Among the eight or so GOP presidential candidates, Mitt Romney is “the frontrunner,” the establishment darling whom the media has all but assured us will be Barack Obama’s rival come next year.
Considering that the rubbing together of two wet stones stands a better chance of generating sparks than does Romney’s candidacy, it is indeed fascinating that, from the outset, it is this former Governor of “the bluest” state in the Union that has garnered greatest support from Republicans. After all, just ask yourself: Outside of the circle of establishment talking heads on Fox News and elsewhere, when do you recall encountering so much as a hint of enthusiasm for Mitt Romney?
Let us be honest with ourselves: Politically speaking, Romney hasn’t a conservative or libertarian instinct in his body. But the situation for genuine conservatives and libertarians is actually much worse than this. It would be bad enough if Romney were just a committed leftist; in truth, though, it is clear with all eyes to see that he is actually a leftist conspicuously lacking in conviction. The regularity with which he undergoes political conversions, to say nothing of their timing, makes this verdict all but impossible to circumvent.
Romney, that is, wants to be all things to all people.
It isn’t that, as it was often said of Bill Clinton, Romney has a craving to be loved. Rather, he wants to endear himself to just those voters whose support he deems critical to the advancement of his own ambitions.
So, Romney is an opportunist extraordinaire. Yet there is also his record of which to take stock.
For quite a while — when he ran for public office in Massachusetts, first as a senator, then as governor — Romney proclaimed himself a champion of abortion rights. In a debate with Ted Kennedy, Romney adamantly asserted his commitment to keeping abortion both “safe and legal.” As he informed Planned Parenthood, not only was he resolved to support “the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade;” Romney advocated subsidizing abortion services for lower-income women.
So credible, so unquestionable, in fact, was Romney’s commitment to the cause of “choice,” that he elicited the endorsement of abortion rights groups — while alienating such national “pro-life” organizations as the Family Research Council.
We can’t but wonder as to which is a more glaring specimen of folly — Romney in expecting that anyone will seriously believe that after a lifetime of throwing his support behind abortion rights, he is now, at just that time that he decides to run for the presidency, an advocate for the unborn; or those who are gullible and/or self-deceptive enough to actually believe him.
Bear in mind, it isn’t that, like, say, Ron Paul, Romney’s position was simply that abortion, given its intensely controversial character, is a matter best left to the states to negotiate amongst themselves. Quite the contrary, in fact, for while the dominant consideration driving Ron Paul — whose personal opposition to abortion no one familiar with his decades-long career as an obstetrician and gynecologist would think to deny — is the need for a decentralization of government’s authority and power, Mitt Romney sought to preserve the federal government’s monopoly over this issue.
But truthfully, when it comes to abortion, we should be surprised by neither Romney’s readiness to embrace “Big Government” nor his comparable readiness to lie about doing so when his record promises to frustrate his political aspirations. We shouldn’t be surprised because the tune that Romney whistles presently on this issue is the same exact one that he is whistling on several others — the most obvious of which is that of universal “healthcare.”
RomneyCare is the principal legacy of Romney’s tenure as Governor of Massachusetts. This is the law that demands of the state’s residents that they purchase health insurance. Being the first and, other than ObamaCare itself, the only law of its kind, it is also said to have been the model on which the latter was patterned. To relieve himself of this albatross, Romney and his apologists point to what they identify, correctly, as a key difference between these two socialistic schemes: Romney’s plan pertains to the residents of Massachusetts alone, but Obama’s, encompassing as it does all 50 states, further strengthens the federal government while weakening the individual states.
Unfortunately, for Romney, this attempt to pass himself off as a proponent of “states’ rights” simply will not do. There are two inconvenient facts that doom it from the start.
First, no small supply of financing for RomneyCare derived from the federal government. That is, Romney was perfectly content knowing that taxpayers from across the country would foot some of the bill for his landmark accomplishment.
Second, in the hardback edition of his No Excuses, Romney expressed his desire to do for the citizens of America vis-à-vis universal healthcare what he did for the residents of Massachusetts. Given the woeful unpopularity of ObamaCare, though, he decided to omit this passage from the paperback edition. It is worth noting that when Rick Perry called Romney out on this score in the Florida presidential primary debate, the latter flatly denied the charge.
That the Republican Party and, what is vastly worse, the Tea Party movement, should even consider Mitt Romney as a viable presidential candidate, much less the frontrunner of the race, only shows that neither the GOP nor the Tea Party movement has learned a thing from the Bush years.
