Conservative case for Romney is … he can’t possibly flip-flop again

Hotair ^ | 11/01/2011 | Ed Morrissey

[SeekAndFind]

Can a conservative case be made for Mitt Romney? Michael Gerson tried mightily at the Washington Post yesterday, leaning heavily on Romney’s business experience and cultural background to argue that Romney’s current positions are probably more natural to him than those he adopted for more than a decade as a Massachusetts politician. Unfortunately for Gerson, he has to come up with some way to explain why Romney wouldn’t slide back to his earlier positions once he faced some political headwinds on the national stage, and this is the best Gerson can do:

Romney’s main political vulnerability is a serious one. Running for Massachusetts’ governor in 2002, he was a pro-choice, economically centrist, culturally liberal, business-oriented Republican. Running for president in 2008, he was a thoroughly pro-life, orthodox supply-side, culturally conservative, Fox News Republican. Romney’s shape-shifting 2008 campaign only reinforced the impression of a consultant-driven candidate.

But conservatives — unsurprised by human frailty — know that great republics are constructed out of flawed materials. Some of Romney’s transformation is explainable as the result of ideological regionalism. It would be a rare candidate who could run and win in Massachusetts with the same message offered to Republican caucus-goers in Iowa.

Well, I don’t know about rare. Ronald Reagan did it — twice — and didn’t do it by bending to the political headwinds or aligning himself with the muddy middle. Dwight Eisenhower did it twice, too, making them the only Republicans to win Massachusetts in the past 60 years. They did so by being men of principle rather than conservatives of convenience.

Gerson then argues that Romney won’t change direction again because, er, he’s changed too often in the past:

Even conservatives who buy none of these explanations may calculate that Romney is acceptable. Precisely because he has a history of ideological heresy, it would be difficult for him to abandon his current, more conservative iteration. He has committed himself on key conservative issues. Having flipped, he could not flop without risking a conservative revolt. As a result, conservatives would have considerable leverage over a Romney administration.

That’s such a tortured explanation that I’m awaiting a Geneva Convention hearing on the matter. Are we to believe that a Romney administration would credit conservatives for his nomination and election? That might have been true in 2008 when conservatives rallied to his side when John McCain’s nomination began to look inevitable, but that’s certainly not going to be the case in 2012. If Romney gets the nomination and the win, he won’t get it carried on the shoulders of conservatives.

The most laughable assertion here, though, is that Romney’s record of inconsistency works as a guarantee of future consistency. That’s not an argument; it’s a rationalization. Since when has a history of political expediency been a good indicator of future principled stands?

The one argument for Romney that actually works with conservatives is that he’d be a better President than our current incumbent by a country mile. That’s also true of most of the rest of the field, though. If the nomination went to Romney, I’d have no trouble pulling the lever for Mitt in November 2012, and I’d be ruddy pleased to do so. But while the primaries are still in front of us, perhaps we can be spared the rationalizations aimed at getting conservatives to back Romney rather than test the rest of the field for a more principled conservative who could win a general election and properly lead this country in the right direction.

[SeekAndFind]

Inconsistency is a great indicator of.... future consistency???

[Tennessee Nana]

Romney … he can’t possibly flip-flop again
___________________________________________

Why not ???

Hes on a roll...

[Diogenesis]

Milt Romney Walked with SUPERMAN

"Whereas most superheroes' secret identities (Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker) are their true identities
--the people they were before their parents were murdered or they were bitten by radioactive spiders
or exposed to gamma rays or what have you--Superman was born Superman.
It's Clark Kent that is the invented alias, the pose, the "costume."
And in the way Superman plays Kent--weak, self-doubting, cowardly--
we can see what he thinks of the human race overall.
It occurred to me that the same is true of Mitt Romney's desperate,
if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican."
[from "Mitt Romney as Tarantino's Superman", New Republic]

---

Proven-Failed Governor Mitt Romney should be NOWHERE near government in the USA.

"As U.S. real output grew 13 percent between 2002 and 2006, Massachusetts trailed at 9 percent.
* Manufacturing employment fell 7 percent nationwide those years, but sank 14 percent under Romney, placing Massachusetts 48th among the states.
* Between fall 2003 and autumn 2006, U.S. job growth averaged 5.4 percent, nearly three times Massachusetts' anemic 1.9 percent pace.
* While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.
"Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," professors Sum and McLaughlin concluded.
In an April 2003 meeting with the Massachusetts congressional delegation in Washington, Romney failed to endorse President Bush's $726 billion tax-cut proposal."
[Cato Institute annual Fiscal Policy Report Card - America's Governors, 2004.]

---

Alex Beam: “In truth, Ronald Reagan
and Mitt Romney have as much in common
as Cardinal O’Malley and Conan O’Brien.
Deservedly or not, Reagan earned a reputation for constancy.
Once he turned against communism, he opposed it big-time.
…. And our former governor? Inconstancy, thy name is Mitt!
A woman’s right to choose? Yes! No! Yes!
Are we in Massachusetts? Yes! Are we in Iowa? No!
Are we on TV? Whatever!”

