DO CONSERVATIVES WANT TO WIN IN 2012 OR NOT?
This is a serious question, by no means rhetorical. Conservatives may be full of sound and fury against Zero, but it signifies nothing without actual evidence, of which there is little.
Tea Partyers can wave the American flag and proclaim their passion for reclaiming America, but you can’t beat something with nothing.
If this isn’t true, then why is a Total Rino way ahead in the polls?
The difference between Establishment Republicans and Conservatives is that the former care more about winning than principles, which is why they constantly compromise them. Thus their mantra of ABO – which they morph into the con that only Rino Romney can beat Zero.
When conservatives – such as Ann Coulter – make the same argument, then they have ceased being conservatives and have become the very establishment Rinos they claim to despise.
It frankly is an utter complete mystery to me how any conservative could possibly support Romney and how any Republican of whatever persuasion could possibly think Romney could beat Zero.
The DNC (Democrat National Committee) has a website: WhichMitt.com. It’s very simple. On issue after issue – healthcare, Roe v. Wade, immigration, government bailouts, flat tax, on and on – it gives contradictory quotes of Romney’s with a video clip of each.
The man stands for nothing – nothing – except saying whatever he thinks will help get him elected. His main talent is an exceptional ability to smooth-talk his way out of his contradictions, and beguile the gullible into believing that what he is saying to them at that moment is what he really believes.
It is delusional for Coulter or anyone else to think Zero and his people won’t annihilate Romney’s character, principles, or capacity to govern in the general election campaign should GOP primary voters be stupid enough to give him the nomination.
Or completely unprincipled. He poses as an opponent of illegal immigration, but when he was governor, he had a law passed giving illegals free health care. He’s brain-dead enough to believe in Warmism. His tax reform proposals are pathetic.
Running for the Senate against Teddy Kennedy in 1994, he said, "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." The video is here. He swears he’s pro-life today – and refuses to sign the Anti-Abortion Pledge.
Teddy the K nailed it when he said, "I am pro-choice – my opponent [Romney] is multiple-choice." Yes, multiple choice on any issue you care to name.
Gun control would be one more example. For any advocate of the 2nd Amendment, it is a complete no-brainer to choose Perry over Romney.
This is far from the case with Cain, by the way. In a CNN interview last June, he gave an astoundingly ignorant view of the 2nd Amendment, saying he was for it but that gun control should be a "state’s decision," i.e., that Congress can’t constitutionally pass gun control laws but states can. Watch the video clip.
Someone needs to explain to Herman that states don’t get to trump the Bill of Rights. Last year in McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court applied this specifically to the 2nd Amendment, ruling that it applies equally to the states and the federal government.
It makes you wonder to what extent Cain has really read and understands the Constitution.
It’s no wonder that Charles Krauthammer thinks Cain is "winging it" –
"I saw him on ‘Stossel,’ on abortion – entirely incoherent. On the one hand, he’s [saying that] people ought to have choice. On the other hand, life is sacred from the very beginning, and abortion ought to be illegal.
This isn’t a complicated issue. It’s either one or the other. It can’t be both. Stossel was simply stunned. And if you combine it with the 9-9-9 stuff, it’s not just [that] he hasn’t thought it out. He’s winging it. And that’s a real problem."
Or that Mark Steyn has identified an even deeper problem with Cain:
"There are whole areas of public policy in which he simply has no interest. None. You ask him a question and from the recesses of his mind swim up half-recalled phrases from some panel discussion he caught once long ago, and he hopes he grabs the conservative line (‘I’m proud to stand by Israel,’ ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists,’ ‘life begins at conception,’ whatever) but just as often he doesn’t (with Gretchen Carlson: ‘No, abortion should not be a part of the political discussion’)."
Cain may joke that he doesn’t know who the president of "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan" is, but Steyn is right. Herman Cain is not ready for presidential prime time. His campaign is headed for Disintegratistan.
He may be soaring in Fox polls, but all of this is going to catch up with him quickly. Perhaps the catalyst will the "thank you for smoking" bizarre-o video ad of his chief of staff Mark Block, ending with this slow creepy smile of Cain’s.
Some folks love it for blowing smoke in his opponent’s faces, but really, this is not an ad of a serious candidate for President of the United States. It reinforces the view that what Cain is really running for is Romney’s running mate.
By now you know where this is heading. There’s only one man left standing, and I know you know who I’m going to say that is.
