January 17, 2008
Will the real Republican please stand up?
National Review's Peter Robinson takes a look at two of the GOP candidates and points out why one is a pale shade of the Gipper, and the other a reasonable facsimile.
Everybody knew just where Reagan stood. And therefore everybody knew, again, when Reagan was advancing his program and when he was merely maneuvering, as best he could, through the politics of the day.
[...]
The reason I find Romney so flawed is precisely that he is so utterly unlike Reagan in this critical regard.
First Romney was pro-choice. Now—a scant two years later—he’s pro-life.
First Romney was a social conservative. Now he’s some sort of managerial moderate.
Until about a week ago, Romney was in favor of limited government. Then he began campaigning in Michigan, where he suddenly discovered that the American automotive industry required the close and intensive supervision of the federal government to recover—and federal handout of some $20 billion to engage in research that Toyota is already conducting.
Over and over again, ceaselessly, with his inimitable chirpiness, Romney claims the Reagan mantle. Yet when Teddy Kennedy accused Romney of being a Reagan-Bush Republican during a 1994 debate, Romney appeared shocked. “Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush,” Romney replied indignantly. “I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”
People who know Romney well—people such as Dean Barnett, with whom, as it happens, I just had a cup of coffee—tell me that the true Romney, the inner Romney, really is a Reagan Republican.
Maybe.
But I’d sure like to be able to do more than take Dean’s word for it. (Not, come to think of it, that his knowledge of the inner Romney has enabled Dean himself to view Romney’s conduct with equanimity. As Dean wrote this very week in the New York Times, Romney has “mounted a campaign that was, at its most basic level, insincere.”)
Fred Thompson? Could any candidate have proven more exasperating?
Not until he began his bus tour of Iowa, a scant couple of weeks before the caucuses, did he even really begin to campaign. And not until the debate in Myrtle Beach last weekend, just a week before the South Carolina primary, did he really begin to fight, landing jabs on Huckabee and taking a swing at McCain.
But could any candidate have proven more authentic?
Thompson has done just what Reagan did. He has stated his principles. He has let voters in on his program. And when Fred Thompson says he intends to secure our borders, defeat the Islamofascists, cut taxes, reduce regulations, control spending, and defend the unborn, he’s not flipping or flopping. He’s demonstrating fundamental consistency with his entire record in public life.
If he lacks college liaisons, direct mail experts, and other appurtenances so in evidence on the Romney campaign, so be it. Thompson isn’t relying on some giant, gleaming juggernaut to carry him along.
Like the Gipper before him, he's standing on principle.
Setting aside the Reagan worship for a moment, I think Robinson gets what it is about Romney that I find so off-putting -- and what it is about Thompson that appeals to me:
Romney says he's a conservative. Thompson is conservative.
Oh, sure, it's impossible to know what's in a man's soul -- and even more difficult to discern the same for a politician (given the rather small chance that he has one) -- but the only thing we have to go on is a man's record, his public history, and Romney's tendency to say what he thinks voters want to hear has been remarkably elastic, even by the tolerant standards of 21st-century politics.
I get the sense that Thompson truly know what he believes in, is comfortable in his own (baggy, saggy and wrinkled) skin, won't pander shamelessly like the rest of his competitors. And I like that. A lot.
The GOP has a choice: nominate a conservative and regain its reason for being, or nominate the Dem's favorite Republican (McCain) or one of the other "moderate" (Ack!) candidates in a futile quest to tack left and recapture the so-called independents by out demming the Dems.
Won't work, my friends. Someone like Thompson offers voters a real choice from what the Dems are selling, instead of a Rino-lite, GOP version of the nanny state.
I've got my fingers crossed for the upcoming South Carolina primary; if Fred can keep McCain or Huckabee from running the board in the Palmetto State, the race remains open -- and when it comes to states where independents and Democrats don't get to pick the GOP nominee, Thompson may surge ahead, thanks to the votes of fed-up conservatives.
Like me.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 17, 2008 08:40 PM
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Comments
Barring a major gaff by the Democratic nominee, this weak field of Republicans doesn't appear to have anyone who can win the big event. With an unpopular war in Iraq to lure away independent voters and troubled economic times predicted for the election season, any Republican candidate will be difficult to push over the top.
Posted by: Bill H at January 18, 2008 07:30 PM