Will Romney Govern as a Conservative?

I, along with many others on the Right, was quite pleased with Mitt Romney's acceptance speech last night.  A far as I'm concerned, he hit all the right notes, allaying the always elusive if not undefinable moderate/independent voter concerns, but doing so without appearing to pander to them in an embarrassingly overt fashion.  For example, I thought he wove the "No, we're not waging a War on Women, to the contrary..." theme in quite nicely.

But not everyone agrees.  Charles Kesler, for one, thinks the speech was written and delivered more from a posture of fear and weakness than the contrary.  He contrasts it negatively with Paul Ryan's speech from the night before which was delivered with much more ideological conviction.

While I think Kessler is wise to remind us that Romney is not, after all, one of us, that is, a movement conservative, I also think he may be worrying a bit too much.

It's true, Romney's pedigree is much like that of George Bush, both of them.  For him and for them, the GOP is the "establishment" party, distinguishing it importantly from the crazies who populate with populism the Democrat alternative.  Public service is principally an act of noblesse oblige, privileged people doing their duty, and conservatism mostly means, "Shhh! Sit still!"

So, why did, and will in Romney's case, movement conservatives support them?  First, and most importantly because of the alternative.  No serious conservative could ever bring himself to vote for Michael Dukakis or Al Gore, and certainly not for Barack Obama.  That, we pray, will be enough to get Romney elected as it did the Bushes.

But how will he govern?

In George the First's case, he governed domestically too often like a moderate and it cost him reelection.  But in the case of  George the Second, he governed, again, domestically, too often like a moderate and it did not.  Why?

The most obvious answer is his conduct of the War on Terror.  Conservatives know that had 9/11 happened with Gore in the White House, with almost any Democrat in the White House, it would have been handled entirely differently, likely with nausea producing soul searching and the self-imposed restraint of multilateral manacles.  However it would have been handled it would not have been done with anything like the decisive and unapologetic leadership Bush provided.  As a result, when it came to Bush too often governing domestically like a moderate, many conservatives simply averted their gaze.  I know, I was one of them.

Absent a similarly serious  foreign policy challenge, Romney will not be afforded this kind of latitude.  Conservative enthusiasm for him is only as deep as his ability to successfully supplant the current White House occupant and, once in office, undo much of his agenda.  If he temporizes in any fashion, conservatives, and more importantly, conservative congressmen and senators will abandon him almost immediately.  If Romney doesn't already know this, he will learn it very quickly if he departs from conservative orthodoxy.

As a result, I think we can be fairly confident that whatever his personal predilections, Mitt Romney will govern from the right.   

Meanwhile...

Did you hear or see this in the news today?  "3 NATO Troops Killed in Attack by Man in Afghan Uniform"

This is becoming an increasingly common occurrence, um, over there.  Is there any doubt that were this still the Bush Administration the New York Times, to pick just one, would have placed it bold type, front page, above the fold?

Still Trusting the Establishment?

Former Florida Republican governor and erstwhile GOP senate candidate Charlie Crist has endorsed President Obama's run for reelection.  If you needed still more proof that this guy never was a conservative, well, there it is.

But please do remember that in 2010 the National Republican Senatorial Committee, i.e., the Establishment, endorsed Crist over Marco Rubio the eventual winner.  Now, Rubio is everybody in the Republican Party's favorite politician and Crist is old news.

You connect the dots.   

It Really is that Simple

The CATO Institute's Daniel Mitchell proves, once again, that it's possible to balance the budget in 10 years without raising taxes.  How?  Simply by reducing the growth in government spending to 2.5% per year. 

Read that again:  Simply by reducing the growth in spending to 2.5% per year.  No one is talking about cutting anything.

As I say, it's really that simple, and always has been so.  Simple, but not easy.

It's difficult in large part because the underlying argument is not now and never has been about balancing budgets or fiscal responsibility.  The real argument is about the size, scope, and reach of government.  The Left wants it ever larger and the Right does not. 

It really is that simple.

They Can't See It

New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson steadfastly denies--despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, mind you--that her paper is guilty of anything like liberal bias.  While one is tempted simply to say "puh-leeze!" and move on, I sense an opportunity here, a teachable moment perhaps.

While much of the liberal bias that describes the elite media is brazenly overt, and increasingly so, I don't doubt there remain still at least a few liberal editors, journalists, broadcasters, etc., who nevertheless honestly believe they are, or at least try to be, um, well, fair and balanced.

I've always thought that ideological bias works something like color-blindness.  Suppose it's someone's job to detect and report sharp and even subtle differences in color.  Suppose also that that same someone is blind to the color red.  While the fact that he cannot see red when it's plainly there is bad enough, what's worse is that he cannot even imagine the color red.

Such are the elite liberal media, some of'em anyway.  Never can they see conservative rectitude, and never can they see liberal perfidy.  When you point it out to them, they squint and simply shake their heads.  They're blind to it.

As I say, that describes some of them.  The rest refuse to see. 

Fine Young (and Old) Cannibals

Reactions to GOP Congressman and US Senate candidate Todd Akin's unfortunate remarks point out, again, key differences between the two parties. 

Never, and I do mean never, would any Democrat react as so many Republicans have this week to a similar faux pas (or worse, much worse, in fact) committed by one of their own.  The examples are simply too numerous to recount.  By contrast, it seems Republicans have come to over-react in just the way almost routinely.

George Neumayr's thoughts on this are worth more than just a read.

Try to Imagine a Biden Presidency

Now that Joe Biden has finally crossed the ever-shifting and always invisible "too far" line, John Podhoretz tells us that the Biden stories everyone in Washington has are pouring out.  I'm assuming from liberal journalists as well. Anyway, here's his and it's worth reading for the story itself, but even more so for his analysis.

As we all now know, Barack Obama was insufficiently vetted by the press and the people in 2008.  The Left, the left-leaning elite media, and all Democrats had of course no reason to; he was their guy after all.  But far too many on the Right, along with virtually all professional Republicans didn't because they were scared to death of being called racists.  (They were anyway.)

But an almost equally egregious dereliction of duty was the failure to tell the voters exactly who Joe Biden was as well. 

What he is, and always has been to anyone with, unfortunately, ears to hear, is a gas-bagging buffoon.  But, as Podhoretz makes clear, the problem with his long-windedness is it's accompanying shallowness.  Biden talks and talks, but in the end has no serious point to make, often no point at all.

(The only difference between Biden and Bill Clinton, by the way, is that Clinton's gas-baggery always has the point of trying to get into some woman's pants.)

Back to Biden.  Can anyone seriously imagine him as the president?  For that matter, can you imagine him in charge of anything?  I doubt it and that explains why until he was sworn in as VP in 2009, he's never been more than a legislator.  In our system, taking charge of either the House or Senate is all but impossible.

Will the possibility of a Biden presidency if something ever happens to Obama while in office (God forbid, and I do mean that) creep into voters' minds this fall?  Let's hope so.