[goldstategop]

Its ridiculous.

Slick Willard should just say he changed his mind for perfectly good reasons, even if they are crassly political ones.

What he should NOT do is come across as a slick politician.

But if he can’t stick to a definite stand, you have to wonder what he’ll be like as President.

[PLD]

Romney is almost up with Clinton on the flip flop meter..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_FIKySVnSvA

[Tex-Con-Man]

My only hope, if by some chance Romney wins, is that conservatives will have significant majorities in both Houses, and, He’ll lack the spine to stand up against conservative legislation. I know it’s not much, but worse case scenario, it’s my elusive dream of a silver lining.

[cripplecreek]

he can’t possibly flip-flop again



The day ain't over yet.

[goldstategop]

The GOP should pick up the Senate and modestly add to its numbers in the House. Hopefully, the margin the GOP presidential candidate wins by is big enough to give him an undisputed mandate.

No matter what, the Left will hate him from Day One.

[mnehring]

Im sure Willard will find a way to rip a hole in the fabric of space to find a new dimension to flip to.

[Mouton]

Just as a leopard does not change its spots, a RINO is not going to become Barry Goldwater in this life either.

If the GOP is stupid enough to run this guy, they better not expect anything different than what happened to the enemy’s candidate Lurch in 2004.

Meanwhile, the left has successfully undermined two great candidates this past month: Cain and Rubio. My guess is the next shots will come at Gingrich as he has been quietly picking up steam of late. They want to run against Romney. They had the advantage that Perry shot his foot off, Backman faded, Santorum never got launched, Paul has not learned to give short answers and stop talking once he made his point.

[Cato in PA]

“Slick Willard should just say he changed his mind for perfectly good reasons, even if they are crassly political ones.”

But even if he did that, his defense of Romneycare is the dead giveaway that he’s a liberal at heart. No conservative would ever defend government-mandated healthcare.

If he threw it under the bus and tried to portray himself as a recovering liberal, he might be more believable. But even then, I’d have a hard time accepting that someone who signed off on universal health care could make a complete 180.

[Lancey Howard]

Romney has no core values - - he is a well-lubricated weather vane.
Yeah, he can flip-flop all he wants at this point. Flip-flopping has become, “There goes Mitt, again,” shrug-worthy.

Romney will flip and flop every time he feels the breath of a Democrat newsroom on his neck. The thing is, he will never end up the right.

[aimhigh]

RINO rule #1: Run to the right, and govern from the left.

[trisham]

No one in their right mind would be convinced by Gerson’s argument.

[Diogenesis]

Romney cannot win.

If Romney is the candidate, the GOP will lose
both houses. Romney will drive away all voters
who will be in disgust at his dog abuse+.

[Haiku Guy]

The one argument for Romney that actually works with conservatives is that he’d be a better President than our current incumbent by a country mile.

Well, let's think this through...

Whomever is President in 2013 is going to be dealing with a heavily Republican Congress, in both the House and Senate. Given that, which choice, Romney or Obama, will lead to the worse result?

Every Republican in Congress will know that siding with Obama on anything will be political suicide. Obama's policies have failed so spectacularly that nobody will want to hop aboard that train.

Romney, on the other hand, will be able to peel off "centrist" Republicans and partner with Democrats to form a center/left coalition and pass much of the Democrat agenda. Romney has shown, time and time again, that this is his tendency when he is in a position of power. He will feel the need to "do something", and everything he does will be another might-as-well-be-Democrat boondoggle.

Nobody enacts the Democrat agenda more effectively than a RINO. So if it comes down to Romney vs. Obama, I am going to vote for Obama. Better gridlock.

Better still to choose a better nominee, so it won't come to that...

[mrobisr]

You my friend are a genius.

[Tex-Con-Man]

Romney will drive away all voters who will be in disgust at his dog abuse+.

If Mark Levin could forgive him and vote for him, I would follow his dog-lovers lead.

[Lady4Liberty]

RINO rule #1: Run to the right, and govern from the left.

Yep. Anyone who thinks Romney will repeal Obamacare or do anything else that is vaguely conservative is out of their mind. This is not my opinion, it's a fact. Just look at his record.

[cemiami13]

I have finally found a site that exposes Willard Mitt Romney for what he truly is...Free Republic is a God send.

I have no doubt that the recent Cain imbroglio emanated from Team Romney and this false narrative about being the best candidate to beat Obama is such a farce.

He is the ONLY candidate who can’t attack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, ObamaCare and Axelrod-Plouffe, with 1.5 billion in their war chest, are going to savage his infinite flip flops, his hypocrisy at Bain Capitol (anti-caffeine unless you are buying at Dunkin Donuts or anti-porn R-soft porn movies unless you were staying and renting one at a Marriott hotel room), etc, etc.

Moreover, Romney is on record as saying that LDS missionary activity is on par with the gallant men and women of our armed forces in harm’s way, be it in Iraq or Afghanistan !!!

Lastly, he is an anti-Catholic bigot who wants to ban me from drinking Cuban coffee in the morning, having my afternoon scotch, and watching whatever the hell I want on cable or off the net.