The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Romney Could Emerge Smelling Of Roses

Posted on | April 11, 2010 | 21 Comments

by Smitty

Let Freedom Ring is deeply skeptical of RomneyCare. As I’ve tried to expound before, a radically Federalist tack could be good for both Romney in particular and Conservatives in general.

Here is the rub: if you argue a libertarian hand at the Federal level, keeping to the 10th Amendment and re-constituting the States as managers for the existing entitlement programs, you needn’t waste breath arguing that Socialism really sucks pond water. You can just say, “Hey, not to my taste. Those that want Euro-socialism should move to the Northeast. Those that want capitalism should move to Texas.  Express yourself at your State’s capitol.”

Unfortunately, renewing a minimalist Federal government is a multi-decade, multi-facet problem. Newt sounds all swell and spiffy talking about repealing all of the toxic legislation signed into law by the Obama Administration. Yay, Newt: woo hoo. Yet knocking the tops off of the dandelions does not a weedless lawn make. We really need to ponder long term structural fixes as well, or the Progressives will patiently out-wait the Conservatives.

So whichever candidate articulates the best long-term restoration plan is the one worth supporting in 2012. Mitt can contend that the style of RomneyCare should be expanded to reclaim from DC all of the education, mortgage and Social Security services that have been un-Constitutionally appropriated by the Federal government.

Fantasize about that for a moment: a Federal government that concerns itself with truly federal and international issues, in a balanced budget environment, making war as required with proper declarations. One not given to acts of taxation without representation (or whatever fig leaf you want to put on stealing from the unborn).

The prospects of a morally sound government leave one positively giddy.

Category: Mitt Romney, Progressivism, Republicans

Comments

21 Responses to “Romney Could Emerge Smelling Of Roses”

  1. bellez
    April 12th, 2010 @ 12:53 am

    OMG Romney, Ron Paul, Huckabee arenot it.

  2. bellez
    April 11th, 2010 @ 7:53 pm

    OMG Romney, Ron Paul, Huckabee arenot it.

  3. Dandapani
    April 12th, 2010 @ 1:20 am

    Newt is a flaming RINOhole

  4. Dandapani
    April 11th, 2010 @ 8:20 pm

    Newt is a flaming RINOhole

  5. Thane Eichenauer
    April 12th, 2010 @ 3:02 am

    There are only two positions any federal candidate can take, one would be to advocate that the federal government continue on its current state of engorged power. The other would be to advocate for less federal taxing and spending.

    There are plenty of Republicans who will offer to tinker here and there and very-very few who want to shrink the scope of government. Everybody knows who is in the first group and everybody knows who is in the second group.

    Which group is Mitt Romney in? That doesn’t take any thinking at all to determine.

  6. Thane Eichenauer
    April 11th, 2010 @ 10:02 pm

    There are only two positions any federal candidate can take, one would be to advocate that the federal government continue on its current state of engorged power. The other would be to advocate for less federal taxing and spending.

    There are plenty of Republicans who will offer to tinker here and there and very-very few who want to shrink the scope of government. Everybody knows who is in the first group and everybody knows who is in the second group.

    Which group is Mitt Romney in? That doesn’t take any thinking at all to determine.

  7. unknownamerican
    April 12th, 2010 @ 7:43 am

    I really feel that we have to take out Rick Romney as well but I think if the Tparty declared war on him the liberals would clamor around him just like they do for McCain but perhaps that would be a good thing?

  8. unknownamerican
    April 12th, 2010 @ 2:43 am

    I really feel that we have to take out Rick Romney as well but I think if the Tparty declared war on him the liberals would clamor around him just like they do for McCain but perhaps that would be a good thing?

  9. Guest
    April 12th, 2010 @ 12:21 pm

    So Romney can weasel himself out of his Romneycare disaster however what can he do to weasel himself out of his hand-raising support of Al Gore’s snake-oil junk science voodooism?

    The Stupid Party will do it again; destroy the voices of the Conservative movement by shoving their ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate down our throats.

    Have you not learned from the Florida race?

    The GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate Charlie Crist is losing to the Conservative candidate Marco Rubio.

    The GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate Charlie Crist is evidence that their GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate Mitt Romney is just another Stupid Party loser candidate.

    GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ = The Stupid Party = Liberal’s Useful Idiots.

  10. Guest
    April 12th, 2010 @ 7:21 am

    So Romney can weasel himself out of his Romneycare disaster however what can he do to weasel himself out of his hand-raising support of Al Gore’s snake-oil junk science voodooism?

    The Stupid Party will do it again; destroy the voices of the Conservative movement by shoving their ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate down our throats.

    Have you not learned from the Florida race?

    The GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate Charlie Crist is losing to the Conservative candidate Marco Rubio.

    The GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate Charlie Crist is evidence that their GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ candidate Mitt Romney is just another Stupid Party loser candidate.

    GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ = The Stupid Party = Liberal’s Useful Idiots.

  11. Guest
    April 12th, 2010 @ 12:24 pm

    I must repeat so that The Stupid Party will stop being Useful Idiots:

    GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ = The Stupid Party = Liberal’s Useful Idiots.

  12. Guest
    April 12th, 2010 @ 7:24 am

    I must repeat so that The Stupid Party will stop being Useful Idiots:

    GOP’s 30% ‘highly educated Whites’ = The Stupid Party = Liberal’s Useful Idiots.

