Christie endorses Romney
No surprise here, except perhaps in the early timing.
Christie and Romney are the type of Republicans many call RINOs. They are somewhat moderate compared to conservative voters, some of whom don’t trust them to be unwavering enough in their support of conservative principles, especially on social issues.
I think that both Cristie and Romney are fiscally conservative, which is the most important thing at the moment (yes, I know about Romneycare; a longer post on that is coming one of these days). And although Christie and Romney are very different in style—and I prefer Christie’s blunt straight-shooter attitude and his sense of humor to Romney’s smoothness—one experience they share above all is being (or having been, in the case of Romney) Republican governors in Democratic states. That’s a special circumstance; probably only Ronald Reagan emerged from it with his conservative bona fides intact.
And sometimes I wonder whether some conservatives might even consider Reagan to be a RINO by today’s stricter standards.
Ah,
But is Romney honest. I’m not so much concerned whether or not he is a RINO, or the fact that he has the charisma of a lump of dough, I’m concerned that he belongs to the over educated elite and likely to do things that he thinks best for the rest of us despite our own feeling on the matter. And tell us soothing fibs in the process. He is certainly not an honest campaigner and, just like Obama, I don’t know what really matters to him.
There are better people out there, I wish some of them were running. Meanwhile, looks like I need to start paying more attention to Cain.
Read Cato for a refutation that Reagan was a RINO. No way, Jose, and the following link shows that the Free Republic cherry picked examples and left out the context.
With regards to the free market:
Critics of trade note correctly that Reagan negotiated “voluntary” import quotas for steel and Japanese cars and imposed Section 201 tariffs on imported motorcycles to protect Harley-Davidson. All true. But those were the exceptions and not the rule. They were tactical retreats designed to defuse rising protectionists pressures in Congress.
Regarding illegal immigrants given amnesty:
But that legislation also legalized 2.8 million undocumented workers. More immigrants entered the United States legally under President Reagan’s watch than under any previous U.S. president since Teddy Roosevelt.
Like President George W. Bush today, Reagan had the good sense and compassion to see illegal immigrants not as criminals but as human beings striving to build better lives through honest work. In a radio address in 1977, he noted that apples were rotting on trees in New England because no Americans were willing to pick them. “It makes one wonder about the illegal alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal alien invasion or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won’t do?” Reagan asked. “One thing is certain in this hungry world; no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters.”
See and read all of:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2705
On federal drinking age, these were Reagan’s remarks:
And yet, today, less than half that number have the age-21 law. And that leaves us with a crazy quilt of different States’ drinking laws and far too many blood borders, borders where teens drive across to reach States with lower drinking ages. And these teenagers drink and then careen home and all too often cause crippling or fatal accidents.
This problem is bigger than the individual States. It’s a grave national problem, and it touches all our lives. With the problem so clear-cut and the proven solution at hand, we have no misgiving about this judicious use of Federal power. I’m convinced that it will help persuade State legislators to act in the
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=40164#axzz1aWHXBdl4
Reagan a RINO?
I don’t think so.
It’s a good point to remember the “Republican governor of a Democratic state,” and even the larger cultural and political reality of the last 20 years which was so heavily influenced by cultural Marxism and lacked the tea party counterweight. It’s good to remember but what to do with the remembrance? I suppose it helps one to remain less virulent, perhaps. But it’s not so much the RINO, which some interpret as moderateness, but the “I am the Lord of this manor and you are the servant” attitude of the permanent ruling class regardless of whether there is a R or a D after the name. Christie doesn’t exude that attitude–and that’s why, except for his Muslim faults–I like him. Romney. Uggghhh. He’s Mr. Big in Little’s clothes. Doesn’t fool me.
Curtis: my point was not about whether Reagan actually was a RINO or not. The point I was trying to make was about whether, were he running today after being governor of California, there would be a significant number of people thinking he’s a RINO, based on certain positions he took at one time or another (or was perceived to have taken) on certain issues.
Shucks, I’ll just have to lower my hackles.
But your’re point is valid and probably because of the fear that is out there that America is being taken over by socialism and tyranny. Fear begets over reaction, and I think your point addresses the reality that, in an effort to make that fear go away, many of us ruthlessly demand an unrealistic purity.
