Posted on 08/14/2012 11:22:08 AM PDT by xzins
In the afterglow of Mitt Romney’s announcement that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan -- a strong fiscal conservative with a 100% pro-life voting record -- would be his running mate, conservatives were excited to think that this might mean a shift to the right by the Romney campaign.
We want Romney to win, so we hope that is true.
However, such assumptions discount the influence of Mitt Romney’s liberal campaign staff on both the direction of the campaign and Paul Ryan’s fortunes on the ticket.
Governor Romney has no longtime movement conservatives in his inner circle and who you walk with says much about who you are.
In contrast to Ronald Reagan, who surrounded himself with conservative outsiders, such as Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, Lyn Nofziger, Dick Allen, Ed Meese, Marty Anderson, Judge William Clark and others thoroughly steeped in conservative policy and politics -- Governor Romney’s inner circle is made up entirely of establishment Republicans, such as former New Hampshire Governor and Bush White House Chief of Staff John Sununu and super lobbyist and Bush 41 political director Ron Kauffman.
Some of Governor Romney’s most influential staff are veterans of Florida’s liberal Republican turncoat former Governor Charlie Crist’s campaign. This includes Romney’s chief media strategists, Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer and Romney’s floundering press secretary Andrea Saul, who was Crist’s communications director and also worked for establishment Republican Orin Hatch.
In addition to explaining why Tea Party backed Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who defeated Crist, never had a prayer of being Romney’s running mate, it also creates the perfect environment for the campaign to be plagued by the liberal staff versus conservative vice presidential candidate intrigue that bedeviled the 2008 McCain/Palin ticket.
In 2008, someone someplace in the McCain operation was smart enough to figure out that after eight years of Bush, if McCain was to have a prayer against Obama, he needed a running mate who was an outsider who would shake-up the race and excite the conservative base of the Republican Party.
He chose Alaska’s conservative Governor Sarah Palin, whose successful 2006 anti-establishment campaign against good old boy Republican Governor Frank Murkowski in many ways presaged the Tea Party rebellion of 2009.
Palin’s conservative-themed acceptance speech at the 2008 GOP convention electrified the audience, fired-up conservatives and was the high-water mark for the McCain campaign, which began to founder when it was faced with real choices between conservative principles and establishment pressure to support the Bush administration.
McCain’s campaign staff, made up of his longtime Capitol Hill staffers and Washington Republican establishment veterans of the Bush White House, were also soon in a tizzy because Palin was drawing vastly larger crowds than was McCain.
What’s more, the things that Sarah Palin brought to the ticket -- an eloquent and heart-felt advocacy of the right-to-life, a readiness to acknowledge divine influence in one’s everyday life, a healthy skepticism of Washington-based solutions, and a sharp wit ready to tweak establishment insiders -- were all things McCain’s Washington establishment staff and consultants weren’t about to make part of the campaign and certainly didn’t want on TV coming from their candidate for Vice President.
The result was that Palin’s benefit to the ticket was wasted as she was set-up for interviews with hostile establishment TV reporters like Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, but prohibited from meeting with right-to-life leaders in New Hampshire who were on the outs with the state’s GOP establishment.
Is the Romney/Ryan ticket going to be doomed by the same establishment insider staff versus conservative vice presidential candidate intrigue that doomed Republicans in 2008?
The Washington Republican insiders and consultants, who are velcroed on to Governor Romney -- such as Saul, Stevens and Schriefer -- readily accept the liberal premises upon which Obama and the establishment media want to frame the campaign. Romney’s advisors are certainly much more comfortable attacking conservatives and defending establishment Republicans, like Crist and Hatch, than they are at crafting winning conservative alternatives to Obama’s disastrous liberal agenda.
Paul Ryan, on the other hand, got where he is by applying conservative principles to Washington’s spending problem -- even if the result wasn’t as bold as many conservatives, including myself, would have liked.
No doubt Paul Ryan is going to run circles around the hapless Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate and Ryan’s facility with the numbers behind Washington’s spending problem make it unlikely hostile reporters will trip him up there.
Ryan’s toughest opponents will not be the Obama campaign and the Democrats or others outside the Romney/Ryan campaign, they will be the liberal insiders and Washington GOP establishment figures who have crafted Governor Romney’s content free campaign and who want nothing to do with the conservative economic ideas and commitment to the right-to-life and family issues that make Paul Ryan so appealing to conservatives.
Go here to sign our letter to Governor Romney urging him to turn Paul Ryan loose to tell America the truth about Obama’s out-of-control spending.
http://www.conservativehq.com/article/9272-governor-romney-turn-paul-ryan-loose-tell-truth-about-americas-spending-crisis
I doubt they have much to worry about since the purists will likely insure the kenyan muslim get 4 more years of unfettered reign.
AMERICA NEEDS A VOCAL CONSERVATIVE POTUS
to remove ALL the evil installed by Obama and Romney.
huh?
But if Romney is so captured by his staffers how did he break free of their clutches long enough to pick Ryan?
Dan Senor is a great and brilliant adviser on foreign policy.
If Hatch is so bad, why does Sarah support him?
Crist is hardly "establishment". He's never professed to be a conservative, but he's certainly not establishment.
If we could change the ticket and put Ryan on top, why would we want to keep romney as veep.
Hatch? Oh, no, xzins. Sarah Palin backed Hatch, and has sent him to a re-education camp. Hatch will be now Palinized, pure as the wind driven snow to the benefit of conservatives. Sarah implied as much.
How could you be so far off on dear Hatch? /s /s #)
Paul Ryan’s toughest opponent will be Romney himself. They guy is a milquetoast loser. I hear Romney’s a sweet guy, but it’s only because his *** is made of candy.
I was just discussing that Hatch/Palin thing at #26.
“Paul Ryan’s toughest opponent will be Romney himself. They guy is a milquetoast loser. I hear Romney’s a sweet guy, but it’s only because his *** is made of candy”
And that makes all of the people he apparently easily beat...what?
I have no idea what you thing you’re talking about.
I have no idea what you think you’re talking about.
Gee, Newt didn’t seem to think Romney was such a candy-ass. Or Santorum. Or Perry. Everytime he knocked one of them outta the race I had to move to the next name on the list. Then there was only the candy-ass left to beat Obama. I’m betting the “milquetoast loser” will send Obama back to the arms of Bill Ayers.
Unfortunately, he didn't really "beat" them. They beat themselves, and let him walk into it.
I agree 100%....... and I have!
I agree 100%....... and I have!
Paul Ryan is a lot smarter and quicker on his feet than the corrupt establishment creeps that have attached themselves to Romney’s campaign. Hopefully he can talk Willard into cleaning house at some point in the campaign.
Paul Ryan is a lot smarter and quicker on his feet than the corrupt establishment creeps that have attached themselves to Romney’s campaign. Hopefully he can talk Willard into cleaning house at some point in the campaign. Let’s face it, there’s no way that that group of guys picked Ryan amongst the available options. Clearly Mitt is operating independently of them to some degree.
Well, I guess that’s better than joining the romney rumpswab brigade on their pleasure cruise up the river denial.
Neat how that vitriol cuts both ways, eh?
A. It is inane to think a relative handful of people on FR are going to affect the outcome of the election.
B. If Obama wins don’t blame principled conservatives, blame the RINO elite Republicans.
But if Romney is so captured by his staffers how did he break free of their clutches long enough to pick Ryan?
They did the math?
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