  13. Old Rebel
    April 12th, 2010 @ 2:51 pm

    Fantasize about that for a moment: a Federal government that concerns itself with truly federal and international issues, in a balanced budget environment, making war as required with proper declarations. One not given to acts of taxation without representation

    And that’s exactly what it is, a fantasy. The entrenched interests in the District of Corruption aren’t going to surrender their power and perks to a bunch of pesky voters who imagine a 234-year-old sheet of parchment can save them. The military-industrial complex and the new health-government complex will fight to hold on to their control over us. Illegal wars abroad and illegal power grabs at home reinforce and legitimize each other.

    DC is irredeemable. The only answer is to pull the plug on this monster.

  14. Old Rebel
    April 12th, 2010 @ 9:51 am

    Fantasize about that for a moment: a Federal government that concerns itself with truly federal and international issues, in a balanced budget environment, making war as required with proper declarations. One not given to acts of taxation without representation

    And that’s exactly what it is, a fantasy. The entrenched interests in the District of Corruption aren’t going to surrender their power and perks to a bunch of pesky voters who imagine a 234-year-old sheet of parchment can save them. The military-industrial complex and the new health-government complex will fight to hold on to their control over us. Illegal wars abroad and illegal power grabs at home reinforce and legitimize each other.

    DC is irredeemable. The only answer is to pull the plug on this monster.

  15. Bob Belvedere
    April 12th, 2010 @ 6:50 pm

    Good thinking Smitty, but one fact derails the plan: Mitt Romney is the capo di tutti capi of wimps. He’d be Bush III without the occasional cajones.

  16. Bob Belvedere
    April 12th, 2010 @ 1:50 pm

    Good thinking Smitty, but one fact derails the plan: Mitt Romney is the capo di tutti capi of wimps. He’d be Bush III without the occasional cajones.

  17. J David
    April 12th, 2010 @ 10:37 pm

    Romney is NOT reformable. He was a grown-up RINO when he foisted socialism on the first state to allow the joining of opposable parts in un-holy matrimonial aping(also on his watch) and a general lifelong LIBERAL. No one, and nothing can change a pragmatist politician (which is soulless, coreless, opportunistic unprincipled being by its essential definition) into something other than what that vast vacuum of what is called a “soul” already is, or is not, which is conservative.
    (NO LIBERTARIAN HAS A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN HELL, which ought to be pretty vividly obvious by now, as no conservatives are ever going to unite with the Anarchy Party.)
    That goes for ANYONE on the last election’s docket of soulless loser RINOs whose name is not Palin. We really need to be looking at people like Sessions, Coburn, Palin, or that conservative representative up in Indiana whose name escapes me at the moment, someone whose whole life up to this point has not been one long wretched story of unprincipled compromise to conservatism.
    The ONLY thing Republicans have ever had going for them is PRINCIPLE (the exact opposite of pragmatism) alone, an adherence to a universal moral code, and to give that up makes them ultimately no more than a very cheap imitation of commie-lib Dems. Once they abandon that high ground, as they mostly seem to have done, they are toast.

  18. J David
    April 12th, 2010 @ 5:37 pm

    Romney is NOT reformable. He was a grown-up RINO when he foisted socialism on the first state to allow the joining of opposable parts in un-holy matrimonial aping(also on his watch) and a general lifelong LIBERAL. No one, and nothing can change a pragmatist politician (which is soulless, coreless, opportunistic unprincipled being by its essential definition) into something other than what that vast vacuum of what is called a “soul” already is, or is not, which is conservative.
    (NO LIBERTARIAN HAS A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN HELL, which ought to be pretty vividly obvious by now, as no conservatives are ever going to unite with the Anarchy Party.)
    That goes for ANYONE on the last election’s docket of soulless loser RINOs whose name is not Palin. We really need to be looking at people like Sessions, Coburn, Palin, or that conservative representative up in Indiana whose name escapes me at the moment, someone whose whole life up to this point has not been one long wretched story of unprincipled compromise to conservatism.
    The ONLY thing Republicans have ever had going for them is PRINCIPLE (the exact opposite of pragmatism) alone, an adherence to a universal moral code, and to give that up makes them ultimately no more than a very cheap imitation of commie-lib Dems. Once they abandon that high ground, as they mostly seem to have done, they are toast.

  19. J David
    April 12th, 2010 @ 10:54 pm

    Oh, yes that Midwestern Representative is Mike Pence, in the picture of R.S. McCain’s American Spectator article today. How could I forget that name?!

  20. J David
    April 12th, 2010 @ 5:54 pm

    Oh, yes that Midwestern Representative is Mike Pence, in the picture of R.S. McCain’s American Spectator article today. How could I forget that name?!

  21. dustbury.com » Mittwashing
    April 16th, 2010 @ 5:05 pm

    […] Smitty sees a way for Mitt Romney to claim the Federalist high ground: [I]f you argue a libertarian hand at the Federal level, keeping to the 10th Amendment and re-constituting the States as managers for the existing entitlement programs, you needn’t waste breath arguing that Socialism really sucks pond water. You can just say, “Hey, not to my taste. Those that want Euro-socialism should move to the Northeast. Those that want capitalism should move to Texas. Express yourself at your State’s capitol.” […]