Romney's Less than Super Tuesday

I've been reading The Corner this morning. There are a number of anti-McCain conservatives that post there so I wanted to learn how they viewed Super Tuesday.

I find it interesting that a number of them have decided that southern conservatives can't vote for a Mormon. None of the posts I read had any data to support that but they seem to think that was the only reason someone could vote for McCain or Huckabee.

I don't think there is only one reason.

I think a lot of conservatives look at Romney and see a fake. No matter how many times Rush, Hannity, Dobson and the rest try to slam McCain and build up Romney, voters still see a guy who flipped on so many issues that they can't believe what he says and who he is.

Just this week, he flipped again on gun control. In December on Meet The Press, he said he would sign an assault weapons ban, but when being interviewed by the gun loving Reynolds on PJ Media, he says he would not sign any gun control legislation. The man does know his audience.

If he had campaigned as the expert on the economy from the start, he might have gained a more solid base, but he tried to become the social conservative. He not only doesn't have a history of being a social conservative, he has a history of being moderate to liberal on the issues.

It is very hard to see how Romney can stop McCain now, and he doesn't do well in what people would call red states.

The talk radio pundits are trying to push a bad product and the people ain't buying.

The Zelig candidate

I realized I didn't do a great job explaining what I think the key is to Romney's appeal to the right wing noise machine: he makes them feel they are being heard.

Access to power is the dream of most pundits. Actually having influence is almost too much to ask for.

Take a look at Romney's platform. This platform could almost have been written by the reactionary pundits that pose as conservatives. By that, I mean Rush, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and such.

So while Romney seems to listen to them and take their positions, McCain and Huckabee stick to their own philosophies.

It would be one thing if I felt that Romney was sincere, but I do not. YouTube has allowed me to watch too many Romney speeches from his past career to buy what he is selling now. He is like Zelig from the old Woody Allen movie. He morphs into whatever he needs to be in order to fit the situation.

He has packaged himself to be the candidate of the right leaning pundits and got them to spread the word. And even better, they act as his attack dogs.

McCain and Huckabee don't follow all of the orthodoxies, so the pundits don't like them.

I wonder how Romney will govern once he no longer needs them.

Romney as Clinton?

I think I've finally figured out why Rush, Sean, Ann and the rest are pushing so hard for Romney versus McCain.

I took some time to look at Romney's website. If only he would have chosen to be born again, he would be the perfect dittohead. His platform is a tailored fit to what the most popular conservative pundits have been asking for.

Why do I say "Romney as Clinton"? All through the '90's, we got to hear how poll driven Clinton was. This was normally part of an attack on Clinton. This was to make us see how Bill had no big vision, but would just deal with problems as they appeared, after consulting his poll data.

In some ways, that was Bush's 41 style as well. If you remember, GHWB struggled with the vision thing.

It appears that Romney is the same type of character. In Massachusetts, he needed to be a liberal on almost all social issues, so he was. For the presidential primaries, he needed to tack way to the right, so he did.

He would probably make a great Cabinet Secretary since someone else would provide him the vision, but I'm not sure he has what it takes to be the president.

Why Rush, Sean and the rest have decided to believe this current edition of Romney is real is a topic for another day.