Romney And The Uphill Slog Of Transaction With Tea Party Trust

The pressure is on the rest of the Republican presidential field to knock Mitt Romney down a peg after the former Massachusetts governor sailed to victory in the Nevada caucuses following his big Florida win earlier in the week. Romney won Nevada by a decisive double-digit margin. The field charges next into a quartet of contests that will either fuel or check Romney’s momentum. Caption & Image Credit: FOXNews.com

Romney And The Uphill Slog Of Transaction With Tea Party Trust

Mitt Romney wins big in Neveda - Romney 48% | Gingrich 23%. It says a lot about a man that due to his embrace of Mormon religious beliefs doesn't gamble, smoke, or drink to win by such a large double-digit margin in a state that made its name for a lax attitude for vices ... he deserves a serious look.

Mitt Romney claims he is a (big c) Conservative but has trouble proving it. When ever he opens his mouth shows he has a disconnect when it comes to firing people or the poor. We know what he meant to say but the method of articulation leaves a lot to be desired.

If one looks at the way Government has honorable business people follow the law, they actually believe the Government has adequate "safety net" program solutions to help the poor and if they need fixing, fix them. Afterall, businessmen provide jobs at every level of the scale and if someone wants a job ... they are available, even at a minimum wage.

This is one area a career businessman can be blind to the fact that minimum wage, which is legislated and has to be followed, may cloud the thinking on a Conservative level. It is hard to see the equation that a minimum wage creates dependency on a very deep level that can not be broken.

Mandated minimum wage, it could be argued, eliminated basic apprenticeship and building block skills through which young businesses learn how to treat entry level workers, and young entry level workers learn how to treat a businesses they work for.

Another issue that has voters uncomfortable with Romney is his ability to become a Chameleon in the face of what he feels is the path of least resistance to win. It is this quality, that if recognized to be the core political survival instinct of Mitt Romney, might be the path that Tea Party principled voters could embrace a Romney Republican party nomination for President of the United States.

This excerpted and edited from Townhall -

The Case For Romney
By: Jonah Goldberg - Townhall - Feb. 3, 2012

Years ago a friend told me a story from her days living in South America. The movie "Wayne's World" had come out, and she went to see it. She spoke English, but it was interesting to read the Spanish subtitles.

For instance, early in the film, Wayne says: "Shyeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt!"

The Spanish subtitles read: "Yes, when judgment day comes."

Needless to say, something was lost in translation.

This, in a nutshell, is Mitt Romney's biggest problem.
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Romney doesn't speak the language naturally.
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He speaks conservatism as a second language, and his mastery of the basic grammar of politics is often spotty as well.
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Many conservatives argue that Romney's stiffness is a superficial objection, and that he's a solid conservative who can appeal to moderates and independents. Other conservatives think Romney's lack of fluency is a real problem, not because it proves he's faking his conservatism but because it would put him at a severe disadvantage in the general election in the same way authentic but stiff liberals like Gore and John Kerry suffered from their inability to comfortably interface with carbon-based life.

And others simply think Romney's a big faker.

It's this last group of anti-Romney holdouts I'd like to address.
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The Tea Party arose in no small part out of a delayed allergic reaction to the rhetorical and, to a lesser extent, policy problems of George W. Bush's presidency and the deep resentment that came with having to vote for John McCain in 2008. These disappointments were visited upon the conservative base by something the naysayers (often problematically) call "the Republican establishment."
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With the raised expectations from the Tea Party's earlier successes, conservatives are extremely reluctant to settle or compromise simply on the say-so of the establishment. For good reasons and bad, Romney seems like a compromise. And no matter how begrudgingly a conservative comes to accept the reality of Romney's nomination, the diehards immediately proclaim any support for Romney to be proof of membership in the establishment. In fact, it seems like the best definition of a Republican establishment member these days is simply someone who has made peace with his disappointment prematurely.
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It is better to have a president who owes you than to have one who claims to own you.

A President Romney would be on a very short leash. A President Gingrich would probably chew through his leash in the first 10 minutes of his presidency and wander off into trouble. If elected, Romney must follow through for conservatives and honor his vows to repeal ObamaCare, implement Rep. Paul Ryan's agenda, and stay true to his pro-life commitments.

Moreover, Romney is not a man of vision. He is a man of duty and purpose. He was told to "fix" health care in ways Massachusetts would like. He was told to fix the 2002 Olympics. He was told to create Bain Capital. He did it all. The man does his assignments.

In this light, voting for Romney isn't a betrayal, it's a transaction. No, that's not very exciting or reassuring for those who'd sooner see monkeys fly out their nethers than compromise again. But such a bargain may just be necessary before judgment day comes.
[Reference Here]

Before the Tea Party became the Tea Party, it was Tea Party principles that had George W. Bush withdraw Harriet Meyers name from being considered for the supreme court ... and GWB was never accused of having Chameleon political instincts.

Duty and purpose combined with Chameleon political instincts of Mitt Romney means that Mitt Romney could be turned through a dedicated focus put up from a Center-Right country. One might say that trust will not be earned or given, but ... applied.

