{"id":1736,"date":"2012-08-17T23:40:05","date_gmt":"2012-08-18T05:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=1736"},"modified":"2012-08-17T23:40:05","modified_gmt":"2012-08-18T05:40:05","slug":"is-mitt-romney-tough-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=1736","title":{"rendered":"Is Mitt Romney Tough Enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The very first email at the top of my inbox recently was a Wall Street Journal<\/em> Review & Outlook editorial titled \u201cWhy Not Paul Ryan?\u201d\u00a0 Having just listened to an hour of Fox News reports on the latest Romney miscues I couldn\u2019t help but wonder which job they were touting him for.<\/p>\n

The 2012 General Election will be the most decisive in U.S. history.\u00a0 Between now and Election Day, Mitt Romney will be attacked on a daily basis by some of the most evil people on Earth\u2026 Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and (name a Democrat).\u00a0 So the question arises, does Mitt Romney have what it takes to lead our party to victory against the forces of evil and then rescue the nation?\u00a0 Until Paul Ryan came along, conservatives had every right to be uneasy.<\/p>\n

For example, after a scathing Wall Street Journal<\/em> attack on RomneyCare, Romney provided the weakest of responses.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI stand by my successful healthcare plan in Massachusetts, but ObamaCare is a disaster because it does all of the things that RomneyCare does, just on a national level.\u00a0 So, if I am elected president I will give waivers to states so they can repeat my mistakes if they want to, or, if they are smart, they will reject both my approach and Obama\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was not a novice in the political arena.\u00a0 He should have known that to characterize his own Massachusetts healthcare initiative as a \u201cmistake\u201d was, in itself, a mistake.\u00a0 If he had any real sense of how conservatives see the respective roles of state and federal government he would have said, \u201cYes, the Massachusetts healthcare reform plan has not<\/em> been the panacea we hoped it would be.\u00a0 But the states are the laboratories of social and economic policy in our federal system and it is the states that must take the lead in trying to solve problems such as the healthcare crisis.\u00a0 Obama and the Democrats in Congress don\u2019t seem to understand that, when it comes to problems as great and as intractable as healthcare, the one-size-fits-all formula that they\u2019re so fond of just won\u2019t work.\u00a0 At least we tried.\u00a0 Now the Congress, the next president, and the other 49 states can learn from our experience in Massachusetts.\u201d\u00a0 That would have been the perfect answer.<\/p>\n

But it was in his announcement for the 2012 nomination that Romney caused conservatives to have serious doubts.\u00a0 Appearing before a crowd of New Hampshire supporters, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world is getting warmer.\u00a0 I can\u2019t prove that, but I believe, based on what I read, that the world is getting warmer.\u00a0 And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that.\u00a0 And so I think it\u2019s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you\u2019re seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more wishy-washy endorsement of global warming does not exist.\u00a0 If his purpose was to throw an ironclad conservative position \u201cunder the bus,\u201d based on nothing more than conjecture, why would he repeatedly insist that he didn\u2019t know anything about the issue?<\/p>\n

During the weeks preceding the Iowa caucuses, when Newt Gingrich was challenging him for frontrunner status, Romney decided to spend $15 million in a negative campaign to derail him.\u00a0 It had the desired effect, but Romney looked really bad doing it.\u00a0 So, if he felt uncomfortable going toe-to-toe with Gingrich, how could he ever expect to defeat a bunch of Democrats who will say and do literally anything to reelect Obama?\u00a0 At this stage of the game we can only hope that Romney will grow tougher and more resolute as we move past the convention and into the fall campaign.\u00a0 There are ways to take Obama apart piece by piece and make him lose his cool, but is Romney capable of doing that?\u00a0 Does he have the toughness to get the job done?<\/p>\n

For example, in their latest advertising outrage the Obama people have produced an ad in which a former steelworker\u2026 laid off when his employer was taken into bankruptcy by Bain Capital, two years after Romney left the company to manage the 2000 Winter Olympics\u2026 attempts to lay blame for his wife\u2019s death directly on Romney\u2019s shoulders.\u00a0 The fact is, the wife continued to have a job, with healthcare insurance, and was not diagnosed with cancer until 4 or 5 years later.<\/p>\n

In baseball terms, the Obama people have tossed Romney a high hanging curve.\u00a0 But instead of using the charge to show that Obama and his people are the lowest form of bottom-feeding scum, a Romney press aide, Andrea Saul, suggested that if the man had lived in Massachusetts under RomneyCare he would have had health insurance.\u00a0 Is Ms. Saul still employed by the Romney campaign?\u00a0 And if so, why?\u00a0 Romney has audio tapes of a senior White House aide discussing the contents of the ad with the former steelworker.\u00a0 The man\u2019s outrageous charges could only have gone from the White House to the Obama SuperPAC.\u00a0 That is patently illegal, but where is Romney\u2019s demand for resignations and indictments?<\/p>\n

