Mitt Romney’s problem is that he is perceived as a big government liberal. Can he convince conservatives and libertarians otherwise? Or, if he is nominated, will he drive the conservative base out of the GOP?
BY DENNIS BEHREANDT
What’s wrong with Mitt Romney?
For conservatives in the primaries, the answer seems to be that he is not perceived as a conservative. And there’s good reason for that. Just look at the Massachusetts’s health care system championed by the Governor. For all intents and purposes, its pretty similar to Obamacare.
It’s so similar that even Obama once alluded to it. Writing for The New York Times in March 2010, op-ed columnist Gail Collins recalled the President’s remarks on the issue to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show. “I mean, a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts,” Obama said at the time.
This suited Collins, and probably the Times just fine.
Collins wrote: “…it really does seem as though the two plans are a whole lot alike, and Romney deserves credit for working with the Massachusetts Democrats to get such an ambitious, sweeping reform enacted.”
For conservatives, this stands as exhibit number one in the case against Romney the liberal.
But this is not what’s wrong with Mitt Romney. It’s not what’s wrong with him because it is in the open. We know that Romney is a liberal and as such can oppose him appropriately. But what if, supported by GOP establishment, Romney wraps up the nomination? And what if he then goes on to beat Obama?
This is where we come face to face with the real problem with Mitt Romney.
If Romney gains the nomination, the GOP establishment will pull out all the stops to get him in the White House. Along the way, anyone with actual conservative leanings will be told to get in line behind the Governor because the alternative will be leaving Obama to take the Presidency for another four years. Those actual conservatives who don’t “get in line” will be marginalized.
As a result, part of the problem with Romney is that he is a poison pill for conservatives. His gaining the White House would be a stake in the heart of the resurgence of traditional conservatism in America.
And it gets worse. Consider the words of the late Carroll Quigley, once the mentor to former president Bill Clinton. In Tragedy & Hope, his book chronicling the rise of the American globalist state, he wrote: “The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.”
This sheds light on what will happen if Romney gains the White House, although it actually doesn’t go far enough.
Romney as President will not represent any real change from the Obama administration’s policies, just as President Obama carried forward policies he inherited from the Bush administration. Recall, too, that Obama famously campaigned on the notions of hope and change. But once in office, hope and change went out the window in favor of continuity with his predecessor.
A Romney presidency, however, will be worse than just the type of continuity envisioned by Quigley and exemplified by the Bush-Obama administrations.
Unlike Obama who cannot unify the parties behind his favored programs, Romney will have no such difficulties.
A president Romney will have the unwavering support of GOP members in Congress and will be able to count on rhetorical support from the GOP’s allies in the media, especially on talk radio. Meanwhile, Democratic members of Congress will work also to support any liberal measures Romney proposes.
Because of this unification, a Romney presidency will have the potential to move a liberal agenda forward much more rapidly than any Democratic administration ever could.
And that, should he gain the Presidency, is the real problem with Governor Romney.
The Moral Liberal Associate Editor, Dennis Behreandt, is the Founder and Editor In Chief of the American Daily Herald. Mr. Behreandt has written hundreds of articles on subjects ranging from natural theology to history and from science and technology to philosophy. His research interests include the period of late antiquity in European history as well as Medieval and Renaissance history.
