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I’ve pretty much thrown my hands up. Even if I wanted to support Santorum, or Gingrich, I can’t vote for them in Virginia. There was a brief time, about 8 hours, when I was ready to go all-in for Newt simply because Perry had just been knocked out of the Virginia primary but Gingrich hadn’t.

It’s not that I dislike Newt, or even don’t trust him. I’m sure if he is elected President, in 4 years most of FR will be cursing him and wondering how anybody was stupid enough to support him — much like what happened with George Bush.

I’m told that in 2000, things are FR were much the same with the “powers” throwing behind George Bush, casting what others thought were more conservative candidates aside. I don’t know, I wasn’t here until 2004.

Frankly, in the few places I don’t toe what conservatives here at FR CLAIM is the party line, I’m more in sync with Newt than they are. At one point I realized that I could probably get ZOTTED out of here if I actually expressed opinions that matched what Gingrich believed — although I also realize that his biggest supporters would simply deny what Gingrich was saying.

My fear of Newt is that he is unelectable. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. I certainly am not upset that this stops Romney, because I didn’t particularly see Romney as electable either. The Newt-worship rubs me the wrong way, the argument that he really is a true conservative, mostly because the arguments are much like what I was vilified for in 2008.

In short, and they aren’t wrong, looking at Gingrich’s campaign platform, it is a good conservative platform. I believe the last Freepathon thread makes that point. But, and I’m not saying this to support Romney, or defend him, but in 2007 I regularly answered critics by posting the actual list of issues from Romney’s campaign website, and nobody could point out one that wasn’t a good conservative plank.

My point being that Romney CLAIMED he’d be conservative, and whether you supported him would hinge on whether you trusted what he was saying or not. And those of us who reluctantly decided that the trust issue was less risky than picking people who promised to do the WRONG things, ended up being attacked for supporting a liberal. OK. But now I see conservatives getting attacked for NOT supporting a guy who had clearly non-conservative policies, simply because he has a conservative platform.

Again, the issue is do you trust Newt Gingrich. Sure, moreso than Romney. If Gingrich had been in the 2008 race, I’d have been supporting him before Romney (just as I supported Fred Thompson, another flawed conservative, moreso than Romney).

So now I’m cautiously optomistic. It appears we have beaten Romney. And if the “establishment” foisted Mitch Daniels on us, and HE ended up winning the presidency, that would be an excellent outcome in my view. And if Gingrich ended up President, that would be a fine outcome as well. I’m not worried about him as President, I’m worried he’ll never get close to being President.

And while I’m not that pessimistic, the fact that so many conservatives who I do trust, and who I believe know a lot more about politics than I do, are backing Romney because they don’t believe Gingrich is electable, it does give me pause. I am not one to simply reject every person who has led the fight for years because suddenly they don’t agree with my preconceptions.

I honor your choice of Santorum. I don’t buy the worst of the “big-government” charges made against him — he’s not Rick Perry, but he’s a good man and I think our nation would be blessed if he could be President.