So first let me say that I have doubts and am backing into this by a process of elimination. Rick Perry is far from flawlessly conservative. Yet if conservatives insist on the perfect being the enemy of the good, Zero will be re-elected next year.
Perry’s tax and economic reform proposal is far, far better (and better thought out) than Cain’s 9-9-9, which keeps changing and necessitates a national sales tax. His mechanism for reducing the federal government to Constitutional levels is the best one for doing so – the 10th Amendment. He will revive the economy far, far more than Romney would by getting the government more out of the way, and by drilling, baby, drilling. (Remember that Romney’s a Warmist who loves renewable energy scams.)
One of these days, conservatives are going to have to figure out that we’re not to going to get better than Perry. And that he really is our best chance to rescue our economy, indeed our country.
To see why – or at least to consider this as a possibility – read the transcript of Perry’s interview with John Harwood of CNBC on Tuesday (10/25). (A caveat: this is an unedited computer-generated transcription of Perry’s answers with lots of mistakes and glitches, which were left in – one suspects to make Perry not as fluent as you could see on television).
What really turned me on, frankly, was his absolute refusal to be intimidated by envy-mongering. Harwood starts right off the bat with this, saying that his tax plan would be a huge tax cut for the wealthy, that "those at the top, it is hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars for them." Perry immediately responds:
"But I don’t care about that. What I care about is them having the dollars to invest in their companies. To go out and maybe start a business because they got the confidence again ’cause they actually get to keep more of what they work for."
OMG. That’s the ballgame. The entire argument of the Left is an envy-trip. What America needs more than any other one single thing is a president who says to the Dems, the Enemedia, Academia, their acolytes, the entire dog’s breakfast of the Left, "I don’t care about your envy!
Harwood can’t get over this, so later he asks a gotcha, "Do you fundamentally believe we should not have a progressive tax system in the country?" Perry straight out answers, "I do." Harwood is shocked. "But the idea of taking– of having– higher rates– of various kinds for people who earn more are [sic] not right?" Again, Perry says straight, "I don’t agree with that."
I encourage you to read the whole thing. Try this on:
"I don’t think this president understands basic economics. Not economics that work. He may understand some theory that someone in Princeton sat and dreamed up, but it’s not working.
"This President would be wise if he addressed the economy in the way that we know it works. You give incentives to job creators. Lower the tax burden, lower the regulatory climate, and this President would be stunned I’m sure. But America’s economy would take off and take off quickly.
"That’s what we need in a president that respects how this country got to the point of being the greatest economy in the world. And it was done simply by giving the incentive to job creators so they knew they could keep more of what they work for."
No teleprompter here, ad lib. You really think Zero could take him in a one-on-one debate? And look how he took care of the "birther" thing:
"I don’t have a clue about where the President (was born) and what his birth certificate says. But it’s also a great distraction. I’m not distracted by it. If those of you in the media want to talk about it that’s fine, but I hope what you’ll really get focused on is how are we going to get this country back on track.
"Because if we don’t, America’s next generation is not going to have as good a future as what we had, and that’s what I’m concerned about. I know how to do that. And you do it by giving a flat tax. You get these regulations pulled off of businesses, and you allow entrepreneurs the confidence that they can go risk their capital."
You can’t get a better answer than that. Birtherism is a distraction for exactly the reasons Perry says. And for another reason. Getting Zero removed from office on a technicality would be a moral disaster.
A majority of American voters electing Zero was the most suicidally stupid and immoral act ever committed en masse in American history since the Civil War. It was complete moral collapse of the electorate to vote for a man whose preacher wanted God to damn their country.
The only way it can be rectified, to stop America from continuing to slide down the path to national suicide and resurrect their morality, is for a majority of voters to unelect him.
Moreover, to unelect him such that it reverses the direction he has taken our country. So which Republican candidate can best do this? Defeat Zero resoundingly, not even close, and pervasively reverse Zero’s course?
Definitely, that candidate is not Romney. I do not think it is Cain, for as fine and accomplished a man as he is, he does not know what he is doing. I think Perry does.
I could be wrong about Cain. He is very smart, maybe smart enough to climb a virtually 90-degree learning curve in the next couple of months.
Conservatives will need to watch him carefully to see if he can do this. They can’t be led by emotions, neither by a crush on Cain nor by carping on Perry. They have to choose wisely.
This is the most serious choice collectively conservatives will ever make. The literal fate of our America depends on it. Conservatives have to decide whether they want to win in 2012 or not.