‘If we could just take a little bit from each of them.”
I’ve lost track of how many people I have heard say some version of this in the last couple of months. The “each of them” refers to the final four combatants for the Republican nomination.
You could take Newt Gingrich’s verbal dexterity, encyclopedic grasp of politics, and techno-optimism. Add in Rick Santorum’s authenticity and religious conviction. Combine that with the essence of Ron Paul’s principled passion for liberty and limited government. Stir vigorously and then pour into the handsome, squeaky-clean vessel of Mitt Romney (while keeping his business acumen and analytical skill). And voilà, you’d have the perfect candidate.
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Of course, you could just as easily have a Frankenstein’s monster with Gingrich’s verbal pomposity, Santorum’s resentful and dour sanctimony, Paul’s conspiratorial nuttiness, and the full suite of Romney’s Stepford Republican qualities. It calls to mind Homer Simpson’s scheme to forcibly mate his pets in a burlap sack so as to create “a miracle hybrid, with the loyalty of a cat and the cleanliness of a dog.”
This is one of the amazing things about the GOP’s final four. The various factions of the Republican party and the myriad slices of the conservative mind are represented (with the one obvious missing ingredient being the lack of a southern evangelical Christian), but none of the pieces is in the right place. It’s like playing with a Mr. Potato Head when the feet are where the ears should be and an arm stands in for a nose.
Santorum is the religious conservative, but he’s a Catholic from Pennsylvania, not a Baptist from Mississippi or Texas. Romney is a devoted family man and business leader running as the authentic outsider, but he’s a Mormon from Massachusetts who seems fake enough to be made from Naugahyde. Paul is the long-overdue libertarian in the GOP field, but he’s an aging holdover from an ideological backwater of libertarianism that dabbled in bigotry and paranoia.
And then there’s Gingrich. The former speaker of the House and leader of the Republican Revolution should be the elder statesman, the insider’s insider. But he’s managed to turn himself into the outsider who wants to fundamentally and profoundly change the world. He’s a southerner who converted to Catholicism with, as National Review’s Mark Steyn writes, “twice as many ex-wives as the first 44 presidents combined.” He’s a true political chimera, a Nelson Rockefeller Republican right-wing revolutionary.
Who in their right mind would accept the Republican nomination at the convention in this day when they would have to build an entire national campaign apparatus from scratch?
The problem is that if things continue the way they are, people will be so strongly divided that there will be A LOT of angry people when the final candidate is established. Romney and Santorum people feel that they simply cannot vote for Newt. Newt people and some Santorum people have been decided against Romney from the start. The undecideds, as well as many Romney and Newt people are afraid of Santorum. A lot of people feel that Ron Paul's negatives are too high to ever support him.
If the whole thing goes until August people will be angry if a new candidate is picked who didn't have to participate in the long slugfest. A lot of people will also be angry if it is any of the current four.
Whoever ulimateley wins the nomination will have a lot of angry people to win over and will only have 3 months to do it. Not to mention the fact that they also have to win over the general populace outside the republican party. The republican party apparatus will not go to the nominee unless things change dramatically.
I believe that the only way for the party to unite is for everyone to calm down and remember that any of them is better than Obama. For the anti-Romney crowd, stop pretending that Romney is the same as Obama. For the anti-Santorum crowd, stop believing that he's going to force christianity and chastity on you. For the anti-Newt crowd, stop thinking he's so crazy and immoral that an Obama victory would be just as well. For the anti-Paul crowd, get over his foreign policy stances, he's right in so many ways that make him indisputably better than Obama.
Everyone, get over yourselves. They're all so much better than Obama no matter how much any one of them has offended you during this campaign.
Well said Zac. Any of these candidates would be infinitely better then Obama. Ultimately I think the poor showing for the primaries will turn around in the general election as many republicans are going to let others decide who they want as the candidate, and then just go vote for them. We can work on a better candidate from the young GOP in 4 or 8 years after Obama is dethroned and we save the country from mandates.