After his decisive win in the GOP Nevada caucuses, if one were to count themselves as being convinced demand the best from Mitt Romney in his support of the Bill-Of-Rights, Rule-Of-Law, and an adherence to the Constitution of the United States.


- Article first seen as Romney And The Uphill Slog Of Transaction With Tea Party Trust at Technorati -

From Shades Of Grey To B&W – Obama Comes Into Focus

Comparison of warm and cool shades of grey. Image Credit: Knulclunk, vectorized by Fvasconcellos

From Shades Of Grey To B&W – Obama Comes Into Focus

This rocket ship ground swell of support for Barack Obama is pretty amazing when one just stands and watches what is actually going on. The press is in the tank for Obama, he never gets questioned on any subject that requires meat to be on the bone to answer … and when he gives only a bare bones response to a difficult question, no follow-up question that would flesh out a real answer is forthcoming.

“Yes We Can”, “Change You Can Believe In”, “Moving Forward Into The Future”, “The Audacity Of Hope”, is all we are fed on the way to the Democrat Party political convention to be held this summer. No real pushback on the issues of Gay Marriage, Abortion, the tensions developing in South America, Israel and the rocket attacks of 2008, the reality of a stronger, more Communist Russia, and the changing world economic landscape.

But now, we do not have to wait on the Mainstream Media (MSM) to do this work of definition for us anymore. Barack Obama, in an unguarded yet genuine moment, captured and reported on by a “citizen journalist” posting in the Huffington Post, Barack Obama has provided us with a glimpse of the core values embedded in his belief system.

By stating to a group of Democrat Party faithful at a fundraiser in San Francisco April 6, 2008, that the way to understand a large group of voters in small town America is to first explain why they “cling” on to religious faith and principles, personal freedom and gun ownership, the dislike toward open-borders immigration, and caution in the acceptance of people different than themselves is a bitterness built as a result of a 25 year shifting economic landscape.

This opinion by Jonah Goldberg excerpted from The Los Angeles Times -

Barack Obama, the yuppie candidate
By Jonah Goldberg - April 15, 2008

Barack Obama is finally coming into focus.

For a while now, the Obamaphiles have insisted that their candidate represents a profound break with the past. No more culture wars. No more "re-litigating the 1960s," in Obama's own words.

But what about re-litigating the 1980s?

There's always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness that's been hard to pinpoint. But I think I've got it: They're self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which was to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.

For those too young to remember, "yuppie" was shorthand for young urban professionals
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Ironically, the biggest complaints about yuppie materialism came from self-loathing liberal yuppies -- like the Obamas.

The Obamas still seem stuck in that time warp, clinging to '80s-style resentments and political assumptions. Michelle Obama is never so eloquent as when she's complaining about the burden of student loans for her two Ivy League law degrees and covering the high cost of summer camp and piano lessons for her kids on her family's half-million-dollars-a-year income.
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It's Ronald Reagan -- the president of the 1980s -- who seems to loom so large in Obama's world. (Recall how last year, Obama caught some flak suggesting he might be a new Ronald Reagan.) Reagan famously restored confidence in the nation while reducing confidence in government as the solution to our problems.
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The Reagan Revolution moved the country durably to the right -- so much so that even Democrats saw the writing on the wall.
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Bill Clinton's 1992 victory stemmed from the fact that he was a "different kind of Democrat" -- that is, one who understood the lessons of Reaganism, or at least claimed to, and rejected the "brain dead policies" of the old Democratic Party. He was a pro-death-penalty free-trader who oversaw the triumph of the Reaganite critique of welfare.

It's as if Barack Obama spent the 1990s in some kind of Democratic Brigadoon -- and I guess Cambridge, Mass., and the South Side of Chicago might qualify -- and didn't keep up with his party, let alone the nation. Barack Obama, the man of the future, in fact stands athwart that history yelling "Stop."

This is the best way to understand his recent comments at a San Francisco fundraiser as he explained his challenge of connecting with rural and small town voters.

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania," he said, "and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. ... It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Later, when his comments sparked a controversy, he dismissed it as a "little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."

But everybody doesn't know anything of the sort. Not in this decade anyway. Obama's merely recycling the liberal cliches of the 1980s, namely that Pennsylvania's "bitter" voters have been duped by "wedge issues" like guns, religion and racial resentment. New Democrats recognized that wedge issues are legitimate concerns. Old Democrats remain in denial.
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Slate columnist Mickey Kaus has been waiting for Obama to "pivot" to the center as Clinton did in 1992. But it may be that America's most reliably liberal senator doesn't think he has to. He isn't a unifier. He's a counter-revolutionary. And waiting for him to pivot is like waiting for Godot.
Reference Here>>

These observations by Jonah Goldberg, we at MAXINE believe, are the best gauge on the what, why, where, when, and how a Senator Barack Obama’s presidency would look like and the shape it would take.

A counter-revolutionary Marxist willing to place socialism over personal freedom in order to bring proper definition to a group of people HE doesn’t understand or relate to ... Americans!