Romney Lets His Conservative Mask Slip
For a while now I’ve been saying that Romney is no conservative, and anyone holding him up as the hope for the conservative movement against Obama in 2012 is fooling themselves. During his campaign for the Republican nomination in 2007/2008 Romney held himself up as a rock-ribbed conservative. The reality is that he’s a power-hungry politician. He was one of the first political leaders in America to institute what amounts to a nationalized health care system in Massachusetts, and his various positions on abortion have changed so often in timing so convenient for his political career as to leave one with the notion that Romney (not unlike Obama) will try to be whatever you want him to be.
And, now Romney is in non-campaign mode, his conservative mask is slipping even more as Soren Dayton at The Next Right points out. In an interview with The Hill, Romney criticizes conservatives for talking about deregulation too much:
In an interview with The Hill, Romney said, “We as Republicans misspeak when we say we don’t like regulation. We like modern, up-to-date dynamic regulation that is regularly reviewed, streamlined, modernized and effective.”
He comes out in favor of government-run economic stimulus:
Similarly, Romney is among the many Republicans who support a stimulus plan, but not in the form Congress passed in February.
“The best stimulus with the highest multiplier effect is one which gives money back to people rather than having government spend more, and so I think they got it wrong. It’s too much weighted toward spending, too little weighted toward tax reductions,” Romney said.
And he’s wobbly on illegal immigration:
Romney believes that one way to attract more minorities to the GOP is to pass immigration reform before the next election, saying the issue becomes demagogued by both parties on the campaign trail.
“We have a natural affinity with Hispanic-American voters, Asian-American voters,” he said.
Speaking in his Ritz-Carlton room with a pair of blue jeans on the dresser, Romney declined to criticize immigration hard-liners like former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who backed Romney after he dropped his own presidential bid. Romney argued that all 2008 GOP candidates — including Tancredo — strongly favor legal immigration.
I think a lot of people like Romney because he’s a) got a lot of money and serious political support and b) has the looks and the smoothness that can give even Obama a run for his money.
But I ask: What good is winning elections if the people conservatives back to win them don’t end up governing like conservatives?
I was no McCain supporter in 2008, and I think I’d support Romney even less than I’d support McCain. Romney may at times come off as significantly better than McCain on many issues from the conservative perspective, but his opinions and stances seem so cynically calculated all the time that I’m left with the feeling that while I didn’t like what McCain had to say, I could usually count on the fact that he was at least telling the truth.
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