The problem with your conclusion is that we may not have the luxury of waiting four more years. We are creating a generation of young "adults" who have essentially grown up in an increasingly bureaucratic society that comes closer to resembling a Euro-statist society every day. As history unfolds, we are being taught that there is no rescue from that maelstrom once a society has committed to it. Look at Greece for an example of the endgame. The people there aren't rioting because they are unemployed. They are rioting because they've hit the bottom of the government gravy train bowl. In "Great" Britain, one of five children wakes up in a household in which they have never seen a single adult get up and go to work on a daily basis. Let that sink in: living in a society in which going to work is an alien concept. US society, especially the younger generation, is rapidly approaching the same mindset--that misplaced sense of entitlement that someone (i.e., government) owns them food, shelter, education, and and iPhone just by virtue of the coincidence that they happen to be breathing and taking up space (look at the attractiveness of the Occupy movement to this age group). That's not to lump all people from that generation into this category, but it is becoming the prevailing worldview among them (notice how current the term "deserve" is among them). If we don't elect a presidential candidate in this election cycle to reverse the Obama agenda, we may be headed down an irreversible path away from freedom and into enthrallment to The State.
Excellent comment. I see this every day. I know someone who has a cell phone supplied by the government. She stays home all day secure in the knowledge that she has to do nothing for a living and can spend all day talking on the phone. She does not pay a phone bill.
I would agree with you if those portrayals of the "anti-" were accurate. My opposition to Newt & Santorum does not fit either of those templates. They can both be summed up very succinctly: I do not trust them to roll back the growth of the federal government, and not let Obama's growth in government become as commonplace as the New Deal. I want a Constitutional Deal.
Newt can screw all the gals he wants, but when he insults wealth-earning in the free market as "vulture capitalism" he loses my trust. Santorum can run from "the pill" like they're scary, but when he votes for Medicare Part-D prescription drug program and demonizes libertarianism as "no government" (as if it is anarchy), it tells me he flat "doesn't get it"?
Jonah, why don't you elaborate on Paul's conspiratorial nuttiness???
"The various factions of the Republican party and the myriad slices of the conservative mind are represented (with the one obvious missing ingredient being the lack of a southern evangelical Christian), but none of the pieces is in the right place."
When you mean southern evangelical Chrisitan, someone who wants to fight endless war in the Middle East on behalf of Israel.
Paul is the long-overdue libertarian in the GOP field, but he’s an aging holdover from an ideological backwater of libertarianism that dabbled in bigotry and paranoia.
Not the ideaological bakerwater of conservatism that dabbled in bigotry and anti-semtism. National Review.
William, if you want to disabuse us of the notion that Ron Paul attracts paranoid bigots, you should probably avoid bringing up the specter of war-mongering Zionists.
Does Ron Paul attract some paranoid bigots?? Probably so but no more than other candidates.
"Now, let’s consider the views of a significant minority of the evangelicals that support Rick Santorum. They are fierce supporters of the U.S. government’s wars in the Middle East because they believe that if Jewish people do not control the city of Jerusalem, then…wait for it…Jesus will not return to earth during the “end time,” which they also believe will occur any minute now. They are willing to elect leaders who will take America to war based upon this belief, which ranks up there with the “precious bodily fluids” theory from Dr. Strangelove."
You could not be more wrong about what evangelicals believe about Israel and the return of Christ. God is bigger than any government of man, and whatever is going to happen there is going to happen, regardless of what any government does. No man knows the day of Jesus' return, and lots of generations have thought they were living in the last days, so no one can be sure. The reason evangelicals support Israel is because God said they were his chosen people and He would bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them.
Democrat Barack Obama sat for 20 years listening to a guy spout from the pulpit vile claims that Jesus Christ wants race-based institutions, mixing Christianity with race-based liberation theology promoting a "black value system". What is that?!?! Mitt & Dr. Paul would get up and leave!
Huckabee - or as I call him, Gov. Gomer Pyle - used the wink-and-nod soft-bigotry against Romney's Latter-Day Saints faith, and the media was complicit with timed programming that shined a spotlight on the 19th century form of the religion.
