With it looking likely than Mitt Romney will be the GOP candidate for 2012 many conservatives will be struggling with what they will do in November. The portents for the GOP are not looking promising if the polling from Virginia, a must win state for Romney, are correct.
For a conservative candidate representing the obscure Constitution Party to be polling at 10% in Va. spells disaster for Romney. If this result is even close to current polling, which has Romney 12 points behind Obama, on election day, then Republicans might as well turn off their televisions an hour after the polls close.
It is instructive to look into the mind of a true conservative to see what agonies of perplexity the Romney candidacy has brought. When has a nominee had such resistance, when has a nominee caused such soul searching, how can such a candidate inspire the massive get out the vote campaign that will be required to even have a chance?
Mary Beth House, an editor on the Conservatives4Palin site is an excellent example of the tremendous challenges to conservatives that Romney brings. House does not state she will vote for Romney, she does not even say she will endorse him-the latter depending on a conservative shopping list (much as Santorum is looking for). She does agree that defeating President Obama is crucial for the future of the Republic-how to go about that is the question.
Reproduced below, with the kind permission of M.B. House and her fellow editors is her cri de coeur, I am sure that many thousands of conservatives are wresting with the same anxieties. By further presenting this outstanding work I hope that I serves to give solace for those who thought they were struggling alone and helps to point a way forwards.
For myself I have no conflicts whatsoever. I will vote down ticket and will never vote for Romney, no matter who endorses him, and even in the unlikely event he chose Palin as VP-nor any RINO ever again.
Here is the Mary Beth House presentation.
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The Official C4P 2012 Presidential Endorsement
“The Official C4P 2012 Presidential Endorsement”?
I jest, of course.
As is typical in all corners of society, the opinions of the editors and contributors at C4P vary like the varieties of coffee available at your local Starbucks.
The one thing we’re unified on…the one thing I can claim as the official C4P response with absolute certainty…is that none of us want to see Barack Obama re-elected this November.
After that, positions diverge and truly from there on out, I can only speak for myself.
A few years ago, it became quite clear to anyone who was even the slightest bit aware that the GOPe wanted Mitt to be the nominee. It’s not even a matter of opinion. Various representatives put it out there whenever asked.
I’d like to share with you my feelings on that; but as it turns out, the use of profanity apparently frowned upon by the other editors. Suffice it to say, I was not thrilled with the idea.
But then back then, I was still certain that the 2012 GOP primary would end up between Mandate Mitt and a certain Warrior from the 49th state.
After Palin announced on October 5th that she wasn’t going to run, I started to consider the real possibility that Mittens might end up as the nominee. Thankfully I was able to control my gag reflex before I made a big mess over my keyboard.
All humor aside, however, I was posed with a very serious dilemma.
At various times over the past few years, Governor Palin has discussed what we need in a nominee. In her piece, “Cannibals in the GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left,” Palin wrote the following:
As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country.We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend ourrepublic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that.
As you can see, this isn’t a matter of preference. This is a matter of survival. Our freedoms, our liberty, our financial security all hinge upon sending the right people to serve in elective office: People with a servant’s heart and with a reformer’s steel spine and ironclad resolve.
Taking what Governor Palin said above a step further, it’s becoming clearer that the old guard not only is uninterested in engineering the sudden and relentless reform we need, they are in fact the very body where such reform is needed now more than ever. As the only viable machine to take on and defeat the left, the GOP is our last political line of defense against the regressives and their ceaseless march to redistribute power from the people and centralize it in Washington DC. But that machine has become so corrupt that those in power have forgotten the purpose and the foundational planks of the party and the people they represent.
What we saw was the GOPe actively campaigning against, smearing and generally carpet bombing anyone who posed a threat to their chosen. Anyone who would upset their applecart. Anyone who threatened the gravytrain of money, power and influence. Reformers are shunned, despised and rejected on sight.
So where does that leave us? Where does that leave me?
For the last several years, we’ve been subjected to the endless drumbeat of inevitability for Mandate Mitt. “He’s the only one who can defeat Obama!” was the cry. We never got any real specifics as to what makes Mitt so special in this regard, only that we’re idiots if we think a “far right extremist” like Governor Palin, who you know, actually has a record of real reform and a strong adherence to the Constitutional limitations placed on government as well as a deep, abiding drive to defend and protect the rights of the people she served, had a chance at all.
For the GOPe, their agenda is clear: Acquire and maintain power and control by any means necessary. Principles and values are great talking points when dealing with the little people but in the end…nothing matters beyond regaining and retaining access to the power brokers and the money machines.
As such, they have no interest in real reform, only projecting the illusion of it to the gullible. They’ll say some of the right things, but in the end they’ll only “manage the decay” as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich intoned.
Back in December, radio genius, icon and legend Mark Levin asked rhetorically why Mitty wasted so much money to destroy fellow Republicans. Why didn’t he and his campaign work on building bridges with conservatives and making the case for why he was the best choice? The answer then is as clear to me now as it was then. They don’t care about wooing conservatives. I said back then that the only case they’ll make to conservatives is, “If you don’t vote for Willard, you’ll get Obama.”
