Romney's Sister: Romney Administration Would Not Work to End Abortion; “Not His Focus.”

From one of the women who knows Romney best, his sister:

Mitt Romney’s eldest sister, who has backed prominent Democrats for office and is in Tampa showing support for her brother, had some reassuring words Wednesday for women concerned about the Republican Party’s hard line on abortion.

Mitt Romney would never make abortions illegal as president, Jane Romney said when National Journal asked her about the subject after a “Women for Mitt” event. "He’s not going to be touching any of that,” she said. “It’s not his focus.”

[...]

But as Jane Romney put it, “Mitt’s much more in the middle” when it comes to abortion.

Mitt Romney has said he supports legal abortion in cases of rape and incest, and when the life of the mother is in danger. As for the fate of abortion rights, “Recognize this is the decision that will be made by the Supreme Court," he said in an interview with CBS News this week. "The Democrats try and make this a political issue every four years, but this is a matter in the courts. It's been settled for some time in the courts."

Jane Romney said she believes “life is sacred” and suggested those seeking abortion should be required to undergo counseling. But she also said that abortion should “absolutely” be safe and legal. “Every woman needs to be left to make her own choice,” she said.

A ban on abortion is “never going to happen” under a Romney administration, Jane Romney said. “Women would take to the streets. Women fought for our choice, we’re not going to go back."

[...]

With the way Romney has backed off in the last few days from the pro-life stance he pretended to hold in order to win the GOP primary, does anyone REALLY doubt that Romney's sister is entirely correct in her assessment of him? She's right about Romney. And what's more, we all KNOW that she's right about him.

And, yet, pro-lifers are falling all over themselves to get this guy elected, even going so far as to say that those of us who will not vote for Romney because of his weak position on life are not authentically "pro-life". [NOTE: It was this piece that caused me to drop LifeNews from my Facebook feed.]

I have been saying for years that Romney is a fraud on the pro-life issue, trying to be all things to all people. But when it comes time to fight for anti-Roe judges, or for defunding Planned Parenthood, or for any other controversial right-to-life initiative, does anyone really believe that Romney will go to the mat in the same way the Dems are willing to fight to the death for abortion? Of course not. It is my heartfelt belief that pro-lifers will come to rue the day they ever supported Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency.

And, yet, the pro-life movement continues to make preposterous claims on Romney's behalf. Just stop. It is one thing to say that Obama is just so much worse that supporting Romney is a necessary evil. But pro-lifers just need to stop claiming that there is otherwise a pro-life argument in Romney's favor. There's just not. And, if he's elected, pro-lifers will eventually ask themselves "What were we thinking in supporting this guy?"

Romney and His People Are Truly Contemptuous of Social Conservatives

How many more instances like this must we be treated to before those social conservatives who plan to fall into line and vote for Dullard Flip Rino because ... well ... we JUST HAVE to ... wake up to the fact that the GOP has, via the nominee it has chosen, decided you are no longer welcome?

Follow my lead and DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, vote for Mitt Romney. There ARE alternatives. Vote 3rd party. Don't buy into the lesser of two evils spin coming from the major parties.

Vote your conscience. Vote your values. Don't vote for Rockefeller RINOs like Romney.

Ahem. Toldja So. [UPDATED]

Paul Zummo has the full story at The American Catholic:

Meet Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom. Earlier today he had this exchange on CNN:

HOST: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?
ERIC FEHRNSTROM: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.

It happens every time Dullard Flip Rino gets a big boost and begins to feel comfortable that he's got the nomination in the bag. EVERY TIME. He or his campaign lets the fascade slip and shows their true anti-conservative colors. EVERY TIME.

Here, Romney is fresh off his big win in Illinois and having received the endorsement of Jeb Bush, and his campaign makes it clear that all that conservative mumbo-jumbo the candidate has been spouting in order to fool enough conservatives and GOP voters to win the nomination has all the staying power of an etch-a-sketch drawing.

Santorum Central needs to get this ad on the air pronto:



More at Creative Minority Report.


