Posted on 11/08/2011 10:56:52 PM PST by reformedcrat
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has written that comparing President Obama to Jimmy Carter would be a best-case scenario for President Obama. But President Obama may be in the process of getting a lucky break. Not that it will help him.
This next election might not be an exact replay of 1980, with President Obama playing the part of Jimmy Carter. Imagine if, instead of nominating Ronald Reagan for president, the Republicans had dusted off Gerald Ford and run him against Jimmy Carter in 1980. That is a good analogy of what is probably going to happen in a Mitt Romney nomination in 2012. Mitt Romney now leads in most of the polls of the first four states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, and after winning most of these states Romney will probably have the momentum needed to cross the finish line for the GOP nomination for president in order to run against President Obama in November. This is a reality conservatives will have to accept. And it will constitute a replay of 1980 except with President Obama playing the part of Jimmy Carter, and Mitt Romney playing the part of Gerald Ford, had Ford run again.
An upright President Ford addresses Congress
And what did we get from the Ford presidency? One can make an argument that Gerald Ford’s elevation to president after President Nixon’s resignation gave force to the 25th Amendment, healing the country after Watergate, blah, blah, blah, but I personally think the best thing about President Ford — and this is just me — was the amusing falls he had walking down or up stairs.
Do a Google image or youtube search of “President Ford” and “fall” or “falling down” and you can see what I’m talking about. When I was a budding young middle school student, barely paying attention, I actually learned to notice when President Ford was shown walking down the stairway from Air Force One. He would get about half-way down the stairway, miss a step or two, let go of the handrail, and then… splat! Head first! How he managed to get up after these falls was quite amazing, but we have to remember that he played football in college, so he had special training for his time as president.
I was able to find one time when President Ford was seen tripping while climbing up some stairs, and this was not as funny a pratfall, but the brown plaid jacket he was wearing was so tacky that he was asking for trouble even being seen in public in it. I know these were the 1970’s, when fashion lost all sense of civility, but still.
Slapstick can be funny, even if unintentional
And slapstick is funny, even when unintentional. So when NBC began a new comedy show named Saturday Night Live during the Ford administration, actor Chevy Chase began every episode acting like President Ford, falling down and stumbling, then announcing the opening of the show. No offense to Mr. Chase, but all NBC had to do was roll the films their news division had of President Ford’s latest falling down. The real thing was much funnier than Chevy Chase’s fallings. You might say that a Chevy imitating a Ford is not that funny…
But as amusing as he was, Gerald Ford was not only a tacky dresser but a milquetoast Republican. Vietnam was formally lost under President Ford. Helsinki Accords and the SALT Treaties were signed and they were roundly criticized as favoring the Soviet Union. Ford also gave a conditional amnesty for draft-dodgers from the Vietnam War. Conservatives saw all this as a limp-wristed foreign policy.
And President Ford proved to be pretty moderate in domestic policy as well. The US economy experienced a bout of inflation, so President Ford had what he called a bold initiative: wearing WIN buttons (Whip Inflation Now) as a fashion accessory, asking people for unenforced pledges not to raise prices on whatever they sold. It was all kind of comical. Predictably, nothing came from the WIN buttons, because businesses charge whatever the market will bear. Then inflation became less a priority to Ford than addressing the next problems of recession and unemployment. President Ford tried to cut federal spending and raised taxes, then later proposed a tax cut.
And as his sole Supreme Court appointment, we can blame President Ford for Justice John Paul Stevens, a pretty consistent liberal justice, who more than once was seen wearing a bow-tie. A striped one.
Mitt Romney comes with several “moderate” problems that might remind conservatives of President Ford, most notably the fact that Romney has an ambivalence to tax cutting and entitlement reform. Romney has also had previous opposite positions on abortion, gun control, global warming, even ethanol subsidies. And when Mitt Romney was governor or Massachusetts he passed Romneycare, which has many similar provisions to Obamacare. This doesn’t sit too well with conservatives, who have repealing Obamacare as a rallying cry. Conservatives will definitely not be too happy and maybe even hostile to a Romney candidacy. It has been said that if Romney gets the GOP nomination, a possibility exists that there will be a third-party conservative challenger.
Will Mitt Romney fall down stairways as did Gerald Ford? Will he be seen in public with a tacky brown plaid jacket? Who knows. We might not get a solid conservative contrast to President Obama with a President Romney, but we conservatives should look at the bright side of a Romney presidency: we might get another new comedy show out of it!
No Romney, No Way.
Romney makes Ford look conservative by contrast. Not a good sign.
The only way Romney gets my vote is if the only choice is between him and Obama in the general election... Because in that situation, my only choice is to vote, or not vote. Obama must not be re-elected. There are many reasons, but for one example, who knows how many SCOTUS appointments will have to be made over the next four years? I do not want Obama making those nominations.
Mitt stinks, but still smells better than Obama. We can do better, but if he is the only choice — then he is the only choice.
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