I’m still running hard with Santorum because I believe he is the better candidate and if Newt will drop out, it may give him the edge he needs to beat Romney in some of these blue states. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Oh, and as for you who say we’re hurting Romney by not supporting him now, just two words: SHOVE IT!
As theRightScoop went on to explain with one commenter, the primary process isn't hurting Romney...Romney's candidacy is hurting Romney. He's the one who's launched full scale negative attacks on his opponents, yet when conservatives mention this, well, we just need to "get used to it." Could not the same thing be said right back to those siding with the establishment candidate now? Could it also be said that Romney may indeed be the worst candidate to take on Obama? His unlimited flip-flops compete with Obama's, and Romneycare provides cover for this regime. All of this, when the 2012 election could, and should, easily be about core principles, as integral to conservatism as they are American.
It's no wonder with all of this that so many conservatives find camaraderie with Rush's 'mystery friend' as the host read an all-too-familiar sentiment on Friday's program:
"Well, looks like Romney, so I wish us much luck. Look at what happened. The Tea Party rises up, the Tea Party delivers the House of Representatives to the GOP, the Tea Party nearly takes out the Democrat Senate in 2010, and our nominee is gonna be a former RINO governor of Massachusetts who invented Romneycare. Rush, this could be ugly. And if Romney wins, the best we can say is he's not Obama. Which is important, but it's not enough to stem the tide of big government disaster. So the establishment's gonna win again. If Romney loses, which is possible, then everybody who has been trying to warn people about Romney are gonna be blamed for not getting behind him sooner. Like the left, the establishment Republicans can never admit responsibility for their own handiwork. We're all gonna be good soldiers, and we'll fight for our nominee even though they don't ever fight for ours. The Tea Party made this chance possible. The Tea Party did everything, and we get a RINO?"
"George Romney was a disaster. He was successfully blocked by conservatives. Mitt's no different. Mitt Romney is like Nixon. I can't name three serious conservative things he's ever done. I look at these endorsements. Bill Weld, Massachusetts, the Bush family, McCain, every Washington insider and former Republican politician. And they didn't do one thing to deliver the House to the Republicans. They didn't do one thing to help nearly take out the Senate, the Democrat Senate in 2010, they didn't do one thing. They sit there and they take all the spoils, but they didn't do one thing to help. Scary."
"The reason that we've had several wonderful days at the Supreme Court, although who actually knows what they'll do, is because conservatives are fighting the good fight. Conservatives are filing the briefs. Conservatives are making the arguments. Not establishment Republicans. Establishment Republicans don't even think the guy can be beat. It's frustrating, Rush, whatever progress is made on our side, it's always due to the conservatives, not Republican operatives, not the consultants, not the insiders, not the establishment."
As Rush concluded, "My friend obviously was hoping for a far more conservative nominee than an establishment guy. He doesn't have anything against Romney personally. It's not that. This is strictly there were so many hopes, the Tea Party, an uprising, conservative grassroots, and there is the old establishment GOP benefiting from it while not doing one thing to assist or to make it happen." Right there with ya, buddy.
And Romney just keeps digging the hole of suspicion and distrust deeper. He's like that pretentiously annoying friend who's not really concerned with how arrogant he comes off. And with the 'grits' and 'y'all' routine in the South, as well as 'trees and cars' and anything else he can think up across the Mid-West, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Romney comes across as the quintessential archetype of a carpetbagger. Just take for instance the gaffes and things that have come to light over just the past few days. Things that present themselves as red meat for effectively illustrating how 'out of touch with the average voter' he is:
On Wednesday, we hear about a joke gone south involving his father and lay offs...hilarious stuff.
Santorum fired back at the end of the week, saying Republicans won't win the presidency by nominating a candidate who jokes about firing people, suggesting that the quip is more evidence that Romney doesn't understand the struggles of working people.
Rich? Yep. Bad? Nope, not at all. Out of touch? Probably so. This just feeds right into the Left's Occupy line of referring to Mitt as Mr. 1%...how many times does Rush have to say it?!
Then on Friday, a double scoop of dupe: Free Republic recalls that lovely Salon piece, divulging campaign contributions paid to many of Romney's endorsers prior to the primaries; and reminding us just in time for Politico to call out the more obvious shilling Karl Rove is doing for Romney on Fox News.
But it’s hard to miss, among all of Rove’s Fox commentary and Wall Street Journal columns, that he seems to favor one candidate over the others. Over the last year, Rove has used these powerful media platforms to systematically undercut every rising Romney challenger in succession while lauding Romney’s victories as “historic.” The pattern has gotten under the skin of the supporters of Romney’s challengers, who argue that Rove has more ties to Romney and his super PAC than he is disclosing to his media audiences, and thus has no business assessing the Republican primary race as a purportedly independent analyst.
As Abie Rubin at RedState ponders with the rest of conservatives, "It is fascinating to watch more and more politicians come out and endorse Romney as his momentum builds and without a single exception they fail to include in their support for Romney the slightest mention of his governing record. They will tout his electability, organization, private business record, and so on, yet totally skip over his political experience despite it being the basis of his presidential run." Fascinating and frustrating, seeing as his governorship was not only lacking in conservatism, but was a disaster from his signature Romneycare to his tax policy, from the state's sluggish economy to the trampling on traditional values, all under Mitt's direction. Sticking with Rubin for a moment, she contrastingly points out in another piece that "Santorum has put forward an economic plan, a path to increase our energy, and his views on foreign policy," but "there’s one plan which he hasn’t put forward, as the others have, and I commend him for that." She's referring to the fact that Santorum has managed to both talk about these strict governmental functions, while also maintaining a moral core and discussing those distinctly American values, that some in the establishment feel "it’s not too popular especially amongst the youth and thereby bidding goodbye to a normal society." And this sentiment brings us full circle, reflecting both Rush's friend's feeling, as well as theRightScoop's point, that principles and values should matter, and they should be a distinct part of this election.
Aside from the very poignant argument that Santorum made to John King of CNN yesterday about how Paul Ryan "got it wrong" with the Romney endorsement, he also makes a compellingly clear case for why he not only must continue in this race, but why we need a genuine conservative as our nominee:
Well, our plan is to take this — take this all the way. We believe that a conservative will be the nominee of the party coming out of the convention and that if we don’t have a conservative, we’ll end up with the same situation we’ve had over the past 30 years, that over 100 years now, there’s only one Republican that’s ever defeated a sitting Democratic incumbent president, one.
And it’s the one time we ran a strong conviction conservative. In the — in the face of the party saying, no, no, no, we need a moderate, we need to win, we need to win, they always say that. And we always lose. And the one time we didn’t listen to the establishment, the Washington insiders, we had Ronald Reagan.
So right, folks. Let's think this out before anticipation gets the better of us. Principled conservative conviction can and will win this...anything less is a crap shot...and conservatives know it.