UPDATE (22 March)
HotAir nails it:

What’s wrong with a strategist acknowledging a basic fact of political life, that candidates tend to move towards the center after the primaries to compete for independents in the general? Philip Klein explains in a post titled, “Romney advisor says his conservatism can be erased”:

Romney ran two races in Massachusetts as a moderate and even a self-described “progressive,” before changing his positions in the run up to his first campaign for president. Just last month, he described himself as “severely conservative” at the Conservative Political Action Conference. But as Fehrnstrom statement suggests, Romney’s appeals to the right are simply a matter of positioning rather than principle, something that can easily be changed once the target audience changes.

If Romney’s fiercest critics wanted to come up with a way to describe Romney’s approach to politics, I don’t think they could have come up with a better analogy than Etch A Sketch. The fact that it’s coming from one of Romney’s long-time aides is stunning. An even scarier thought for conservatives: if the Romney campaign is willing to take them for granted before even clinching the nomination, imagine how quickly Romney would abandon conservatives if he ever made it to the White House.

Yeah, that’s the killer. Before the campaign, I could imagine conservatives nominating Romney if he swore up and down that he’d be a right-wing warrior while in office. There’s always a chance that he’d be telling the truth and a chance is all you need to justify voting for a guy who stands the best chance of knocking out The One. But here’s one of his very top aides all but telling you that “severe conservatism” is rhetoric aimed at getting him through the primaries — and yet we’re going to go ahead and nominate him anyway. Think this is the guy who’s going to the mat as president if a Republican Congress gears up to advocate sorely needed yet unpopular spending cuts and fiscal reforms?

(emphasis added)

Nailing it by saying what I've been saying for years. You CANNOT trust Dullard Flip Rino. He is a self-described "pro-choice progressive" who feels most comfortable when he is running to the left.

Join me, therefore, in vowing to NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER vote for Mitt Romney.

Romney Sells Out Congressional GOP - Comes Out Against Conscience Clause Bill Protecting Employers from HHS Contraception Mandate [UPDATED]

THIS is the REAL Mitt Romney:



Here's how Greg Sargent at The Washington Post is calling it:

Jim Heath, a reporter for ONN-TV in Ohio, just Tweeted a remarkable piece of news: Mitt Romney told him he does not support the Blunt amendment, which would empower employers and insurers to deny health coverage they find morally objectionable.

I just got off the phone with Heath, and he graciously played me the audio. Heath asks Romney if he’s for the “Blunt-Rubio” amendment, and defines it. Romney replies:

“I’m not for the bill. But, look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, I’m not going there.”

That’s pretty remarkable. If Romney knew what he was saying, the Senate GOP caucus, which is set to vote on this amendment tomorrow, may feel as if Romney has pulled the rug out from underneath them. And this has become an important issue for conservatives. So it’ll be interesting to see how the base reacts to this, particularly since the GOP primary is anything but over and Rick Santorum — who’s perceived as a more reliable social conservative — is likely to use this to attack Romney, who will be under continued pressure to connect with social and religious conservatives.

Perhaps Romney now feels confident enough in victory in the GOP primary that he’s willing to risk some ire from the base in order to begin his pivot to general election mode in advance of winning the nomination.

[...]

UPDATE III: The Romney camp now says he’s for it:

“Regarding the Blunt bill, the way the question was asked was confusing,” a spokesman told TPM. “Governor Romney supports the Blunt Bill because he believes in a conscience exemption in health care for religious institutions and people of faith.”

You can see that all the RINOs [LIARS!] are trying to spin this by explaining that Mitt was confused about which bill they were talking about. Bull!!! DO NOT let the post-interview spin fool you. Romney's initial reaction is what he REALLY believes, and the spin is the Romney campaign scrambling to clean up another one of his messes. Here's how you can tell:

Notice how easily Mitt adopts the language of the left in describing the bill. Notice how he uses this opportunity to get to the left of Santorum and try to paint Santorum as some sort of "bedroom police" - again utilizing the rhetoric of the left.

And then recall how comfortable Mitt was in getting to Rick Perry's left on Social Security and adopting the language of the Democrats in essentially arguing that Perry was going to force Grandma to eat dogfood, or worse, was going to push Grandma off a cliff. Romney seemed like a natural in making those arguments, just as he seems like a natural in his arguments against the Blunt bill and criticizing Santorum's support of it.

Now, contrast those two instances of Romney feeling comfortable in his own skin with those many, many, many times during his campaign in which Romney seemed ill-at-ease and downright uncomfortable trying to sound like a "severe conservative" in his attempts to appeal to grassroots conservatives (i.e. the base of the GOP).

