Assessing the GOP field: Mitt Romney

The final GOP candidate currently running with any decent chance of being relevant is former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. In many ways, Romney is an ideal candidate. He has been a governor rather than a senator or congressman, meaning he has executive-level experience. That’s invaluable for anyone seeking the presidency. He’s also held executive positions in the private sector, including serving on the Olympics board at a time when it was besieged by steroid scandals; he was able to cut through the press and politics and deal out tough but fair decisions in each case, and gained broad respect in the process.

Those are Mitt’s strong points on paper.

On the other hand, he’s a late convert to many of his most conservative positions, including his opposition to abortion. While he claims to be pure now, it’s hard to judge if these late conversions are a genuine reflection of how he might govern, or a political calculation in his quest to gain the White House.

His perceived biggest weakness is his religious affiliation as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Being a Mormon is indeed a mixed bag outside of Utah in the political arena. Much like John F. Kennedy had to prove his Catholicism was an all-American attribute in the 1960s, Romney faces a similar uphill battle over 45 years later with his Mormonism.

For WonderfulPessimsit.com, Romney handled these questions about his faith with Reaganesque Americanism appeal in his recent address on the topic. He was at once optimistic, positive, and spoke in glowing terms of the American traditions of religious tolerance and shared, common American values.

For WonderfulPessimist.com, that speech settled any doubts. While Mormonism is not this blogger’s faith of choice (see MessianicMusings.com for details), I do know what it’s like to practice a minority religion. The Constitutional freedoms that protect my faith also protect Gov. Romney’s, and I have to respect his stance on moral issues, whether they descend from my brand of faith or another brand.

I will say that at times Romney has overstated his moral values just a bit; while I admire his long-term marriage and fidelity to his wife, claiming he and his wife have “never fought” during their marriage is just a bit of a whopper to swallow. I can believe they’ve never held grudges, but I know of no married couple who doesn’t have disagreements once in a while. It’s not a sin to disagree, or even to have mild fights, although it’s admittedly best to avoid fights. We all fall short now and then, though.

So Mitt’s Mormonism is a non-issue for WonderfulPessimist.com. What matters are where he really stands policy-wise. And while he sometimes comes off more like a term life insurance salesman than a great public speaker, his address on his faith set a much better tone for his campaign, and one worthy of a serious conservative contender for the office.

Mitt is not a pure Reagan conservative; but he’s not far off and if he’s good enough for the National Review, that says something. The National Review thoroughly vetted Mitt on his views and the important note they made is that while his rhetoric has at times seemed to lean to the middle, it must be kept in mind that he was running in Ted Kennedy’s home state, Taxachusetts, and what is more important is how he governed; he governed consistently more conservatively than did this election cycle’s “faux conservative de jour,” Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee is surging in Iowa and in New Hampshire, McCain is attempting to revive his near-death run for the White House, where he stands a chance of upsetting Mitt. Right now, if the choice is Huckabee, McCain or Romney during the upcoming caucus and primary season, it’s clear that the most conservative of those three is Romney.

This election cycle, the GOP must decide whether it wants to be a choice against the Democrats, or a faint echo of them. While WonderfulPessimist.com would love to see Fred Thompson carry the conservative banner back to the heart of the Republican party, his campaign seems to have stagnated; and as for Ron Paul, he is too closely associated with the conservative/libertarian version of MoveOn.org extremists.

Therefore, the man who strikes the most conservative profile in an admittedly weak field, and yet has the best chance to win the nomination, is Gov. Mitt Romney. Therefore, unless Fred Thompson’s campaign rises from the dead, WonderfulPessimist.com is proud to announce our full endorsement of Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination as President of the United States.

Give ‘em hell, Mitt, and whatever you do, don’t make me regret the endorsement!

Assessing the GOP field: Fred Thompson

Law and Order fans may associate Fred Thompson more with plasma TV lifts than presidential politics, but the former US Senator from Tennessee actually has a solid political background, securing two Senate terms in office and taking over the spot once held by Al Gore, but vacated when he joined Bill Clinton on the 1992 Democratic ticket.

