Posted on 07/17/2012 8:47:54 AM PDT by xzins
Who you walk with says a lot about who you are – and this is especially true of candidates for public office and others seeking positions of high public trust.
It is also one of Mitt Romney’s most easily cured problems in closing the deal to bring conservatives fully behind his candidacy for President.
During the primary season, it was no secret that Governor Romney was not the first choice of grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers.
Part of the reason conservatives had difficulty buying into the Romney candidacy was they looked at the Governor’s team and saw an awful lot of the same people they had clashed with or been ill-used by during the administration of President George W. Bush.
Or they saw hired guns from the establishment Republican political consulting world whose advice is always to hew to the middle of the road and run a content-free campaign bereft of any commitment to the small government constitutional conservative agenda.
This is almost the exact opposite of the image Ronald Reagan conveyed during his runs for the presidency.
Reagan largely eschewed surrounding himself with Washington political insiders and notables from the Republican establishment.
His confidants and those you saw with him on the campaign trail were the California entrepreneurs of his “kitchen cabinet” and the outsiders of the burgeoning conservative movement – as well as conservative elected officials, such as Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt and the young conservative backbenchers in Congress who bucked the establishment to support Reagan.
These conservative outsiders, such as Ed Meese, Lynn Nofziger, Dick Allen, Marty Anderson and Judge William P. Clark, Jr. were not merely political window dressing or junior staffers, but serious people who were there day-to-day to advise President Reagan and would later help him run the government.
The typical Washington establishment powerbrokers were simply not part of the circle that ended-up in a front page photo of Ronald Reagan or found their way into his kitchen cabinet.
Governor Romney, on the other hand, can’t seem to appear in public unless he is surrounded by “his people” and without an establishment Republican figure Velcroed to his side.
Perhaps this is due to Mitt Romney’s acknowledged love of “metrics” and background as a CEO, in which having “his people” or experts close at hand to crunch numbers and handle details speeds decision-making.
The establishment Republicans create a bigger problem. Although they are loathe to admit it, the Tea Party rebellion was as much about them, and the Republican establishment’s failure to deliver conservative government during the Bush years, as it is about President Obama and Obamacare.
The problem this creates for Governor Romney is that in every photo and TV segment it ends-up putting him squarely in the middle of a big crowd of people who grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers see as, if not the enemy, at least a major part of the problem.
As things stand now, surrounded as he is by the same establishment Republicans whose failures sparked the Tea Party rebellion, Governor Romney is squandering his credibility as an outside-the-Beltway business leader and state elected official not tied to the old ways of Washington.
Conservatives are not looking for window dressing, or something symbolic, like inviting the occasional conservative leader or evangelical pastor onto the platform at a Romney campaign rally. We are looking for Governor Romney to make serious conservatives a serious part of his campaign and to show us he intends to govern as a conservative by bringing them into his administration.
Who you walk with says a lot about who you are.
If Governor Romney wants grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers fully behind his campaign, the first and easiest step he should take is to make serious conservatives part of his campaign and show he means to govern as a conservative by walking with them every day.
Richard Viguerie’s Conservative HQ is one of the voices of conservatism that attempts to deal with all sides of issues confronting conservatives.
Mitt Romney is definitely one of the touchiest issues ever to confront conservatism.
I know it is not Christ.
So who’s Romney going to pick to be his token conservative?
I don’t think he’s going to pick a conservative. I think he’ll pick a moderate and make a run for the middle and middle-left voters.
Most conservatives have sent the signals to him that they will vote for ABO, anyone but Obama, and that they have no other choice but to fall in line.
I wish they’d kept quiet about their sense that they were absolutely at his mercy with no one else to turn to...at least until after the VP selection. But they didn’t. They let him know loud and clear “Help us Obi Wan, you’re our only hope!”
So, I’m fairly convinced he’ll pick a defendable moderate female. That’s why Condi’s name was tossed out. If he comes up with Christi Todd Whitman, or someone like that, don’t be surprised. He really wants to improve his standing with female voters. And, if he could put New Jersey in play, he would change Obama’s game plan.
If you have read this article, would you call it anti-Mitt Romney???
I thought it was pretty balanced....in fact, so balanced that I almost rejected posting it.
Listening to Levin on the radio is interesting. He was a Romneyite all along and now he is getting frustrated at what I see as a repeat of Bush I’s re-election “campaign.”
I kept waiting for Bush I to unload with the big guns- I knew that he was just waiting for the right time to fire and clinch it all. That moment never came. Like Ford and Dole and McCain he did not actually run a campaign. He sort of stated his case and went to the club to wait for the election. “Mainline” Republicans don’t seem to want to be president but they mightily crave the recognition of receiving the Republican Party nomination. As nomination winners but election losers they don’t have to bear the burden of the presidency and they get invited to all the fashionable parties that they would be forever frozen out of if they won the election.
I am not going to vote for the man in any event but it is interesting that Republicans can’t do any different, except for Reagan of course. Reagan did what is necessary to get the nomination- he put out his markers and campaigned and made all the right moves for 12 years before he got the nomination. No other conservative Republicans have done that but the Rockefeller guys do it. For them it is like working to be on the rowing team and then captain of it. Palin did a shortened version of it and could have won but chose not to follow through. If she is waiting for next time around in 4 or 8 years then she is not so sharp as I had thought. There probably isn’t going to be anything worth running for in 4 years, maybe not even a contest or an elective office.
I doubt there will even be a token. The disdain is too strong.
He doesn’t walk with the Lord, who died yesterday along with Kitty Wells!
A Mitt Romney administration is the equivalent of building a billion-dollar airport and spending $1.98 on the control tower.
I have a lot of respect for Viguerie but what he needs to understand is that the base doesn’t want a candidate simply surrounded by conservatives. The base (even ABOs) wants a conservative candidate. And Romney ain’t it.
That really surprises me. I thought Viguerie went out of his way to give advice to Romney on how to get conservatives to start backing him. Lord knows, he has problems with conservatives.
You can’t expect the guy to be a bubbly, vapid “anything you want Mitt” kind of guy. After all, Viguerie is a respected, hard-line conservative.
He seems to be working at trying to hold Mitt’s feet to the fire...something other conservatives say they’re going to do, but instead they end us saying “Anybody but Obama”.
And that signals to Mitt that he can do anything at all and those folks won’t complain. (That, incidentally, is why I think he’ll nominate someone like Christi Todd Whitman to be his running mate. I think he’s going to go after the middle and middle-lef voter and females. He’s already got the ABO’s locked up afraid to talk about supporting anyone else.)
Who died with the Honky Tonk Angel???
I didn’t understand your post.
Mitt proved to himself in the primaries that conservatives are inconsequential and just get in the way. I don’t think he cares even a little how or if we will vote. I don’t think he particularly wants to win the election. Winning would ruin him socially and be a burden he doesn’t need. What he needs, for his own satisfaction, is the Republican nomination, and he has that.
Honestly, arthurus, I think most conservatives are supporting mitt for the same reason most mormons are. For them, it's because he's a mormon. For the other, it's because he's a republican.
They could care less if their principles align.
He is a blue-blood, silver spoon in mouth, kind of guy who did the Mormon thing at BYU, and the blue-blood thing at Hahvuhd. (while managing to avoid the draft, coincidentally)
Just like all those Obama lovers who are still looking for that hope and change, it ain't gonna happen.
There are only so many Conservatives who enjoy being physically abused and tossed onto the trash heaps of history, so who?
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