Why is that? I'll tell you why: Because, as Romney has said on multiple occasions, he can't be who he is not, and can only be who he is. Well, THIS is who he is. The Romney in that video - selling out Congressional Republicans trying to do the heavy lifting of overturning the HHS mandate - is who Romney is. Should he win the nomination, we will have an entire campaign season of Romney being who he is to the chagrin of conservatives. And in the unlikely event he were to defeat Obama, we would have an entire 4 years of Romney being who he is and the Republicans in Congress going along with him, again much to the chagrin of conservatives. And in 4 years, he'd be running for re-election, being who he really is, again much to the chagrin of conservatives.

DO NOT VOTE FOR THIS MAN. Not in the primary, and not in the general election. Because I believe in my heart of hearts that the Romney in the video above, and the Romney who demagogued Rick Perry on Social Security, is just the tip of the iceberg of who Romney REALLY is, I will NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER vote for him.

And neither should you.


UPDATE
Even Romney sycophant Britt Hume notes the opportunism evident in Romney's answer to the question, as he seemed downright gleeful at the opportunity to get to the left of Santorum:

@ByronYork I thought Romney skipped past the question, to seize a chance to stick it to Santorum on contraception. Not a considered answer.

It may not have been "considered" in the sense that Romney let his mask slip, but make no mistake: the answer Romney gave reveals the TRUE core of Mitt Romney. Romney's core impulse is to run to the left of his opponent - that's his comfort zone. Heck, he even ran to the left of Ted Kennedy for crying outloud. If you want to get Romney off his game, force him to have to run to the right; but he's on his turf when it comes to taking the discussion leftward.


UPDATE #2
Lisa Graas has more, including the response from the Santorum campaign:

Verona, PA – Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) proposed legislation that would prevent the government from forcing religious institutions to provide services against their faith doctrine. Today, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said he would oppose it. When Mitt Romney had the chance, he forced Massachusetts Catholic hospitals to go against their private beliefs and provide morning after abortion pills to patients. All the candidates are entitled to make misstatements here and there – but this is a much deeper issue.

Hogan Gidley, National Communications Director, said: “As Governor, Mitt Romney has a clear record of taking away the freedom of religion. We all know Romney’s liberal record on this, so when he’s asked a question about a bill that would protect our religious freedom – and Romney’s gut reaction is to say he’d oppose it – we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised.”

“On the other hand, Rick Santorum was asked the same question, but he wasn’t confused because Rick Santorum has consistently supported religious freedoms.”

UPDATE #3 (1 March)
New York Daily News: "Mitt Romney accused of flip-flopping on GOP-backed Blunt amendment on contraception".

Romney Attacks Santorum for Focus on Social Issues

Just more evidence for why I will NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER vote for Dullard Flip Rino: He doesn't care about (and, in fact, is on the opposite side of) the issues that matter most to me.

Just Another of My Occasional Reminders ...

... that I won't be voting for Mitt Romney (a.k.a. Dullard Flip Rino) UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Not in the primaries, and not in the general election should he be nominated.

NEVER. NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. EVER!

I'm rooting for Santorum to win the nomination. Should he fail (and I believe he is the only one left with a real shot at denying Romney the nomination), I will not settle for being force-fed yet another establishment RINO.

But should Romney wind up being the GOP nominee, this year I will have a real 3rd-party choice: my friend, Virgil Goode who is seeking (and should win) the Constitution Party nomination.


(And please don't come here spouting such nonsensical and demonstrably false platitudes as "A vote for an unelectable 3rd-party candidate is a vote for Obama". Should anyone ever feel so inclined, just keep such inane rhetoric to yourself. It's not convincing, and such nonsense will not change my mind. In fact, the more I hear it, especially to justify a vote for Dullard Flip "Obama Lite" Rino, it only further entrenches me in my views. So save your energy - you'll need it to continue to justify the unjustifiable to an increasing number of skeptical conservative voters. For my part, should Romney win the GOP nomination, I will actively campaign against him and in favor of Virgil Goode, and will try to convince as many conservative and independent voters as I can not to waste their votes on a candidate they don't believe in, but to support a true conservative like Virgil Goode instead.)

