Rick Perry is a solid candidate, but not one who can win the general presidential elections. Republicans need Mitt Romney.
It’s as though Romney’s entire life has led up to this moment. He is a pro-health care Republican whose major obstacle has been his pseudo-Mormon background. He is now running against Barack Obama, a guy who attended (for a matter of decades) the sermons of Jeremiah Wright.
For those of you who don’t recall, Jeremiah Wright was Obama’s long-time ‘religious mentor’ who caused a stir during the last elections when his website surfaced – repeatedly evoking the term ‘black power’. He caused an even bigger stir when tapes surfaced with footage of Wright praising the 9/11 attacks and proclaiming that Americans deserved it for their greed.
Old news for most of you, but it’s a very important factor for 2012. The other Republican candidates can make passive-aggressive allusions to Romney’s Mormonism to their heart’s content. However, if Romney manages to clinch the Republican primary and runs solely against Obama, Obama has nothing. A guy who had to sweep decades of attending a church which advocates ‘black power’ and praises 9/11 under the rug doesn’t really want to bring up religion in a debate. Romney’s biggest career obstacle is suddenly a non-factor; maybe even a slight advantage.
Romney is pro-health care. Nowadays, many Republicans are. Conservative government isn’t defined by not having a government at all — it’s defined by having a government which supplies only necessary and emergency services. Many could argue that basic access to health care is a fundamental ‘necessary’ role of even minimal government, or even that it qualifies as an emergency service. I meet an increasing number of Republicans who have realized that we spend more money on hopeless ‘urban social programs’ (mostly Democrat-sponsored) every year than we would spend getting every American a health care plan.
This is all important because any Republican candidate will be portrayed as a merciless corporate monster if he doesn’t support universal health care reform against Obama. I don’t care what the Tea Party says; this isn’t the biggest issue Republican voters are facing. We have a drug-riddled warzone and demographic crisis on our southern border. We have an economy being compared to the Great Depression.
Now isn’t the time to try to get the ‘perfect’ candidate, it’s time to get the candidate who can beat the walking disaster that is the Obama administration and erase memories of the other walking disaster that was the Bush Jr. administration. Obama cannot run against Romney on health care. The two support plans which possess key differences to experts, but are way too similar for the average moderate voter to love one and hate the other.
The economy? Romney was turning failing businesses into multi-billion dollar monopolies when Obama was smoking pot with his sociology professors. Lets not even consider this issue competitive. Romney is portrayed quite rightly by the media as ‘the economy candidate’.
So what CAN Obama use to attack Romney? Well, I can’t think of anything.
Romney is moderately pro-gun; unfortunately for Obama, so are most Americans. Advantage; Romney. Romney’s gun record isn’t stellar, and this could be one of the things that loses him the Republican primary; but what good does a candidate with an A+ rating from the NRA do if he has no chance of actually becoming president? For gun owners, Romney is the best compromise and best hope.
Romney wants border security reform. Unfortunately for Obama, so do the overwhelming majority of Americans. For Republicans, and humans in general in the southwest who have to read about humvees full of narcotics smugglers in ski masks kidnapping entire families on a daily basis and watch local hospitals and schools go bankrupt from illegal alien burdens, this isn’t an issue — this is the only issue.
Even European Union countries have stricter border security than the US. We are so far left in regards to our immigration system that their effectively is no system.
Border Patrol agents fight a hopelessly outnumbered ‘battle’ in which they are required to treat armed smugglers of drugs and child-prostitutes as though they are.. ahem.. ‘undocumented migrants’ and let them off with a warning before sending them home. Where clear legislation is absent, bizarre and inhumane forms of political correctness take over.
The war in Iraq is still an issue, but no longer the mammoth advantage it once was for Obama. People look back and recall Obama magically, before ever assuming office or being briefed by top military intelligence, predicting with month-level accuracy exactly when he would pull out of Iraq. People actually went out and voted for Obama because he promised to pull out a couple of months earlier than McCain. At one point they were both promising to pull out within six-months so Obama dropped his bid even lower.
Of course this is all a source of outrageous comedy nowadays. Obama’s term is nearly over and we are still in Iraq and twice as poor. If the Obama campaign attempts to run on the same ‘world peace’ platform it did in ’08 and make another hilarious promise of how he’ll march in and tell the military brass what to do, it will be laughed at.
Obama’s only hope is that the Republicans select a really cliche ‘shoots from the hip’ Texan, like say, Rick Perry, so they can let the Bush Jr. comparisons fly and warp everyone back in time half a decade.
Against Romney – a northeastern yuppie who has been neither here-nor-there on foreign policy, the Obama campaign yet again has nothing. And that seems to be the general theme. In ’08 I donated to and campaigned for Ron Paul. Up until recently I was a big supporter of Rick Perry – and still am in regards to everything other than letting him run against Obama. It’s time to realize that Romney was made to beat Obama.