create the appearance that everyone is trampling on women's rights and he's their great hope. Therefore, he's eradicated religious rights under the 1st amendment and what's it really for. Obama doesn't care about you, just your vote.

Obama's entire term has been a campaign for his re-election. His laws and regulations that he his put in place have all about making people more dependent on the government and, more importantly, on him. He wants to make as many people as possible dependent. Just look at the way he frames the issues I've mentioned so far. If Obama loses, all immigrants will be deported, students will not get a college education, the unemployed will starve, and women will be doomed to oppression without any access to birth control.

What people must understand is that the philosophy of the President doesn't help people, it enslaves them. If you are forced to vote for someone because you are dependent on the entitlements they give you, you are no longer free. And the truth is that Obama doesn't really care about all of these "rights" that he proposes, because if you ever really got what he promised, you wouldn't need him anymore. That's why we have a welfare system in this country creates a permanent poor class. The only country that will ever meet your needs is a nation of freedoms, not rights.

The Myth of Electability

I find it interesting that the same people who are pushing Mitt Romney as the most electable Republican were telling us four years ago that John McCain was the most electable. So what's changed? In case you've forgotten, Mitt Romney was running in that race too. If he's so electable now, why wasn't he four years ago? Why did we have to go with McCain?

The difference is that in 2008 Romney was more conservative than the moderate McCain ...a maverick who was proud of bucking his party and working with Democrats on bills like McCain-Feingold. (Don't forget to thank John when you're watching your favorite SuperPac ad.) Electable doesn't mean the strongest candidate who eloquently articulates conservative principles. It means the man who runs to the middle because, "that's where elections are won", and in 2008 that man was John McCain. That's why the establishment pushed him all the way to the White House, right?

Oh wait...that's why he went down in flames. Because he was a man with no core principles. He would rail against the Republicans for passing tax cuts without spending cuts, but then supported the big government bailout known as TARP. Which cost us more? His moderation didn't make him electable, it made him forgettable. While Barack Obama had an idealistic campaign of "Hope and Change" with no substance to back it up, McCain had no memorable theme at all. He wasn't inspirational and not even really all that likeable. He was the epitome of Reagan's "pale pastels".

Four years later and nothing has changed. The previously unelectable Mitt Romney has suddenly become the most electable because he's now the most moderate. That's all that matters to the the Republican elites. In their minds, we need "a candidate who will make Barack Obama the issue." Again, that is code for moderate. Someone who won't ruffle too many feathers with any dramatic changes. In other words, we can't pick a true conservative who will drastically rollback the size of government. That person won't appeal to the center, which means he can't win. That's what they say, and they must be right since they do this all the time and are so much smarter than the rest of us.

The establishment has history on the side too. Gerald Ford, Bob Dole and John McCain were all extremely successful centrist candidates, right? Of course not! In fact the only recent historical examples of where this has been successful has been Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. This works for the Democrats because when they moderate, they are moving to the right and not the left. We are a center-right country with an emphasis on the right. Americans believe in smaller government and personal liberty and liberals can get elected when they disguise their liberalism as conservatism, especially when running against moderate and weak Republicans.

What the Republican establishment fails to recognize is that all of the so-called independents that are needed to win elections are not all in the center. They are just people who are so disgusted with both parties (and rightfully so) that they won't claim either one. Many of these independents would never vote for a Democrat, but they also won't bother getting out to vote for a Republican just because he is the lesser of two evils. They want someone who excites and inspires them in "bold colors". That's why Reagan won the sweeping landslides like he did.

So the next time you hear that you have to vote for Romney because he's the most electable, ask yourself what that really means. Then examine the candidates on the issues and vote for the one who best represents your values and makes the case for conservatism. Don't just vote for the so-called electable candidate.