If Santorum Beats Romney, Watch for GOP Establishment to Replace Him With Jeb Bush [UPDATED]

One "brave" anonymous U.S. Senator has already said it should happen:

Silly me; I thought that when one candidate in a primary race lost a state, it meant that another candidate was stronger. Not so, according to an unnamed but “prominent” Republican Senator contacted by ABC’s Jonathan Karl. If Romney can’t win, it’s time to call in … Jeb Bush?

“If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,” said the senator, who has not endorsed anyone and requested anonymity.

[...]

It would have to be somebody else, the senator said. Who? “Jeb Bush,” the former Florida governor.

The Secret Senator believes that Rick Santorum would lose 35 states in a general election, and apparently thinks so little of Newt Gingrich’s chances that he doesn’t even raise him as an alternative. No, it would be better to call the younger Bush and skip over the rest of the primaries, apparently, since it would be almost impossible at this point for a new candidate to qualify on enough ballots to win a majority of the delegates.

[...]

How about this for an idea: let’s hold a primary among those candidates who had the courage to put themselves on the line for almost a year, and stop worrying about those who sat on the sidelines. Stop looking for a Deus ex machina and start building the organization that will help whomever the voters choose as the nominee win the general election.

[More]

If the GOP tries this, it will forever sever ties with social conservatives and with grassroots GOP voters, and will consign itself to permanent minority status.


UPDATE
Yeah, what Patrick Archbold said: "I Hate Republicans"

... Dear Senator Jerk, I would rather go down with Santorum than win with your type. And if Santorum does lose, I hope to God that he takes you with him.

I hate Republicans.

My sentiments exactly.

“Living in Washington Isn’t My Life’s Ambition.”

Says the guy who's been groomed for the presidency since childhood, and who's been trying - unsuccessfully - for the last 20 years to get elected to Washington.

Somehow I doubt GOP voters are going to buy Dullard Flip Rino 6.0 - "anti-establishment Washington outsider" version - any more than they were willing to buy previous unelectable versions of this loser.

Romney = Kerry Redux [UPDATED]

Every day, I am more and more convinced that an observation I made over 4 years ago about Dullard Flip Rino is 100% correct:

Isn't Mitt Romney basically the Republican version of John Kerry? They're both shallow Massachusetts pretty boys with nice hair, lots of money, a patrician background, a liberal record, and a penchant for flip-flopping on the issues.

Of course, Mitt can't claim to have served in Vietnam [by the way, did you know that John Kerry was in Vietnam?], but he can say that his sons are "serving their country" by working on his campaign.

Massachusetts patrician "relating" to the common plebes:

“Can I get me a huntin' license here?”
~ John F. Kerry


“I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then.”
~ Willard Mitt Romney

And I'm afraid, if nominated, the "varmint hunter" will fare about as well (actually, probably NOT as well) as did the guy who wanted to "get me a huntin' license."


UPDATE
Romney at CPAC: My record is “severely conservative”

What the hell does "severely conservative" mean? Certainly doesn't sound like he believes being conservative to be a good thing. As the writer at HotAir points out,

The awkwardness of that phrase is Romney’s whole candidacy in a nutshell. The word “severely” is almost always used colloquially in a pejorative or clinical sense (“severely unhappy,” “severely handicapped”), yet he’s using it here in a boastful way, as if to say that he can be as strident and unreasonable as he thinks the crowd needs him to be to give them comfort on his ideological bona fides as nominee. I go back and forth between being annoyed that a guy as intelligent as he is can’t even fake his identification with the right more effectively and feeling sympathy for him that he can’t connect with his audience on a gut level.

I mean, SERIOUSLY.

Look, if you keep having to try to convince a doubting GOP base that you're "conservative" by continuing to mention that you're "conservative", but you don't even know the right words to use to convincingly make your case, there's a very good chance that YOU'RE NOT REALLY CONSERVATIVE.

And so it is with Dullard Flip Rino.

Santorum Fights Back Against Romney Attacks

Smack!

... Although he didn’t mention Rick Santorum by name, Mitt Romney emphasized in his speech last night that he was the only candidate in the race who was not a Washington insider. Santorum was dismissive of Romney’s outsider claim this morning, reports The Hill:

“Gov. Romney, ‘Mr. Outsider,’ was for government takeover of healthcare, was for government takeover of the private sector in the Wall Street bailout, and was for the government takeover of industry and energy with cap-and-trade,” Santorum said on CNN. “So ‘Mr. Private Sector’ was ‘Mr. Big Government’ when he was out there running.”

