by Frank James
A good picture of the dilemma facing conservatives in terms of their choice for the Republican presidential nomination can be drawn from two essays in different conservative political journals.
As we wrote yesterday, the influential National Review has endorsed Mitt Romney as the most viable Republican candidate who also most embraces a conservative worldview.
More than the other primary candidates, Romney has President Bush’s virtues and avoids his flaws. His moral positions, and his instincts on taxes and foreign policy, are the same. But he is less inclined to federal activism, less tolerant of overspending, better able to defend conservative positions in debate, and more likely to demand performance from his subordinates. A winning combination, by our lights. In this most fluid and unpredictable Republican field, we vote for Mitt Romney.
Meanwhile, another important conservative journal, the American Spectator, just featured a piece on why conservatives should be wary of Romney. He’s too focused on data and process, not principle, is the case Jeffrey Lord makes against Romney.
Mitt Romney loves data and lusts after process.
In a recent cover profile in the Weekly Standard by the magazine’s Fred Barnes, Romney is portrayed as the man who would be the CEO-in-chief of America. Says Barnes quoting Romney, a Harvard MBA: “His idea of the perfect deal is not when one side wins but when ‘you find a new alternative that everybody agrees is the right way to go. That doesn’t always happen.'”
Indeed.
Barnes says Romney’s “approach to government is not ideological.” A Romney adviser is quoted as saying of his candidate: “He’s super-pragmatic. He’s an eclectic conservative.” And Romney himself says flatly that as president he would “insist on gathering data…and analyze the data looking for trends.”
Uh-oh.
Make no mistake. If the leading candidates in the GOP presidential race are to be litmus tested as conservatives, all would cause conservatives sleepless nights. If the Reagan coalition was of economic and social conservatives combined with national security hawks, each group has something to be disturbed about with this batch of front-runners. Giuliani famously has his issues with social issues, McCain his prickly insistence on First Amendment censorship and an addiction to sounding like Al Gore on global warming and Hillary Clinton on immigration. Huckabee amazingly sounds like Ted Kennedy in his attack on supporters of economic growth as greedy, while Thompson was not only assisting the pro-choice movement as a lawyer, but has an apparent bent for trial lawyers.
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Yet the Romney approach as described not only by Barnes but more importantly by Romney himself is an approach that goes far beyond any particular issue. It is, as Romney himself freely admits, all about process. Whatever the issue — economic, social or national security — Romney would gather the data, look for a trend and thus “you make better decisions.”
This should cause conservatives to break out in cold sweats.
What also should cause conservatives anxiety is that, with the Iowa caucuses so near, there’s still so much uncertainty among them about who best can carry forward Ronald Reagan’s legacy.
Clearly, when it comes to conservatives and the former Massachusetts governor, there appears to be something we could call the Romney Whipsaw.