Learning to Love Mitt Romney
Posted on January 10, 2012
Learning to Love Mitt Romney
The first Republican to ever win both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in the same election cycle is under attack by both the Obama Administration and several of his challengers in the Republican primary.
That probably should be no surprise. Front-runners are often attacked by all sides, and what does not kill them, makes them stronger.
What is a complete surprise is that the Obama Administration and his chief Republicans rivals are using the same talking points.
I just got done watching Rick Perry on the Sean Hannity Show attack Romney for being a vulture capitalist (as distinct from a venture capitalist, I guess). Hannity is not exactly Mitt Romney’s biggest supporter, but he was slack-jawed as he watched the Texas Governor bash the former Massachusetts Governor for being a capitalist pig.
Perry was not the only one to take this tack. Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman made similar attacks against Mr. Romney for the last two days, and the former Speaker is spending a bunch of venture capitalist money in South Carolina to drive home the point that Mitt Romney is a scum-sucking, money-grubbing, greedy bastard.
You can’t make this stuff up folks. Four weeks ago, Perry and Gingrich were the great hopes of the capitalist class, the collective apples in the collective eyes of the conservative movement. Now, they are launching fierce attacks at Romney FROM THE LEFT. Four weeks ago, Romney was a mealy-mouthed moderate who secretly loved gays, supported abortion and inspired Obama-care. Today, he a rapacious capitalist who loves to fire people and worst of all, loves to make money.
This is a Mitt Romney I can learn to love. And more importantly, this is the kind of Mitt Romney that the conservative movement can learn to love.
I have long thought that no matter who gets the Republican nomination will immediately gain the affection of vast base of the Republican party merely by dint of being the standard bearer against the hated Obama Administration.
I thought it would take awhile. I thought the wounds would take some time to heal. I thought that conservatives would have to their own personal cost-benefit analyses before they began to understand why supporting Romney was so important to the future of the country.
I never, ever thought that the Republican field would move so quickly, and so dangerously, left and leave Mitt Romney stranded as the lone conservative.
The conservative movement has long hated Mitt Romney, but they will learn to love him, and they will learn to love him quickly. For all of his warts, he is the most conservative candidate left in the field this year. So, he’s got that going for him.