Mitt Romney: I Don't Want To Be The Republican Nominee In 2012

Well, that's how I read it.

The Republican Party has two top priorities this cycle: Reduce government spending and defeat ObamaCare. ObamaCare's chief political and constitutional weakness is the individual mandate. Other parts of it are actually popular or at least not unpopular (such as letting adult children stay on policies until age 26); our best path to undoing ObamaCare is focusing on the individual mandate.

And defending the mandate as "conservative," every inch of the way, and actually showing uncharacteristic passion while doing so, is would-be Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

I'm sorry. I have tried. I recognize the attractive parts of Romney. He's smart, he's put-together, he doesn't scare the moderates, he polls consistently well, he has a nice family that recommends him.

But Romney will not bend in his singleminded mission to make himself unelectable.

It's going to be hard enough to repeal ObamaCare without our own nominee flacking for it.

This is like a hardcore doctrinaire pacifist running for Congress in 2002 against the Authorization of the Use of Military Force against Al Qaeda. Even Ron Paul bowed to the political winds on that one and cast an ass-saving, career-saving vote in favor it.

I ask again of Romney supporters: What argument do you suggest we bring into 2012 on ObamaCare, when Romney keeps calling the individual mandate "fundamentally conservative"?

Oh right, we're supposed to make some dry, sterile proceduralist argument that the mandate is awesome in and of itself; it's just that the wrong tribunal imposed it.

Yay...?

I take back my previous assertions that at least Romney is smart.

He's not smart. Not where it counts. Not in the grit.

posted by Ace at 01:12 PM

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