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January 30, 2008
The Obligatory, Unnecessary and Completely Meaningless Primary Endorsement
By now it's clear I'm a supporter of Mitt Romney. Still, I figured I might as well explain what brought me to that point. This has been an odd campaign season. I started out liking three candidates: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson (with an extremely brief look at Mike Huckabee in there). I liked all three for slightly different reasons - Giulani was a mean fighter type who would fight the war without reservation, Romney was successful and I was familiar with him from living in the Boston media reach area and Thompson was the most doctrinaire conservative who could communicate conservative ideals.
As the early primary season started, it became clear that Giuliani was completely uninterested in moderating his more liberal tendencies on abortion. I'm not a one-issue voter, but would have liked to see some willingness to move right on that issue. When conservatives (especially evangelicals) revolted, I figured Giuliani would split the party and looked elsewhere. At about the same time...
Fred Thompson jumped into the race. Well, sort of jumped. More like John Wayne-ambled into the race. At first, I was impressed by his relaxed campaign style. It seemed thoughtful and policy-based. As time went on, though, it was clear the Thompson campaign was a bit too disorganized to compete. I don't think Thompson was lazy, but he either surrounded himself with incompetent people or didn't provide the good people he doubtless hired with adequate leadership. After he lost South Carolina by a fair margin, I went to Romney.
But first...my secret shame. After the first couple of debates, I was impressed by Mike Huckabee. His ability to communicate and connect made him stand out from the rest of the 'also-ran brigade.' After the second debate, I looked up his record and promptly became unimpressed. Extremely unimpressed. In fact, I'm not sure I could bring myself to vote for John McCain if he chooses Huckabee as his running mate.
So now, it's Romney.
This National Review editorial on Mitt Romney actually explains most of my reasons for gravitating to him. John McCain may be more conservative on paper, but he shows an irritating tendency to gleefully stick his thumb in the eyes of Republicans.
The big knock on Romney is that he came to his positions too recently and that he's a flip-flopper. Honestly, I see the flip, but not the flop. If anything, he's a convert to social conservatism. He's given me no reason to doubt the sincerity of his conversion on abortion. (Honestly, gay rights issues aren't really that much of a concern to me.)
I like that the guy was able to cut taxes in Massachusetts, find a free-market solution of sorts to the health care issue in his state (not a perfect one, but then again I have Dirigo Health as a comparison point) and yeah, I like that he made his own money. Not sure when earning loads of cash became a bad thing in the GOP (both McCain and Huckabee have criticized his wealth).
Plus, he was always funny on Howie Carr's show and genuinely seems like a smart guy.
So this weekend, I'm going to attend the Maine GOP caucus and cast my vote for Mitt Romney. Then, I'm going to taunt the Paul supporters by glancing at them from time to time while talking into my wrist.
Posted by slublog at January 30, 2008 02:36 PM
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Comments
Good post, dude. Duly linked.
Posted by: Allahpundit at January 30, 2008 03:50 PM