[...]

“I ran for the U.S. Senate the same year Mitt Romney ran for the U.S. Senate, and I won,” Santorum said. “It’s not that Gov. Romney didn’t want to be Sen. Romney — he wanted to be Sen. Romney, but he ran as a very liberal Republican in Massachusetts who had just become a Republican, and he lost. He lost badly in a year when Republicans had one of the biggest Republican sweeps in history, when the Republican revolution occurred.”

[More]

(emphasis added)

Exactly. Romney's not so much a "Washington outsider" as he is a wannabe Washington insider who LOST in a year in which Republicans were winning in record numbers, and running against Ted Kennedy who was vulnerable due to scandals involving: (a) his presence when his nephew allegedly raped a woman; and (b) a sandwich Kennedy made involving himself, Chris Dodd, and a waitress. Yeah, "Mr. Electable Outsider" is only an "outsider" because he's NOT electable.

I like the way Santorum fights. Unlike Gingrich, Santorum hits above the belt, lands his punches, and draws blood.

Romney, Santorum Camps Engaged in E-mail War

Just reported at The Corner on National Review Online:

Rick Santorum must be either surging or plausibly on the cusp of a surge. Because there’s no other explanation for the Romney campaign’s abrupt, and intense, series of attacks on Santorum today in e-mail blasts to and a conference call with reporters.

[MORE]

Here's the money quote from Rick Santorum in response to Dullard Flip Rino's attacks:

“If Governor Romney were confident running on his record and his vision for the future, he would,” said Santorum communications director Hogan Gidley in a statement. “But Gov. Romney does what he always does and directs his well-funded attack machine to destroy the opponent. Mitt Romney’s act is tired, old and wearing thin with voters and I suspect at this point, with the media too. Romney never touts his own record — because it’s abysmal. In the Republican Party we have a name for someone who supports government healthcare mandates, big bank bailouts, and radical cap and trade initiatives — we call them Democrats.”

BINGO!!!

It will only get worse from the Romney camp in the days ahead. And, I hope that you will be thoroughly PO'd enough about it that, if that fraud manages to win the GOP nomination, you will join me in refusing to vote for him UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Fat Cat Romney on Preferential Option for the Poor: "Let Them Eat Cake" [UPDATED]

Actually, what he said is MUCH WORSE: "I'm not concerned about the very poor":

In an interview with CNN Wednesday morning that should have been a Florida victory lap, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made a fumble that could give rivals an attack ad sound bite.

Asked about his economic plan, Romney said repeatedly that he was not concerned with very poor Americans, [ED.: Just in case you didn't catch it the first time that this Fat Cat doesn't give a rat's ass about "those people", he made sure to emphasize the point by repeating it over and over again.] but was focused instead on helping the middle class.

Romney explained that he was confident that food stamps, housing vouchers, Medicaid and other assistance would keep the poor afloat [ED.: Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation? The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then? ... I was afraid that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course.] — he pledged to fix holes in that safety net “if it needs repair.” He repeated past statements that his main focus is the middle class because those people, in his opinion, have been hardest hit by the recession (President Obama also has focused many of his efforts on the middle class).

But Romney’s awkward phrasing could give fuel to critics who argue that he does not empathize with the poorest Americans. [ED.: Ya think?]

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there,” [ED.: Good God! Really?] Romney told CNN.

[...]

“The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat party [about] the plight of the poor,” Romney responded [ED.: Oh, yes, "the poor" - that's a Democrat issue. We Republicans don't talk much about that rapidly expanding group of people. We'll leave it to the Democrats to talk about those people.], after repeating that he would fix any holes in the safety net. “And there’s no question it’s not good being poor [ED.: Let me be very clear that I am against being poor.] and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor [ED.: I'm not worried about helping the very poor overcome their poverty via economic means. That's what government programs - and Democrats - are for.] . . . My focus is on middle income Americans ... we have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. but we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor.” [ED.: Let them eat cake - they can pay for it with their food stamps.]