At the same time, Governor Palin is absolutely correct. Our Republic cannot survive another 4 years of this President.
But you see, this is where I hit a brick wall. I know too much about Mitt. I know too much about the corrupt machine that did everything it could to make sure he would be the nominee. I know what a liar he is. How phony he is. How he’ll say whatever people want to hear in order to get them to support him. I know how his operatives smear and degrade in order to make their guy seem better in comparison or, as was the case throughout the primary, to dishearten, discourage and dissuade those who supported other candidates.
So how can I endorse that? He’s part of the problem! He’s a part of the very machine we as conservatives are dedicated to dismantling! As it is, I’m going to have to work up the nerve to pull the lever for him much less publicly endorse him.
Theoretically speaking, if I endorse him, I’m tied down to every idiotic non-conservative utterance he makes. But forget about me as an individual and consider the movement as a whole. Conservatives. The Tea Party. The reformers. Even now, some folks in these groups are straining to find ways of calling Mitt a conservative.
Let me just save you some time. He’s not a conservative. He’s a liberal progressive with an R next to his name. Every time people try to make the case that he’s a conservative, they water down the meaning of the word.
In Mitten’s plus column, he’s not Obama. But in some ways, he’s more dangerous because the policies and ideas he forwards will be under the Republican banner, thus lulling conservatives into a state of complacency. The hazard is that people will believe the job is done, the danger is passed and the sleeping giant can return to its slumber. Nothing could be further from the truth. If he should win in November by some miracle, we have to be even more vigilant, not less!
The GOPe want nothing more than for the reform movement to die so that they can go back to business as usual. We must NOT allow this to happen.
And so, I cannot in good conscience endorse Mitt Romney for President.
What I can do, however, is endorse Constitutional Conservatism because that is the only thing that will save us. These time-tested, proven principles of our founding are the only thing that can bring us back from the brink.
I can encourage people to donate to, volunteer for and generally support reform conservatives who are running at all levels of government.
I can support and defend conservatives who are under siege by the left for taking a bold stance on reform, such as Governor Walker and Lt. Gov. Kleefisch of Wisconsin.
I can discuss why we cannot allow Obama to win in November. In fact, I’ll follow Mitt’s lead on this one. Just like Mitt never really made the case for himself during the primaries but instead focused on destroying his opponents, I will do all I can to highlight why Obama is the worst President our Republic has ever had the misfortune of electing. How dangerous his agenda is. How disastrous his policies are.
But by not endorsing Romney, I’m allowing myself some wiggle room. If he makes good decisions, chooses a good, solid reformer for his running mate and updates his agenda to include the kind of massive reform we need, I will praise him for it. But I will not be bound by the non-conservative, bone-headed things he says. I will call him out on them.
I believe it is imperative that conservatives not be cowed into silence. We must be bold and continue to promote what works and challenge what doesn’t work, regardless of who’s promoting it…even if that person is the GOP nominee.
We must not be concerned with how we’ll be treated either. If Mitt wins, the GOPe will say it’s in spite of us. If Mitt loses (as I suspect will happen), we’ll be blamed for the loss because we weren’t appropriately enthusiastic about Captain Etch-a-Sketch. But then, we were blamed for 2008 too, weren’t we? Even though countless people, including perennial hack Steve Schmidt begrudgingly admitted what the data proved…that Governor Palin’s involvement in the 2008 campaign ensured a greater turnout than McCain would have had otherwise and that without her and those who got engaged in the race because of her, McCain would have lost by significantly more.
Suffice it to say, I don’t take a stand based on what either the left or the GOPe will think of me for doing so.
One final note. This isn’t sour grapes; and it’s extremely important for the Mitt supporters to understand this. Yes, when Governor Palin announced she wasn’t running, I eventually gravitated to Newt. And yes, I am bummed that he wasn’t able to succeed. And yes, I am bitter by the lies and smear campaigns orchestrated by Mitt’s surrogates. Team Mitt did a fantastic job of burning down as many bridges as they possibly could.
But like Palin, I supported Newt because I believed his agenda and bold reform are necessary in order to save our nation. Like I said above, this is about survival, not preference. Conversely, I cannot endorse Mitt because he has no bold agenda of reform, he has no record of real reform (unless we really want to put the grandfather of ObamaCare in this category) and there is a string of proverbial bodies of conservatives and reformers who get in his way. For example, even now Governor Palin continues to be attacked not just by those on the left but also by the establishment GOP, both of whom want to destroy her, weaken her influence and rewrite history for their own twisted agendas’ sake.
Well to that I say, not just no, but HELL NO.
Yes…we must defeat Obama in the fall. But we as conservatives must not capitulate to the GOPe. We must not let them weaken our resolve or dilute our cause.
We must stay focused on our end goal, regardless of what flak we take or from where it originates: Preserving our Republic for future generations.
This is our charge.
We must not fail.