In the same news cycle, the Daily Caller<\/em> reported that they have obtained emails showing that top Obama administration officials, including Treasury Department officials and Obama\u2019s auto\u00a0 czar, were the driving forces behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts division of General Motors.\u00a0 Those employees were singled out solely because they were not members of unions.\u00a0 Imagine the heartache and the desperation Obama has caused in those 20,000 households.<\/p>\n

According to the Daily Caller, \u201cThe internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures.\u00a0 They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those non-union pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, where is the outrage in the Romney camp?\u00a0 Does Romney have what it takes to counter Obama\u2019s brand of gutter politics?\u00a0 Before arriving at the White House, Obama had never so much as run a sidewalk lemonade stand.\u00a0 How could he ever hope to reorganize the auto industry?\u00a0 Ridicule is a powerful tool.\u00a0 Are the Romney people smart enough to use it?<\/p>\n

On the subject of job creation, House Republicans have passed and sent to the Senate at least 20 job-creating bills.\u00a0 But Majority Leader Harry Reid, the most despicable human being ever to set foot in the United States Senate, refuses to allow them out of committee for fear that Republicans might be given credit for a turnaround in the unemployment figures.\u00a0 And since the Democratic Party is wholly dependent on people\u2019s misery for their very existence, it\u2019s not likely that any of those bills will ever see the light of day.\u00a0 Will Romney have what it takes to hang that issue around the necks of Obama and the Senate Democrats?<\/p>\n

And finally, Obama\u2019s ill-conceived attack on Roman Catholic doctrine, contrary to the best advice of his own vice president and his chief of staff, is a gift that will just keep on giving\u2026 IF Romney has the political smarts to use it for all it\u2019s worth.\u00a0 While a majority of Catholics may not agree with church doctrine on contraception and may practice birth control in violation of church teachings, the laity see the issue in a much broader sense.\u00a0 Along with the vast majority of voters in mainline protestant denominations, Catholic laymen see it as an attack on religious liberty.\u00a0 It is the proverbial elephant in the living room.\u00a0 Can Romney capitalize on it?\u00a0 Will he?<\/p>\n

And while Obama will never willingly<\/em> put documents on the table to let us know who he is, there\u2019s nothing to stop Romney from assembling every conceivable kind of personal document, including tax returns from the years when he supposedly paid no federal taxes, spreading them out on a table, and saying, \u201cHere they are boys and girls.\u00a0 This is my life.\u00a0 I have nothing to hide.\u00a0 Now, Mr. Obama, let\u2019s see the story of your life.\u00a0 Put up, or shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are all questions that conservatives have been asking since the beginning of the primary season.\u00a0 After our experience with Bush (41), Dole, Bush (43), and McCain, conservatives have every right to question whether or not we want to take a chance with another moderate.\u00a0 If Mitt Romney is still unaware at this stage that Democrats don\u2019t play beanbag, then it\u2019s up to us to throw a few high hard ones past his chin just to get his attention.<\/p>\n

But there are signs that that may not be necessary.\u00a0 Now that he has named Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney appears to be animated in ways we\u2019ve never seen before.\u00a0 In response to the latest Obama-Biden outrages he demonstrated a bit of anger, saying, \u201cMr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago.\u201d\u00a0 And in response to Joe Biden\u2019s suggestion that Romney and Ryan would like to put black people back into chains, he said, Biden\u2019s comments are \u201cwhat an angry and desperate Presidency looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

But just as Romney begins to excite a bit, something happens to make him disappoint us.\u00a0 The Obama challenge to drop the issue of Romney\u2019s tax returns if he will only release five years of returns, was the perfect opportunity to challenge Obama to release all of his college entrance documents, his college papers, and his college grades.\u00a0 Tit for tat.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not what happened.\u00a0 Instead, a Romney spokesman merely responded, \u201cNo.\u201d\u00a0 Another opportunity lost.<\/p>\n

Nothing less than the future of western civilization rests on the defeat of Barack Obama.\u00a0 If he wins a second term, everyone loses.\u00a0 It\u2019s as simple as that. \u00a0As my former colleague, Alan Caruba, has written, \u201cBarack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life.\u00a0 We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The very first email at the top of my inbox recently was a Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook editorial titled \u201cWhy Not Paul Ryan?\u201d\u00a0 Having just listened to an hour of Fox News reports on the latest Romney miscues … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1737,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}