[More]

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)

My Comments:
Just. Wow. Has there ever been a more out of touch and tone deaf politician as this character? And he's the likely GOP nominee?

The bad news for Romney: He could say it wearing a top hat and a monicle, and it couldn't be any more effective as a campaign commercial for Obama than it already is.

The good news for Romney: Showing indifference for the poor is a sure-fire way of getting Ann Coulter's impoverished-bashing juices flowing, motivating her to pen some more pro-Romney love letters and anti-Catholic screeds against his remaining GOP primary opponents.


UPDATE
A couple of additional points regarding Romney's boneheaded remarks.

First, the irony here is that these comments reveal BOTH Romney's penchant for big government liberalism AND his elitist illiberalism. His big-government liberalism is evident in that he believes in expanding federal welfare dependency for the poor; his elitist illiberalism is evident in that he believes that's good enough for them.

Romney's alleged policy principles are that free economies lead to economic growth, and that economic growth leads to more opportunity for the greatest number of people. But Romney has just stated that his economic program excludes the very poor from sharing in that opportunity, and that he is reconiled to their being permanent fixtures on the public dole. But that's "good enough" for them.

The seond point about this is that David Axelrod is no doubt on the horn right now with his ObamaCath allies talking about ways to use Romney's indifference to the "preferential option for the poor" to soften the fallout over the HHS mandate among Catholics who supported Obama in 2008. They'd be fools not to. Every ObamaCath who has infiltrated the chanceries and the USCCB staff must be licking their chops over the prospect of watering down any strong anti-HHS statement coming from the Bishops with a bunch of verbiage regarding the preferential option for the poor, just as concern over allegedly rampant racism was used to water down the anti-abortion provisions of "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" 4 years ago.


UPDATE #2
Mark Steyn addresses the topic I commented on in the first point of my previous Update regarding Romney's comments revealing both his big-government liberalism and elitist illiberalism:

Romney’s is a benevolent patrician’s view of society: The poor are incorrigible, but let’s add a couple more groats to their food stamps and housing vouchers, and they’ll stay quiet. Aside from the fact that that kind of thinking has led the western world to near terminal insolvency, for a candidate whose platitudinous balderdash of a stump speech purports to believe in the most Americanly American America that any American has ever Americanized over, it’s as dismal a vision of permanent trans-generational poverty as any Marxist community organizer with a cozy sinecure on the Acorn board would come up with.

After half-a-century of evidence, what sort of “conservative” offers the poor the Even Greater Society?

Yep.

Bill McGurn on Why Romney Sucks

Under the guise of advice for how Romney can finish off Gingrich, Bill McGurn's Wall Street Journal piece only confirms some of the reasons why I will NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, vote for that effete RINO fraud:

... at bottom the Newt insurgency is fueled by the sense that Mr. Romney's tepid policy agenda reflects no fixed beliefs. Many who support Mr. Gingrich will concede he is not their ideal candidate. In fact, it's telling that Mr. Romney's GOP rivals are defined as non-Romneys, each standing for something lacking in the front-runner.

[...]

He might steal a lesson in style from Rick Santorum. With little money and a shoestring organization, Mr. Santorum has managed to articulate the core arguments of the conservative agenda: why we need to address Iran, why we need to help Americans keep more of what they earn and, most of all, why the words of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution matter still. In the last debate he proved you can be tough without being personal, skillfully demolishing all the governor's pat answers about RomneyCare.

[...]

Those of us who believed that a primary fight would toughen Mr. Romney up have little to show for it. Far from sharpening his proposals to reach out to a GOP electorate hungry for a candidate with a bold conservative agenda, Mr. Romney has limited his new toughness to increasingly negative attacks on Mr. Gingrich's character. It's beginning to make what we all assumed was a weakness look much more like arrogance.

RINO Establisment Hack Chris Christie is an Embarassment

Here's New Jersey's RINO governor, Chris Christie, favorably comparing his boy Dullard Flip Rino to Newt Gingrich:

"I think Newt Gingrich has embarrassed the party over time," Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said on NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning. "Whether he'll do again in the future, I don't know. But Gov. Romney never has."

(emphasis added)

For what it's worth, here's Romney NOT embarassing the GOP:












Nope, nothing embarassing about that. From repudiating Ronald Reagan and the GOP (claiming to have been "an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush"), to criticizing the Contract With America, to rejecting the endorsement of a pro-life organization, Mitt Romney has NEVER done anything to embarass the GOP.

