The reason Mitt Romney seems so ideologically elusive is that he is striving for ideological elusiveness. He is a sane, reasonable guy trying to win over a pack of political cranks without isolating the plurality of sane, reasonable folks he imagines he's going to lean on once nominated.
We've seen this movie before and the ending sucks. A primary season full of tortured contortions and coded appeals ends with a clouded victory. That hollow achievement is followed by a shotgun marriage to a horrifying vice presidential pick, which leads to a sound thumping in November. Then the wackos get to spend the next four years pretending that the GOP candidate lost because he wasn't quite outrageous enough.
It doesn't matter at this point whether Romney wins in November. If he's "lucky" enough to make it to Washington he will be little more than a hostage to a bizarre grassroots movement that neither trusts nor respects him and plans to push him around like a stooge.
It's time to give them what they want. Let them have Gingrich, Santorum or even Ron Paul. Let the talk radio fringe take over official leadership of the party so we can dispense with the toxic deception that rational people run the GOP.
Sensible conservatives need to face up to some cold facts. Until we reach the realization that we've been beaten we cannot begin building the infrastructure we'll need for a long insurgency to retake control of the conservative movement. The struggle ahead will not be easy. Best to stop putting it off.
Many if not most of the party's remaining rationalists outside the Blue States are in relatively senior positions in Washington. Successful lobbyists, pundits, wonks, staffers, and even some elected officials who managed to avoid the freakout that has swept the party have been watching it from above with detachment. Their almost magical denial lets them downplay the meaning of the insanity, pretending it's a temporary blip. Until it claims their job.
They expect administration appointments or positions on Capitol Hill. They expect jobs in think tanks and lobbying firms. They are not ready to go back to the trenches and fight their way up all over again from the outside. They have a vested interest in failing to see what's happened. In effect, they can be bought off individually long enough for the nutjob wing to steadily neutralize and replace them.
Two things have to happen before the Republican Party can start the long process of recovery.
First, the purge that has aggressively suppressed any hint of sanity or reason among the grassroots in much of the country has to reach the top. As long as guys like Mitt Romney can be impotently dragged around as the face of the party, the lunatics will continue to have crucial cover and the American public can still pretend we have two functioning political parties. Let the fringe win. Let them put "A Real Conservative" out front as the symbol of the GOP. Let Americans, especially Blue State conservatives who have been somewhat insulated from the madness, see the truth.
Second, Republican rationalists need to take a long hard look at Ron Paul's campaign organization. The only serious weakness in that machine is their candidate. Ron Paul is writing the book on how to wield the maximum political influence with the weakest of raw materials. Properly understanding Paul's success could shave a decade or more off of rationalists' effort to regain some influence.
I like Mitt Romney. He's precisely the type of sensible pragmatist that the country desperately needs. I think he believes in his heart of hearts that if he's able to get into the White House he will be able to change this country's direction in ways that could set it up for another generation of greatness.
I have also become convinced that he's utterly mistaken about his potential options. No one man can wield power independently in a democracy. If he's unfortunate enough to get what's he's asking for he will be bitterly disappointed with the outcome. It will never again matter who the Republican Party nominates at the top of the ticket until rationalists can regain some influence in the precincts.
They say that addicts can't begin to repair their lives until they hit bottom. Waking up in a ditch one afternoon with one shoe, no wallet, and a collection of unexplained injuries, one decides once and for all to get help and live sober, one day at a time. America is the abandoned family waiting for that loser to come home and live up to his obligations.
Let's muster the courage to turn off Fox and Friends and all say it together: "I am the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan, and I have a problem...."