Thompson falls into the reliably conservative camp and while he may or may not be completely Reagan-esque in his values, he is probably as close as the GOP will get in this year’s race. Thompson has the boldness to balk at being expected to march in lock-step with the leaders of the religious right, like Focus On the Family, and the temerity to question the relevance and logic of certain debate questions, refusing to play along with ridiculous propositions.

Yet Thompson has had the good common sense to not alienate faith voters, nor has he kicked up a ruckus just to get attention. In fact, Fred Thompson has even been accused to not wanting the presidency desperately enough, although as Gregory MacDonald wrote in Fletch and the Man Who, would you really want to vote for someone who did?

Thompson’s Senate record verifies some exposure to foreign policy, and he is one of the few candidates consistently endorsed as reliably pro-life on the abortion issue. I trust his common-sense approach to most domestic issues, which he doesn’t sell from a viewpoint of ideological stridency, but from more of a blue-collar, “this is what makes sense to me” approach that ought to appeal to Reagan conservatives disaffected by both the MoveOn.org Democrats and increasingly big-government RINO Republicans.

In an ideal world, Thompson would be setting the polls and the electorate on fire. He has few negatives to speak of from a “Reagan conservative” viewpoint, and he’s a plain-spoken, to-the-point public speaker. Yet for some reason, he’s just not catching on; not yet, anyway.

In an ideal world, WonderfulPessimist.com would love to endorse Fred Thompson for the GOP nomination for the presidency during the caucus and primary season. He’s the candidate that is closest to our hearts, and would stand a decent chance of moving California into the GOP side of the voting column, much as Reagan did.

But the sad reality is, it’s not an ideal world and, so far, Thompson’s not lighting a fire under most of the GOP electorate. While we hope this turns around and Thompson emerges from the early primaries and caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan, gearing up for Super Duper Tuesday with at least a couple wins under his belt, right now that doesn’t seem to be the way the tides are turning.

So for now, WonderfulPessimist.com can’t endorse the candidate it likes best; Thompson needs to prove he’s a winner before that can take place.

Assessing the GOP field: Ron Paul

A member of the House of Representatives with no executive experience, Rep. Ron Paul may be a genuine conservative with strong libertarian leanings, but he’s certainly not a Reagan-style conservative. And he’s not ready to be president.

If he were to pull off a miracle and win the GOP nod, WonderfulPessimist.com could conceivably support his bid in the general election, but it would be a guaranteed losing ticket. He’s not well-known enough, he’s absolutely wrong on the War on Terror and all foreign policy issues, but he is a breath of fresh air in the area of domestic policy.

Rep. Paul is solid when it comes to interpreting the Constitution to its founder’s intent, and is correct on our country’s drift away from true constitutional government. He has solid viewpoints on domestic spending and conservative, small government principals and seems at times to disapprove of wearing sexy corsets, at least on the campaign trail, which puts him at odds with Democrat Senator Barney Frank. So there’s that.

That said, Rep. Paul is a mess on foreign policy, embracing such outdated isolationist policies that he’d make the old 1960s John Birch Society look like liberals. Rarely has a Republican been so embarrassingly wrong on all things foreign policy, and with the War on Terror, Iraq, Israel, the looming threat of Iran and more all promising to be vitally important, Paul simply is the wrong candidate at the wrong time, running on the wrong issues.

The GOP simply doesn’t need an anti-war candidate; while some of his pure Constitutionalism is sorely needed in the GOP, he simply is not the right conservative for WonderfulPessimist.com to support in the primary and caucus season. (But at least he’s a conservative.) Our call is that, at most, Paul might make a half-decent running mate for whoever does win the GOP nod; but we can also think of plenty of other GOP faithful who would make stronger, and far more legitimate, running mates for whoever does top the GOP ticket in 2008.

And here’s a confession: Rep. Ron Paul himself doesn’t scare me. But the fanaticism of his supporters, their unwillingness to listen to a simple, “he’s not my candidate of choice this time around” response, their endless antiwar rhetoric, is nothing short of frightening. And no one can win the White House by frightening members of their own party. (It didn’t even work for Howard Dean over in the Democratic party, where fanaticism is far more acceptable and in fashion, thanks to MoveOn.org.)

