Thanks. Which, if you look at politics as warfare, which it essentially is in non-violent form, might explain why more people are starting to talk about a Newt/Santorum alliance as the next weapon to deploy against Romney. Of course if Perry had stayed in the race, he might very well have been able to take the mantle of frontrunner back for himself as the next anti-Romney warrior.
I've posted on here before on how I felt it could be good strategy to not vote for Romney in November in the fall, but to vote for Republicans in Congress. Gridlock isn't the worst thing in the world for government. We would have the chance to clean up in the mid-term elections again in 2014 by running against Obama. And then in 2016 we'd have an open race on both sides, where hopefully we could get a real conservative and hopefully the Democrat nominee would be beatable.
The question is how much damage would Obama be able to do even under gridlock? The Supreme Court nominees are the worst possibility. Obamacare might have a chance to become popular, but then again it might become more hated, which means we could still repeal it (or it could be overturned in the SC this year, making it a non-issue in November). Our energy policy would stay disastrous, so we might keep paying high gas prices. Of course what if we put up with all that and still couldn't nominate a conservative in 2016?
The danger of nominating Romney is that we might be stuck with him for 8 years. The Democrats have a better chance to win back Congress by running against him. Romney has shown in Taxachusetts that he'll pass liberal policy and then use Democrats in the legislature as an excuse why he "had" to do it. We could have all that stuff done under our brand name, tarnishing the party. And then if he becomes as unpopular as he did when he declined to run for a second term as governor, we could see him voted out and have a Democrat put in with a ready-to-go Democrat Congress again just like in 2008.
I’ve posted similar sentiments before, but took a more subtle road because I didn’t want to get zotted or flamed. A Romney win would be a disaster for the Republicans. They could very well lose the House, and lose any chance to pick up the Senate. In addition, Romney and his big government policies will take the country over the cliff forever destroying the Republican brand. That’s just the politics of it. It would hurt the cause of freedom more than anything. When marginal Republicans get into office by talking about free markets etc., and then pursue statist policies the left seizes the moment and blames the negative consequences of statism on the free market. It’s absurd, but that’s what they do (the same way they fight for minimum wage increases that throw poor people out of work, and then turn around and blame the resulting unemployment on the free market and Republicans that don’t care about the poor; commpletely absurd). As for judges, I would encourage you to look at Romney’s record in Massachusets. It’s not just the Dem/Rep breakdown that is so disturbing. Look at the kind of judges he chose Republican and Democrat. I think Romney, as POTUS, would put forward activist judges. Maybe not hard leftists, but judges that will increase the power of the state over the individual.
I think if Obama is elected the conservative movement will make huge inroads at all levels. The movement that the Tea Party revitalized can continue to grow from the ground up. The continued cycle of the left saying “we want government to grow by x” and our “friends” replying with “we only want the government to grow by 1/2x” is just getting us to hell slower.