These candidates - not Mitt Romney, and not Ron Paul - attracted bigots. Many Hucksters didn't want a Mormon in the White House, and Obama rode to power on the backs of white people who thought voting Obama would cleanse them of some misplaced guilt.
Nutty on almost every other issue or not, Paul's the only candidate still in the race who even comes close to being serious about the fiscal disaster. None of the other issues are going to matter at all if that isn't addressed first.
So (unfortunately) that leaves a nut as the only candidate preferable to Obama. Whether, Obama, Romney, or Gingrich were to win, we'll still have irreversible momentum for the cliff edge before another 4 years have passed. (There's a strong argument to be made that we're already past that point, but I'm an optimist.) The only difference between those 3 is how fast we get there. If we're going to crash though, better it happen sooner than later, and get an early start on picking up the pieces. So Obama is preferable to the other 2.
I'm definitely not a fan. Paul's got a few nutty ideas on finance too, not just criminals and foreign policy, but sadly, he's the only one even in the ballpark on finance right now.
I'm hopeful events in Europe and elsewhere may yet shock Santorum awake, or a 2nd fiscal conservative (that has a better grasp of reality than Paul) to step up. For the moment though, nutty as he is, Paul is the only alternative to total financial collapse.
Lawrence, it's those Jews, William R's personal bete noir. He can't give them up. It's the whole Pat Buchanan Joe Sobran troglodyte wing of conservatism circa 1965 that William pays homage to, the last true believer. Cordially, Bill
No Bill, it's the traditional conservative wing. Not the policing the world that the current National Review is so very fond of.
Sobran, one of the true greats at National Review.
I dropped my subscription to National Review after Buckley's pathetic cover story "In Search of Anti-Semitism." Buckley admitted that he voted for Buchanan a few weeks later in the Connecticut primary against H. W. Bush.
And how can we forget National Review legend Russell Kirk at the Heritage Fondation in 1988---"Not seldom has it seemed," Kirk declared, "as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States."
William R, it doesn't surprise me in the least that Sobran is one of your personal heroes. That he got dropped from National Review for his antisemitism probably sealed the deal for you. Cordially, Bill
Yes, a band of bigots are fighting to install the economic policies of... Ludwig von Mises?!?
Don't misunderstand this as the whole "I have a black friend" defense. It's not just that Ron Paul is associated with von Mises, it's that his economic thinking owes so much to this Jewish man who fled Europe as Hitler rose. Dr. Paul wrote a book - Mises Institute just tried to sell it to me with a flyer in my inbox today - "Mises & Austrian Economics: A Personal View".
Plus, in the 1980s, Republicans and Democrats joined together (which should cue anyone paying attention that something bad will happen, when bipartisanship rears its head) to chastise Israel for taking out nuclear sites in another country that threatened its sovereignty. Ron Paul took to the floor and said essentially what he still says near 3 decades later: Israel is a sovereign country, and we should mind our own business!
The State of Israel was re-created because, after not only the Holocaust but centuries of second-class citizenship across Europe due to religious & ethnic discrimination, many felt the only way to assure safety and equal dignity was to restore a homeland. Once again, a state would serve as a safe-haven. They don't want your welfare, just your respect!
Though, as far as welfare goes, we give more foreign aid to Israel's enemies than to Israel, so if we take all foreign aid away - across the board - the result is PRO-ISRAEL! Geopolitics is often a game of relative advantage, and that pushes Israel ahead.
Read this last August:
lemnos philoctetes 08/13/11 06:54
'Dr Frankenstein might take Romney’s face, insert Gingrich’s brain, transplant Bachman’s heart, attach Cain’s feet (firmly on the ground), place Santorum in the moral centre and well give Pawlenty the right hand and Paul the left to confront the face.'
The NRO should do an analysis of the platforms and policies of the remaining candidates because that is ALL that matters at the end of the day. The rest is just obnoxious and counterproductive--unless you truly wish to lose the election.
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