Assessing the GOP field: Mike Huckabee

It’s like the set-up to a gag: how would you like to nominate a former governor of Arkansas, who hails from Hope and says he’s a Baptist, for a bid to the White House? Surely we’re talking about former national disgrace, Democrat Bill Clinton, right? Nope. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is running for the GOP nod in 2008, and is being taken seriously by quite a number of misdirected “faith” voters who helped install Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush into the White House.

That’s because, ever since the so-called “Hucka-boom,” in which the media scrambled to puff a less well-known liberal Republican when it became obvious voters weren’t buying John McCain and were growing increasingly wary of Rudy Giuliani. They found their fair-haired faux conservative and genuine RINO in Huckabee. His conservatism is about as inflated as a flat garden hose; in other words, not much at all.

Huckabee talks a decent game; he has faced the Clinton political machine in Arkansas and won. But is he noticeably different from those Democrats the Clinton machine ran against him? It would appear not.

So how does he do it? How does Mike Huckbee fool so many conservatives into embracing liberal government solutions instead of Reagan-style conservative values? The answer is simple: religion.

Mike Huckabee wears his faith bonafides on his sleeve in a manner so outrageous, even George W. Bush would tell him to tone it down a bit. He mentions being a former Baptist preacher more often than he mentions being Arkansas’s former chief executive. Huckabee’s miscalculation is in thinking that he’s running to become America’s pastor, rather than its president; even Pat Robertson focused more on politics in his failed runs for the GOP nod.

Now, to be kind, Mike Huckabee has a nice personal story. As a man who once was challenging Bill Clinton for who had the fastest-expanding waistline, Huckabee conquered his overeating and, if he’d had a better career manager, might have even won an edition of NBC’s The Biggest Loser. Or at least MTV’s Celebrity Fit Club.

His tale of embracing fitness over fatness is inspiring.

But is he a Reagan conservative? He’ll claim the mantle, but the devil is in his policy details. The Huckabee record includes some controversial tax hikes, and perhaps he did inherit them; but he also did nothing to reverse them while in office. The Huckabee record also includes a permissive approach toward illegal immigration that could serious jeopardize national security. And the Huckabee record includes proposals mandating health and fitness goals that would make any big government, control your life liberal proud.

Bottom line is, Mike Huckabee has a lot to prove and leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to living up to the Reagan legacy. Of the six candidates WonderfulPessimist.com will be profiling, Huckabee rounds out the three we feel fall into the undesirable, liberal RINO candidates who would make poor choices that are only an echo of their Democratic rivals, not a clear choice in favor of a different, more democratic, federalism-centered, Constitution-based Reagan brand of conservatism that moves the country away from socialist drift and toward the type of government our founders intended.

Of these poor choices, both Huckabee and Giuliani are supportable in a general election, simply because they have some positives going for them (Giuliani) or a thin enough public record that perhaps they could grow in a more Reagan-esque direction (Huckabee) than they may appear. Only McCain is so anti-conservative and objectionable that his nomination would cause WonderfulPessimist.com to withdraw general election support in 2008.

But none of these three are worthy of this site’s primary- and caucus-season support; there are three better options on the table.

Assessing the GOP field: John McCain

In assessing the GOP presidential field for 2008, Senator John McCain is the favorite of the media and the GOP establishment. That much, right there, should disqualify him. Of all the lukewarm, liberal-leaning GOP candidates running for the nod this time around, none of them embody the definition of RINO – Republican In Name Only – the way McCain does.

When liberal newspapers endorse any GOP candidate in primary season, it should set off caution flares in conservatives across the nation, and no GOP candidate has received more media endorsements than John McCain. In all honest, McCain is someone who should have been purged from the party as a traitor long ago.

The list of conservative-stifling crimes is long and dismaying. McCain-Feingold? He’s the co-author of one of the most anti-Constitutional campaign “reform” laws in US history. Foreign policy? He’s a nightmare on most of the wars that have been fought since he took public office; McCain even whined when Ronald Reagan bombed Libya, even though that one action has kept Qaddafi nice and quiet ever since. If you want a list of measures in which he’s voted against Ronald Reagan conservative values, one need look no further than just about his entire voting record. It would be easier and quicker to cherry-pick his rare conservative-compatible votes than to point out his instances of voting with the opposition.

