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
ping
Crist........
says so much about ROmnoey’s past .... and his future.
And Obama, and the MSM, and the Libs, and the Dem Party . . shall I go on?
We live too much in this bubble. Most Americans don’t think the way we Conservatives think. Most Americans don’t think the way Liberals think. We can cling and hope and pray that Rasmussen isn’t an outlier when every single poll has this from a solid win to landslide for Obama, getting excited when someone says something we believe ... or we can realize we are a minority, doomed to eternal minority status if we ever again listen to the GOP elite about whom to nominate and how to run OUR Party.
We will never, ever gain a wider acceptance of Conservative values through sheer force of will and wishful thinking.
McCain II (but we already knew that!)
Crist is a pro-abortion rino who almost ran as a democrat, but chose “unaffiliated” instead.....against Marco Rubio.
Then we are doomed. Stop posting and start preparing for the worst.
Any way we can make Ryan the presidential candidate and RINOmney the VP?
That way, we can put RINOmney somewhere that he can not prove that he is simply Obama lite.
RINOmney is a vapid dork.
Which, I guess, is slightly better than the Obamaloon, who is a talentless, lying, felonious, cretinistic vapid dork.
Then we are doomed. Stop posting and start preparing for the worst.
Oh sh*t.
Seem like a typical Romney trick, but I don't think Paul Ryan knows it -- yet.
Palin, despite a gargantuan pleading (from me also who swore to donate by credit card often and largely if she declared anything) from supporters chose to demur and settle her personal goals whatever they are.
Pick this man's campaign apart in it nascent reprise with a new conservative running mate. Pick it apart. Harp on the ‘could haves’ the “we can't accept anything less than ideological purity” and give this election to Obama on bended frickin’ knee.
I am so tired of this. I'm not saying I agree with everything Romney has to offer and I don't post Pro-Romney spew like some on the religion thread post against him, but I damned sure know what I'll get with Obama in the next 4 years. If you guys, the mod, or Jim Robinson want to ban me for saying it, then do it.
It is one thing to oppose an ideological opponent against your ethic. It is another to give it all way to an opponent even more committed to your destruction. I'm not gonna head into a 15th year here listenng about Dictator Obama if I can help it.
Romney may be liberal, but he is also smarter than McCain. I know, everyone is smarter than McCain, but Romney knows how to make smart business decisions.
I haven’t seen anyone banned for saying they are an ABO so they’ve decided to support Romney. Nor are they banned for posting pro-Romney threads, making pro-Romney comments, etc.
The only ones I’ve seen banned are those who violate the truce and make personal attacks against those who are not ABOs.
I fully understand the logic of an ABO. I used the same thing with McCain. Romney, however, was too much for me. That doesn’t make either of us traitors. That just places us in disagreement over the right decision regarding Romney.
I’m tired of the lectures from the likes of you.
Romney: Ryan and I are on the same page with our budgets
Well, golllllleeee.
Color me utterly unsurprised. But thanks for the post!
The FR Defeat Mitt Club now has officially gone off into LA LA land.
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