Conservatives, Myself Included, Need to Get a Clue

For months now in the Republican presidential race we have watched an "anti-Romney" break away from the pack only to get shot down. The firing squad is a marriage of convenience between the liberal media and the Republican establishment. Interestingly enough, they both want the same thing: a moderate as the GOP nominee. As best I can tell, the liberal media want a moderate because they think that's whom Obama can more easily beat, whereas the Republican establishment wants a moderate because they are moderate themselves and they want to remain in power. Meanwhile, together they are playing conservatives like a fiddle, and conservatives are letting themselves get played. To have any hope of mounting a conservative alternative to Romney, we have got to stop it. We have got to quit nit-picking the conservative candidates to death ourselves and start defending them against all the attacks. There is NO PERFECT CANDIDATE. There is no candidate that is free of "baggage." There is no candidate that is going to agree with us 100% all the way up and down the list of issues. Even if we find such a candidate, we may discover that he or she has different ideas from our own on how to achieve the desired end. We need to get comfortable with some imperfections and impurities and start celebrating the strengths of each of these excellent candidates instead of joining in the flash mob of detractors that only want to tear them down so as to ensure Romney's nomination.

If Romney does get the nomination, I will support him. He is capable. He is not a socialist. He will not go around the world apologizing for the United States. But notwithstanding the common wisdom, I do not think he is the most electable. I think he has simply not been vetted. If he does get the nomination, the Obama forces will get busy attacking him with class and racial warfare like you haven't seen in a long time. And they will no longer keep silent about his Mormonism.

I am saying this to myself as much as to anyone. Rick Perry was portrayed as dumb, Bachmann as a gaffe machine, Newt Gingrich as unstable, and now Santorum is about to be painted as a bigot and a "big government conservative." Let's quit falling for whatever caricatures the talking heads decide to put out there, and let's come together for a change and work to build up and support and champion our conservative presidential contenders. Any one of them is far preferable to the current President. Let's quit falling for whatever narrative the powers that be want to feed us and start writing our own narrative, one in which a conservative wins the Republican nomination and proceeds to clean Obama's clock.