I was for Romney in 2008 but didn’t jump on board with Romney this cycle until the field settled completely last month. I figured that Romney was the least bad option in the field and I had hope that he had seriously seen the light.
Since I came fully on board for Romney it has been a death of a thousand cuts. Day after day he gives me reasons to not support him and makes me less and less enthusiastic about his candidacy. Today was the last straw, not being able to firmly stand against Public Employee Unions and on the side of every Kasich on the Ohio referendums is it. I can’t take it anymore. I am off the Romney bandwagon.
The problem is I have nowhere else to go. My requirements in a candidate are not very rigorous. I only have two requirements; be conservative and be able to convincingly articulate conservatism. That’s it. I am confident that as with Reagan in the 1980s, if we have a candidate who can communicate our ideas, independents and Democrats will vote for conservative Republicans in droves and we can begin the process or repairing our economy, our government and our country.
Somehow we are left with a situation where none of the people who can actually fulfill these requirements want to be President. Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Tom Coburn, Marco Rubio, etc. Instead we have a field of flawed candidates that leaves me praying for a last minute miracle change of heart by Mitch Daniels’ wife or by Paul Ryan.
Romney’s problems are too numerous to count, but for me it boils down to one thing. Unlike most people, I really do believe he is mostly conservative at heart and not the horrible moderate he is made out to be, but it is plainly clear that enacting conservative policy is less important to him than being elected. When Romney is on and has the right talking points, he can sell the conservative message as well as almost anyone. I think Romney is the ideal person to oversee and audit of all federal agencies to enact budget cuts, eliminate waste and improve efficiency, thus enacting a small part of my conservative vision for America.
Perry’s biggest problem is that he can’t articulate conservative policy so I don’t even really care how conservative he may or may not be. Also, I don’t believe he is a small government conservative. He is probably a step or two to the right of being a George Bush Republican but I am not even sure about that. Bottom line, because of the liberal media we need a President who can use the bully pulpit to sell conservative economic policy and budget/entitlement reforms. Perry isn’t that guy.
Cain’s biggest problem is that he is not ready to be president. It is clear that Cain never envisioned he would get this far and the policies he has actually proposed are not that well thought out. If I decided to run for president tomorrow I would be more prepared from a policy standpoint than Cain. Also, he is so gaffe prone that even if he did manage to understand all the issues and have associated policy prescriptions, he wouldn’t be able to answer his critics or undecideds. People like him, I am not sure that he can convice them to like his ideas.
Gingrich is a bit of a different story because he fulfills my two requirements, being both articulate and conservative, but he has so much history and so much baggage that I really don’t think he can overcome the late 1990s with most independents. That said, I am half-way reconsidering Gingrich because I wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit I support him (Romney) and I wouldn’t have to explain conservatism to my liberal and moderate friends, Newt would do it for me.
Nobody else in the field is worth talking about.
Maybe the conservative media (Rush, Hannity, Redstate, Malkin, HotAir, etc) could convince Mike Pence to run.
Dan McLaughlin
KnightsofMalta
Steve Maley
Neil Stevens
Moe Lane
