Sultan Knish
Now that we have lost the election of 2012, where our champion, a
third-rate imitation of Ronald Reagan, without either his charm or his
principles, who believed in absolutely nothing except being the best
salesman he could be; let's pause to reflect on all the things we lost
out on through his defeat.
When we lose something, a relationship or a job, the grief comes from
what we thought we had and what we imagined it was, not from what it
truly was. Perspective means getting a true sense of what we had and
what we never had to begin with.
So let's look at what we might have had with President Mitt Romney.
We lost the chance to have universal health care, with the mandate,
become a principle that every conservative was duty-bound to defend.
Oh I know. Mitt Romney was going to repeal ObamaCare. And he was. And by
"repeal", I mean he would have tinkered with it a bit and turned it
into RomneyCare. And for the next four to eight years, it would have
been heresy to ever suggest that we opposed universal health care with a
mandate. Once Romney did that, it would have turned out that we only
opposed universal health care with a mandate when it was badly enacted,
without regard for businesses, by a Democrat.
We lost the chance to have a Republican president deliver weapons to
Syrian Jihadists. Not to mention apply more sanctions to Iran in order
to force it to the negotiating table. We could have been so privileged
as to have a Republican president execute these two items of Obama's
agenda. Instead we're stuck with a Democrat doing it.
Of course President Mitt Romney would not have done these things out of a
deep abiding hatred for America and a sympathy for terrorists. But he
would have still done them anyway. He wouldn't have understood what he
was doing, but his foreign policy would still have been sixty percent of
Obama's foreign policy, without the conscious malice. It would have
been an improvement in that regard and only in that regard.
Those of you pro-Israeli types who imagine that a President Romney would
have taken the boot off Israel's neck, would have been shocked when a
month after taking office, his Secretary of State would have commenced
condemning Israeli "settlements" in Jerusalem. Just like it was in the
days of the Bush Administration.
But, Romney would have been different, you say. He had a great rapport
with Netanyahu. And Bush had a great rapport with Sharon. He had an even
better one with Saudi Arabia. The same would have been true of Romney.
Still Romney would have appointed conservatives to the Supreme Court.
And there you may even be right. I wouldn't place any bets on it though.
Oh we probably wouldn't have gotten any Wise Latinas on his watch, but
then again we might have, but I wouldn't count on too many members of
the Federalist Society ending up on the bench either.
Romney would at least have been pro-business. So was George W. Bush. And
how well did he deal with the problems of government overreach? It's
all well and good to be pro-business, but even a former businessman who
becomes a president, sees problems from the government's end, not from
the standpoint of a businessman.
And, for that matter, if you doubt any of this, do look back on the Bush
years and consider that Romney would have been worse in every area than
Bush. It's human nature not to believe that, but it's so. And if the
election had gone another way, in a few months you would have seen it
for yourselves.
The 2012 election was of course a disaster. A complete and thorough
disaster. But it was a disaster because Obama and his cronies won. Not
because Mitt Romney lost. Mitt Romney filled a void. He stepped into a
spot that we needed, became a symbol and then he failed, because he was
only a man, and worse still he was a blue state politician who was light
on principles and heavy on being a people person.
What we lost in this election was not a chance for better leadership,
but a chance to remove a bad leader. But what we gained was an end to
complicity in the actions and policies of this administration. What we
gained was a chance to use this defeat to launch a movement that can
actually win an election by confronting the issues.
I would have never called for people to stay away during the election.
Another four years of Obama would have been too high a price to pay for
that. But now that we have that four years, it helps to remember that we
never had a shot at making a complete break with the policies of Barack
Obama. What we were really trying to do was replace Obama with a man
who would carry out many of the same policies, but without a hidden
agenda or destructive urges.
What we were trying to do was elect a man who destroy America with the
best of intentions, with an open heart and enough practical experience
to avoid overreaching and destroying the country too quickly. And that
is no bad thing, from one perspective, certainly if we have to choose
between high speed destruction and medium speed destruction, it's best
to take the foot off the pedal, but it's not a solution of any kind to
anything. At most it might have amounted to breathing room that would
have corrupted us by making us complicit in those same policies.
So here we are again, right back where we were in 2008. The
establishment blew another election. The base is angry and frustrated.
The country is divided. And a growing number of people reject the
policies of the administration. The establishment rejected the Tea Party
as a bunch of crazies, but the Tea Party is more relevant than ever.
A day before the election,
I wrote, "Even if we lose this election, it will have been worthwhile
to make it as close as possible, to bring out massive rallies of people
who are waking up out of the daze and realizing that they don't have to
take the occupation and that there are tens of millions of people out
there who feel as they do.
"Mitt Romney is a symbol, a convenient shorthand for freedom of
expression, enterprise and faith. Whether or not he embodies these
values is a secondary concern. As Obama became a vehicle for the left to
express its identity, Romney has become a vehicle for traditional
Americans to express theirs. If Romney wins, then he will become a
politician and if he loses, then the symbolic identity, which transcends
him, will go on, because it is an expression, not of one man, but of
the values of a country."
So Mitt Romney has fallen and I will waste no great amount of time
either condemning him or mourning him. I have never met him and cannot
speak for his character. I believe that he was genuinely motivated by
public service, in the old-fashioned sense, but I also believe that,
like his father, his instincts tilted to the left. Faced with a new
left, his old-fashioned liberalism would have given them a foothold,
while destroying him anyway.
Romney ran an effective enough campaign, but it was the campaign that he
needed to run, not the one that the country needed. And now that it's
over, we are back where we need to be, fighting the good fight. We have
the opportunity to organize and radicalize, to bring together growing
numbers of people around opposition to everything that the Democratic
Party has come to stand for. That is something we could not have done
under a President Romney. It is something that we can only do while in
the opposition.
And equally importantly, we once again have the opportunity to mobilize
and transform the party. That opportunity may be more than the answer to
winning the next election. It may be the means of saving this country.
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