David Brooks, Self-Anointed Member of "Educated Class", Admits Unwashed Red-State Conservatives Smarter Than He Is

David Brooks: Obama is ‘certainly more liberal than I thought he was’. Ya think?

... Brooks’ apparent impression after that party was that Obama was “a Burkean” — and not a strict ideologue — who understood the “organic nature of change.” Aside from perhaps admiring the crease in Obama’s pants, nearly three years to the date after that party at Will’s house, Brooks admits he had the president completely wrong.

On Thursday’s “The Laura Ingraham Show,” Brooks said he still admired Obama, but conceded the president was more liberal than he originally thought.

“Yeah, I still like him — admire him personally,” Brooks said. “He’s certainly more liberal than I thought he was. And he’s more liberal than he thinks he is. He thinks he is just slightly center-left. But when you got down to his instincts, they’re pretty left...

And yet the simplest of red state rubes (upon whom Brooks showers so much disdain) might not know who Edmund Burke is but could've told you that Barack Obama had absolutely no conservative underpinnings and was as left-wing a candidate as this country has ever seen. The unwashed don't get caught up in such high-falluting nonsense as crisp pant creases, wonky philosophical conversations about Reinhold Niebuhr, and Harvard credentials in determining who is the best fit to lead our nation. But, then, it doesn't take a genius to figure out when someone is a frickin' socialist.

And so, with the advantage of hindsight, our intellectual betters in the establishment "smart set" can finally see what so many of us yokels and hicks and rednecks and bitter clingers could see so clearly 4 years ago. Turns out a plumber's assistant from Toledo really does have better political insights and is a better judge of political character than the house conservative at "the newspaper of record".


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Comeuppance for "Conservative" Critics of Conservatism (Who STILL Won't Admit That They Were Wrong)

Self-Critical Navel Gazing for Thee, But Not for Me

Another Elitist "Conservative" Realizes Too Late That "This Obama Fellow Is Unequal to the Task"

David Brooks Wonders What Went Wrong [UPDATED]

"Educated Class" Waking Up to Fact That Us "Yokels" Were Right All Along

Noemie Emery on David Brooks and the "Educated Class"

Michael Barone on David Brooks and the "Educated Class"

The "Elizabeth Bennett Conservatives"

Brooksback Mountain

Today's Must-Read: "Palinphobes and the Audacity of Type"

A Conservative Manifesto

Another Elitist "Conservative" Likes the Cut of Obama's Jib

The Liberal Media's Elitist Conservative Rats Leave the Sinking Ship

Victor Davis Hanson: "What is Wisdom?"

Let's Get One Thing Straight ...

Mitt Romney: Phony. Elitist. Pro-Abort. RINO. Liberal. Not Getting My Vote.

The Daily Show
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Seriously? Dullard Flip Rino is the GOP frontrunner? If so, in what way is the Republican Party remotely "conservative"?

Go ahead, GOP. Nominate this health-care regulating, pro-abortion, flip-flopping, liberal, phony, RINO stiff. But believe me when I say that I will NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER vote for him.

I Genuinely Despise Mitt Romney

I've long detested Romney, and didn't think he could fall any lower in my estimation. I was wrong.

Let me make myself perfectly clear (in case I haven't been up until now): I will NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER vote for this flip-flopping, pandering, pro-abortion (YES, HE IS), health-care mandating, Rockefeller RINO fraud. If I knew with absolute certainty that my vote would be the difference in his beating Obama, I STILL wouldn't vote for that fraud Romney.

So, Let Me See If I Have This Right ...

... so-called GOP "insiders" believe that, in this center-right country (that is actually more "right" than these GOP "insiders" would care to admit), an inexperienced hard-core leftist with an Arabic name can be elected President a mere 7 years after 9/11, but the experienced, longest-serving Governor of the 2nd-largest state with a record of economic growth and job creation can't get elected against a weak, hard-left President responsible for the worst economy since the Great Depression and the biggest deficits in history?

Yeah, right. Methinks the GOP "insiders" are full-of-shit Romneybots.

Romney to Criticize "Career Politicians" in Shot at Perry [UPDATED]

That's Mitt Romney ... the ultimate political outsider and down-to-earth populist.