Perhaps this last paragraph from an AT essay hits the concern without overreaction:
The elections in 2012 are about more than the economy, stupid. They’re about freedom, or if freedom will survive the onslaught loosed by the left, in the persons of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi. No — come to think of it, 2012 is about driving a stake through the heart of the eighty-year statist experiment that has been inflicted on the republic. It needs to be about a rebirth of freedom — that, is if the GOP has the clear-sightedness and courage to strive mightily to do so.
Curtis: you hit the nail on the head. I am afraid of that ideological purity: the perfect is the enemy of the good (or, in the case of the GOP candidates, the hopefully-good-enough).
None of them are what I’d prefer. But that’s politics, especially in this age. How many people would want to throw their hats into that ring? More like the Roman Coliseum.
Although, perhaps twas ever thus.
Romney’s too slick. Only fools still trust a smooth talker, post-Obama. Romney failed many opportunities to admit that Romneycare was a mistake. Self-effacing honesty would proven that he trusted the regular folks, that he was on the side of the people, but he chose instead to remain one of the all-knowing elites. Romney cannot light any gut-level fires, not like Cain. If we were going to have a boring candidate, we could have gone with Pawlenty, a true conservative.
Curtis made the point on this for me. Romney may be “conservative enough”for Massachusetts (and I live in this Godforsaken state, so I’ve had a chance to see him up close), but he simply IS NOT the man to “drive a stake through the heart” of the left. He is another McCain who is more afraid of what the MSM will say about him than in standing up for freedom. If he’s the nominee, I’ll sit the election out. Better to have a known enemy like Obama than be stabbed in the back by a collaborator like Mittens.
I think of RINOS this way: When elected, they vote with the Dems most of the time. Specter was a RINO, McCain is a RINO. There are plenty of them in Congress. I don’t think of Christie so much as a RINO because of his hard line with the unions and with spending. The RINOS have very little separating them from the Democrats, which is why we call them Republicans in Name Only. Perhaps a better term would be DIABLO: Democrats In All But Label Only.
Jewel, well said! The example of Specter has come to mind a lot for me lately. The Republican party spent a lot of time, money, and energy in an effort to hold that seat. When the going got tough, he flipped and became a Dem. To the “elite” of the Republican party: I won’t vote for Romney, I won’t work for Romney, and I won’t donate to Romney. ANY of the others, sure, but Romney has taken every position on every issue, and to me he is just a common every day politician, who will say whatever he needs to say to get elected. Once in office, he’ll go whichever way the wind blows, because he doesn’t stand for anything.
And of course, now Christie has endorsed Mitt. Months of pointless shilly-shallying about whether or not he’d run, only to embrace Mr Obamneycare.
I wonder what pieces of silver the RNC promised him for this. VP? Cabinet? Ambassador?
Thanks for nothing, Fat Man.
Christopher: yours is the sort of attitude that would guarantee the re-election of Obama and probably end the last chance to stave off the country’s slide into entrenched liberalism and/or leftism and/or socialism.
But by all means, stick to your principles and your hunches about what Romney would do, despite what he says he would do.
I think Chrisopher doubts that Mittens will stop the descent. Mitt might change the flavor of the castor oil force-fed to the Country class, but that is all. We do not have to accept Mitt as the obvious choice simply because he is glib and smooth in much the same way Hussein was in ’08.
Mitt sees the Presidency as his personal Manifest Destiny, IMO. He is devoid of a fundamental sense of duty to the American people. His instinct is to cut deals-for personal benefit-as he did at Bain & Co.
Wow. I just read that Romney is too slick. I read that he is over educated–or something. I read someone linking Romney and Ombney care, or something like that. I better hide my MS degree, but I will never run for office, so it is irrelevant. Just as is the education of most candidates, if we vet their records, their political philosphy, and their understanding of the issues.
Does anyone actually listen to Romney–and the others; or does everyone listen to the late night comedian characterizations?
Romney, said that he would issue a waiver of Obamacare to each and every state immediately after innauguration. Is he lying? Does anyone have evidence of him lying in the past. What more can he do?
There is a constant pining for the person who isn’t in the race–usually Reagan. As someone noted above, you cannot reject the good in search of the non-existent perfect.
In my opinion, this race has a long way to go. We will learn a lot more; but, we know what the choices will be now. Deal with it. I was prepared to like Perry and have been generally disappointed. I like Cain; we will see how he holds up during the hurly burly. I like Romney, and he is vetted.
