“O-Mitt Romney?”
By: J. Hunter
 |
| Mitt Romney at Heritage Foundation (pic1) |
A great quip about the
unpredictability of politics says, “I can’t tell you what will happen next, but
I can tell you why it was inevitable.” During his presidency, Ronald Reagan
probably had no idea that he would become a conservative icon to the extent
that mirroring him, or being in even the most obscure way associated with him, would
be tantamount to a public policy position. Today, Mitt Romney is
confused—scratching his head and trying to figure out why his unpopularity “was
inevitable.” I am equally confused.
Republicans, are
having a severe allergic reaction to Mr. Romney on the grounds that he is not
conservative enough. As with biological allergies, this is simply an
overreaction to common elements in our environment (party, in this case). How
common? If you pay attention to Republican gripes, you would think that the
party is rife with secret liberals looking to undermine the conservative cause.
Conservative politicians are extolled one day and dashed the next, for not being
sufficiently Reaganesque (according to the ahistorical Neo-Reagan Purists.)
Scott Brown, for example,
garnered a “hero’s welcome” for beating a liberal Democrat in a pivotal election for Ted Kennedy’s
Massachusetts Senate seat—or “The People’s Seat” as he rightly put it.[1]
In short order, he was excoriated for being one of the most liberal Republicans
in the Senate. If you Google the words “Scott Brown” and “liberal” you will be
met with a vast array of articles from conservatives citing the work of
University of Chicago professor Dr. Boris Shor titled “Scott Brown is a more
liberal Republican than Dede Scozzafava.”[2]
Is he really?
 |
| Chris Christie at American Enterprise Institute (pic2) |
The straight-talking,
no-apologies New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, is another Republican hero—or
is he? Ann Coulter loved him. Millions of Republicans tried to drag him into
the 2012 race to save us from Rick Perry (who was saving us from Mitt Romney,
who was saving us from Michele Bachman who was saving us from Barack Obama). However
Reagan-like his admirers once found him, Mr. Christie is now viewed as yet
another pretender.[3]
Finally, the textbook example of
this paranoia is 2008 Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. Decades earlier,
liberals hated McCain because he served the country honorably as a soldier in a
war that they hated. In 2008, Republicans abhorred McCain because he was not
conservative enough—voting with Republican interests only 82.6% of the time according to the American Conservative
Union.[4]
Denigrating McCain the way Republicans did in 2008 was a complete violation of Reagan
Principle #211: “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a
friend and an ally—not a 20 percent traitor.”[5]
Those Neo-Reagan Purists, constantly on the lookout for turncoats, saw McCain
as the dastardly 17.4% traitor that he was.
So where are we now?
In 2008, disaffected Republicans
viewed Mr. Romney as the conservative alternative to the establishment’s newest
RINO (Republican in Name Only) toady, John McCain. Romney lost the primary.
McCain lost the general. During the Republican wallowing period following the
Democrat sweep in 2008, right-wingers bayed that they would have won the
general if they had only nominated a “true conservative”—like Romney. Surely,
Mr. Romney heard that statement everywhere he traveled, and in 2012, the
nation was faced with another election where the Republicans needed to offer a
stark contrast with the liberal president Barack Obama—bold colors, not pale
pastels.
Enter Mitt Romney.
 |
| Ronald Reagan (Pic3) |
No one would have predicted the
right-wing's scurrilous attacks on Mr. Romney, but given our apparent penchant for ripping
ourselves to shreds over ideological purity, we can now see these attacks in
all of their inevitability. What Republicans claim to want is another
Reagan—but not the real Reagan. We
want an amorphous, red-meat Reagan that never existed and could never have been
elected had he existed. Republicans want the Reagan who never compromises with
the Left the way that the real Reagan
consistently compromised with Democrat House Speaker, Tip O’Neill. Republicans want the
Reagan whose record on the issues is impeccably conservative, not like the real Reagan who, as governor of
California, signed into law the most liberal abortion policy in American
history. Republicans want the Reagan who is tough on unions and immigration,
not the real Reagan who was a union
boss and signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act which turned out to be true amnesty for
illegal immigrants.
Republicans want a fantasy—a
conservative version of Barack Obama minus the feckless leadership style and
inability to address the most pressing issues of our time. If we continually
turn our backs on fellow conservatives, and insist on “the ideal” over “the
better,” winning elections will become a fantasy, too.
I am too young to remember Ronald
Reagan, but I consider myself lucky to be able to reap the benefits that he
helped secure for the nation that I love. My daughter is too young to remember
Barack Obama. If we do not get serious about electing a nominee who can defeat
Mr. Obama in 2012, she (and all of our children) will enjoy all the
disadvantages that he helped secure in his second term while Republicans
“honored a man” by dishonoring his true legacy—a legacy that Mr. Romney upholds.
Article
Sources:
[2]
http://bshor.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/scott-brown-is-a-more-liberal-republican-than-dede-scozzafava/
[5]
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan#Attributed
Photo Sources: "Pic1" from http://biggovernment.com/tag/romney-care/; "Pic2" from http://dc-cdn.virtacore.com/2011/04/09579e16d665a57c38e00f3db179179d0.jpg; "Pic3" from http://www.frumforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/reagan-thumbs-up.jpg
0 comments:
Post a Comment