It's not like he's the privileged son of a former Michigan governor who later served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. It's not as if his mother was herself a candidate for the U.S. Senate. And it's not like Mitt was Governor of Massachusetts and has spent practically the last 20 years running for one office or another. Right?

Allow me to reiterate: Mitt has been running for office for the last 20 years, although his efforts have only resulted in one stint as Governor of Massachusetts. Does spending 20 years running for office, regardless of electoral success, at least sort of qualify one as a "career politician"?

In effect, Romney's criticism amounts to little more than "Perry has been more successful at getting elected than I have been", which doesn't strike me as an altogether compelling case in an electoral climate in which "electability" and "experience" (or lack thereof) are constant buzzwords.


UPDATE
And, besides, Perry hasn't spent his entire career in politics:

Perry did a stint as an Air Force pilot (a military record that is conspicuously absent from Romney's resume - as well as the resumes of every male member of the Romney family, although Romney's sons apparently "served their country", according to their dad, by working on Romney's last presidential campaign); and

Perry was a farmer and a rancher before running for his first political office.

UPDATE #2
Jonathan Last makes a familiar-sounding observation:

Ross Douthat [ED.: Gosh, I'm really starting to hate that guy!] seems in danger of jumping on the Romney meat-wagon. He writes that despite Rick Perry’s position, Romney should not panic because “Romney doesn’t have to worry about any of the rival candidates making a play for his core supporters.”

We’re going to hear this argument a lot in the coming months from Romney partisans as they try to argue that something they would like to happen is, in fact, likely to happen. It’s worth taking this pundit fallacy apart now because it gets to the nub of why I’ve been insisting for four years that Romney is a non-starter as a political commodity—it’s precisely because he has no core supporters. Which is why he is not very good at winning elections.

Let’s revisit Romney’s campaigns:

[...]

1) Romney made his political career out of his “close” 17-point loss to Ted Kennedy. But keep in mind that to only lose by 17, he spent $7M of his own money. But more importantly, this was the 1994 midterm election—so he got blown out during the biggest Republican wave in half a century.

(2) The high-point of his electoral career was the 2002 MA governor’s race, where he took 49.77%. Even in the biggest win of his life, he couldn’t capture more than 50% of the vote.

(3) It’s funny that Romney’s line of attack on Perry seems to be that Perry is a “career politician” because he’s been in elective office since 1984. Well, Mitt Romney would have been a career politician too, if only voters would have let him. He’s been running since 1994. His real gripe about Perry is actually, “Hey, that guy wins all the time! No fair!”

[...]

Douthat says that “The greatest danger to Romney’s candidacy — the thing that could destroy him long before the voting even started — has always been that a more appealing establishment candidate would enter the race.” But that’s not right at all. The greatest danger to Romney’s candidacy is that he has no constituency because he’s not very good at campaigning and, as the electoral results of the last 17 years have shown, voters don’t like him very much. The danger to the Romney candidacy is the candidate...

[More]

(emphasis and editorial commentary added]

The Debate Answer I Long to Hear

[Laughs good-naturedly in response to question] Well, I may not have served in the Obama Administration or appeared in the pages of Vogue magazine, but I don't think those are necessarily valid measures of "sophistication" or "intelligence", either. [Looks gravely into the camera] Look, it's not a matter of "believes" or "doesn't believe" in a scientific theory that, quite honestly, a whole lot of people are skeptical about, and rightly so, given the fact that the earth has heated and cooled all on its own - without any help from humans - for millenia. What this is about is that, in one of the worst economies in our nation's history, with millions of folks unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, it just doesn't make sense to implement the sort of policy schemes supported by Ambassador Huntsman and President Obama that will devastate our already fragile economy, throw even more people out of work, and raise the costs of heating and cooling our homes and driving our cars beyond what people can afford.

So, the question is not whether I quote/unquote "believe" in science the way some folks around here seem to treat it like some sort of religion, but rather why Ambassador Huntsman and President Obama and those like them, who seek to impose their catastrophic tax and cap regulatory schemes that will only further devastate our economy, seem so unconcerned about the working families of this country on whom their policies will most heavily fall. I'm for putting America BACK to work, not breaking our backs economically to futher some environmentalist dogma.