> “And yet Romney clobbers Gingrich on the issue of character.”
There is more than one way to show bad character. Adultery is only one way.
Here’s another way: govern like a liberal in a liberal state, and then present yourself to conservatives nationally as their guy.
According to Ezra Klein, when Romney met with left-leaning groups in Massachusetts in 2002 to assure them he was no threat to their interests, he went the extra step and bragged to them that they needed a man like him in the Republican Party, someone who would raise their concerns at the national level.
> Klein: ““You need someone like me in Washington,” [Romney] reportedly told the advocates. The GOP had swung too far right, and he would be “a good voice in the party” for left-leaning groups. His support for their agenda would mean more than the support of another Democrat. His would be “widely written about.””
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-republicans-trust-gingrich-but-not-romney/2011/08/25/gIQA34FQsO_blog.html
As Klein goes on to point out, this goes well beyond pointing to congruencies in policy positions. Romney, in effect, said to liberals: I’m one of you.
And now, nine years later, he’s one of us. Or so he says. Some people may call that “character.”
There are many disadvantages to having to fight a liberal Democratic president. But one advantage is the knife goes in the front. Nothing I hate more than facing the Democrats from the trenches and suddenly spotting a Republican bayonet coming out of my solar plexus. That tends to happen to conservatives a lot, all the way from “No New Taxes!” to “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market.”
As a conservative, I understand all too well that the Republican Party is a coalition of which we’re just a part, and that we can’t always have things our way. I was fine with that for forty years. I guess I’m a slow learner. But at some point during the past decade, though, the GOP convinced me that they despise their conservative base and would like to keep them sequestered from any decision-making — “Break glass in case of election.”
Newt may be no conservative, either. But the GOP establishment clearly hates him, so for now the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Newt wins the presidency, Lord only knows which direction he’ll run off in. But if he reaches into the RNC’s mouth all the way to his shoulder, grabs its tail, and yanks it back all the way through its teeth, I say, payback is a pregnant lady dog. It is not good for a party to anger its base.