Back to Reagan. There are some damn short memories scattered liberally (no pun) around the country. Reagan was good. He was not perfect; not by a damn shot. I will never forget the pitiful episode of the Marines in Beiruit. Nor will I forget the air attack that took place with such ridiculous, politically motivated, haste–over USN Admiral on-scene’s objections– that the result was pure ineptitude; and a friend of mine was shot down carrying it out to no immediate or lasting purpose. No other President would have been forgiven for sending the Marines into Beirut with no defined mission, or for cravenly pulling them out under a cloud. There were other issues during his tenure, of course. Anyone remember amnesty for illegal aliens? Maybe not. So, give Reagan the credit he is due; but do not use him as some mythical, unattainable measuring stick for every candidate from here to eternity (would that make a move title?).
Oldflyer: there is a great deal more in the 2000-plus page Obamacare law that granting states waivers would NOT undo. It would be a first-step immediate executive action, true. But the law must be rescinded in its entirety.
Yes, Don Carlos; and Romney acknowledged that. What he pledged to do was what he could do immediately as President.
The Conservative Punditry either ignores that, or else they downplay the significance as you just did.
Amen to that. I think that there is an increasing absolutism to right-of-center politics, such that the standard of being conservative is increasingly being defined by a very narrow view of “conservatism.” Its getting to be similar to the type of factional disputes that used to occur among the left, where each faction would claim to represent a pure version of leftism or marxism, and condemn those who didn’t meet their standard.
What is amazing is how, under this type of purism, one who was a hero one week, gets put down as “impure” the next. For example, how long ago was it that Chris Christie was seen as an ideal candidate by so many on the right? But now that he has decided not to run, and endorsed Romney, see how quickly he has become a “RINO.”
And Romney, who was the conservative’s choice in 2008, how quickly he is now seen an being “not pure enough.”
And even Newt Gingrich, who was the absolute hero to so many conservatives in the ’90s (I know, because I was there), and at that time seen as an insurgent, is now seen by so many on the right as “old news,” or “establishment,” or not conservative enough.
By the way, anyone who thinks that Ronald Reagan (who eventually supported social security, and who signed into law a wildly unpopular catastrophic health care law in 1988 ) or Barry Goldwater (pro-choice, against the ban on gays in the military) would have lived up to today’s exacting standard of conservatism are not looking at the full records of either of those two complex political figures. I think its no doubt that they, too, would have been tarred with the RINO label.
Jewel said:
“I think of RINOS this way: When elected, they vote with the Dems most of the time. Specter was a RINO, McCain is a RINO.”
“most of the time”? This statement may have applied to Specter, who was, in fact, a liberal Republican who would probably have felt more comfrotable among the Democrats. But it is categorically untrue with regard to McCain. Although his voting has varied through time, the record of the American Conservative Union (ACU) has always rated McCain a strong conservative.
See here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/McCain-ACU-ADA-scores.gif
Sometimes I get the feeling that we convince ourselves something is so just by repeating it often. The echo chamber has that effect.
JL, McCain was a RINO, he may have frequently voted for conservative issues, but when the chips were down, and it mattered he was an attention seeking whore, and a “maverick”. I actually don’t think the man was really even concerned with anything more than promoting himself, which is what makes him a RINO. Romney was NEVER the choice of conservatives, we’ve ALWAYS thought him a worse flip flopper than (s)Kerry. I personally don’t think Mitt is conservative or liberal, I think he’s a barely ordinary politician concerned only with self promotion. The problem with Newt is not that he’s not conservative enough, or “establishment” or any of the other nonsense you said. It’s that we don’t want to re-hash giraffes, death bed divorces and the like that caused him to leave his seat in Georgia.
Here are the problems with Mitt…
http://www.whichmitt.com/
Tom:
Ok, perhaps one can take issue with my description of Romney ’08 and McCain.
(I’ll acknowldge that after I wrote the post, it occurred to me that my phrase that the ACU “has always rated McCain a strong conservative” may be a bit innacurate since his voting record has shifted in different years between 100% to the 60’s percentage-wise conservative. An important point, since I made an issue of Jewel’s statement that he votes with Dems “most of the time”.)
But I am definitely right about Christie (who very many conservatives were enthusaistic about) and Gingrich (as I say, I was there).
But more importantly…. I think my larger point is still accurate. The right is beginning to resemble a circular firing squad, where we rule out people as worthy of our support due to some or other inequity.