John McCain for president? I’m not even convinced he should be a GOP Senator from Arizona. His history as POW should not make him an expert on torture; it should disqualify him from becoming the chief executive because when push comes to shove, I’m just not convinced he has the stomach to do what’s necessary in the War On Terror, especially if winning is the goal.

McCain is probably the only GOP candidate that, if he secures the GOP nomination, WonderfulPessimist.com could absolutely not get behind in the general election; if McCain gets the green light from the GOP, WonderfulPessimist.com may just have to endorse a third-party conservative, because there really would be no difference between a potential McCain administration and the Democratic alternatives. If he wins, this site may have to spend the next four years on a series of Carnival Cruises.

Assessing the GOP field: Rudy Giuliani

In looking over this election cycle’s field of GOP candidates for president, WonderfulPessimist.com finds itself at odds with itself. On the one hand, just about any of this field of competitors is a vast improvement over the Democratic alternatives: Hillary Clinton? Nightmare! John Edwards? Equally so. Barack Obama? Well, at least he has a charming smile while being deeply liberal… which won’t buy him a cup of Starbucks with this conservative.

But nitpicking at obvious liberals like those are “easy pickins,” and there will be a long election cycle to engage in that. At the moment, WonderfulPessimist.com is more concerned with zeroing in on the right candidate to carry the conservative banner, the Reagan legacy, and the War on Terror into the next administration. There are six main GOP candidates remaining; it’s time to get honest about how they measure up.

First up: Rudy Giuliani

Let’s admit something right up front: Rudy Giuliani is a likable candidate. He has a self-deprecating sense of humor, going so far as to have been a guest star – more than once – on Saturday Night Live. He has the ability not to take himself too seriously, and that’s a plus.

But let’s also be honest about something else: he is a media creation of convenience. Giuliani was savaged by the liberal New York media, and the national media in general, for much of his run as New York mayor. His in-office affair, divorce and remarriage is messy, even though it’s in the past. And the only reason he media was kind to him in the wake of September 11 was because he was about to leave office, and it gave the liberal media someone to praise who wasn’t President George W. Bush.

That’s the only reason he, not Bush, was Time’s Man of the Year in the twilight hours of 2001. The media puffed Giuliani only because he would soon be out of power and because he was the only person they could find to praise other than Bush that year. That’s the simple, brutal truth of the matter.

Now that he’s running for the GOP nod as president, Giuliani will continue to receive the kid gloves treatment by the media, right up until the moment he would secure – if he can anymore – the nomination. Then, watch the fur fly as the liberal media work overtime to crush him like a bug to usher Hillary, Barack or John into office. It’s that simple.

While most GOP voters admit Giuliani is the candidate they’d trust most with handling the War On Terror after Bush leaves office, they trust him very little on any other issues, especially domestically. In fact, on the domestic front, there’s very little on which Giuliani and the GOP agree.

Abortion? Sure, he promised Sean Hannity he’d appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court, but given his own personal pro-abortion stance, that’s hard to swallow. He’s the darling of the Log Cabin Republican crowd with his pro-gay marriage stance. And on illegal immigration, he’s as much of a mess as the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I trust Giuliani on taxes and controlling spending, to a degree; but I think he’s actually far too inexperienced and under-educated on issues like education reform, school vouchers, health care and various biomedical issues, like fetal stem cell research and other such issues. On the foreign policy front, I simply am not sure what we’d be getting from Giuliani in terms of support for Israel, which is the key to any presidential candidate’s foreign policy, for me. In my view, we must support all Middle Eastern democracies, and beyond infant democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq, or loyalty to the oldest democracy in the Middle East, Israel, must never waver.

In the end, Guiliani is a nightmare on domestic issues and a mixed bag at best on everything else; if war with Iran seemed imminent, my concern for strong leadership on that front might nudge me in Guiliani’s direction. Failing that, there’s really no other reason to support Rudy Giuliani in the primary and caucus season. Reagan-style conservative values would not be well-represented under a potential Giuliani administration, and that’s the fiber cable of any strong endorsement from WonderfulPessimist.com.

While Giuliani would be far better than the Democratic alternatives if he secures the GOP nod, there are better alternatives still in the field than the man from City Hall who wants to bypass any state house and go straight to the White House.