First, while Obama might drive even more voters to the conservative cause in his second term, he could make lasting changes along the way\u2013especially on the Supreme Court\u2013that would frustrate conservative political goals for generations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Imperfect as Romney may be, it’d be much better to have him nominating people for the SCOTUS.<\/p>\n
Second, foreign policy could return to the fore in 2012\u2013and Romney is one of the few candidates who has a well-informed foreign policy consistent with Ronald Reagan\u2019s tradition of American global leadership.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m a lot more comfortable with Romney on foreign than domestic policy. \u00a0And Romney has a better command of the issue than any of his opponents.<\/p>\n
Of course, domestic policy is what this election is going to be about. \u00a0And while Romney may not be “the conservative” candidate, on business and economic issues I think he’s conservative enough<\/em>.<\/p>\nFinally, while Romney is not quite the establishment figure he is often made out to be, there is something to be said for having an establishment, even one in need of reform. After the dramatic changes of the past decade, Americans are eager for stability. That is a fundamentally conservative impulse, and one that an establishment leader could satisfy.<\/p>\n
Democrats believe the best charge against Romney is that he is a \u201cflip-flopper.\u201d It\u2019s not Romney\u2019s inconsistency that worries conservatives, but his underlying convictions. Yet if we consider that the Supreme Court may strike down all or part of Obamacare next spring, and that even a Democratic Congress failed to pass climate change legislation, we may be able to look past the most problematic of Romney\u2019s previous positions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sue Jeffers hates <\/em>it when I say “perfect is the enemy of good enough”. \u00a0Down that road, she yells at me, lies mushy importent Arne-Carlson-style RINO-ism.<\/p>\nWhich is true. \u00a0But down the other <\/em>road – uncompromising purism – lies the Libertarian Party where, untroubled by ever needing to govern by dint of having been elected to, well, anything, they can sit about their conventions and think big, pure thoughts. \u00a0Politics is about, well, not so much being impure, but about making compromises with the other <\/em>side(s) from a position of such electoral strength that as much of your pure agenda as possible survives.<\/p>\nMichael Reagan put it well when Brad Carlson and I interviewed him at the Midwest Leadership conference; a key facet of his father’s greatness was not his purism – George Will wrote an entire book on how impure a conservative Reagan was – but on his ability to bring the impure to his side. \u00a0Which meant compromise. \u00a0The sort of thing the “anyone but Romney” crowd eschews today.<\/p>\n
As they should – today. \u00a0And through the caucuses. \u00a0And all way to the Republican National Convention, if need be!<\/p>\n
But if he gets the nomination – is he conservative enough? \u00a0That’s a great way to start an argument these days in conservative circles:<\/p>\n
Romney may not have courted Tea Party support, but he has tacitly adopted key points of its conservative agenda\u2013repealing Obamacare, cutting federal spending, and fixing the entitlement system.<\/p>\n
Conservatives should consider supporting Romney\u2013and do so while understanding that unlike Obama\u2019s left-wing base, we will have to be as strong a check on a president we have elected as we have been against one we have opposed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And that is the big takeaway; for Republicans, the Presidential race is only a quarter of the battle. \u00a0To really put a ding in the juggernaut of Obama’s legacy, we have to eject Obama, and <\/em>take the Senate, and <\/em>hold and preferably extend our lead in the House, and <\/em>consolidate and expand our gains at the State level. \u00a0Partly to support (we hope) a new president. \u00a0And party to keep that new president honest – meaning conservative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don’t have a dog in the presidential fight yet. \u00a0I’m nowhere close to picking a candidate. Oh, I am advocating – for principles. \u00a0Seeing which candidate best articulates what I believe in – whatever that is – is the real test for me. \u00a0And none of the candidates is perfect. \u00a0None of them ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-conservatism","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24524"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24529,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24524\/revisions\/24529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}