Another GOP presidential primary season and another "non-conservative" is being chosen. This despite all the bragging by the candidates during the primaries about who was more Conservative. Instead it is the establishment that has chosen Romney. Just look all the endorsements he has. What it proves is voters are not whom really decide. It's money that rules. And the GOP is first and foremost a big business party.
Four years ago the GOP chose John McCain, who like Romney, had suspect Conservative credentials:
Senator McCain might help his cause with conservatives if he stopped
calling himself a conservative. He is damaging their brand name. And
conservatives should stop, now, demanding that he be a conservative:
that is not a condition precedent for being the better choice for
president. Conservatives should remember that the fault McCain is not a
conservative is partly their own: They have not succeeded in making
conservatism the iPod in the marketplace of political philosophies.
To
conservatives, John McCain sounds like the Devil. That is his fault,
not theirs. He has dissed them and enjoyed it. That is not presidential,
and if he does not stop he will not be president. He should make-and is
making-amends, and not for his own sake, or for the conservatives', but
for the country's.
The same column argued in 2008, like today with Romney, that the GOP should tolerate McCain because he is the lesser of two evils, even if he isn't a conservative:
It is time for conservatives to accept reality (accepting reality is
another conservative trait); and the reality is (1) John McCain will be
the Republican nominee for president and (2) he will make a far better
president than the Democratic alternative.
Lew Rockwell
got it right:
The Republican Party
is not now, never was and never will be a conservative party. It is
what it has always been — a representative of the rich and of big
business.
Both Bushes were suspect Conservatives. George W. described himself as a "compassionate" Conservative which is the same as saying he is not really conservative. Bob Dole was
no firebrand:
The moderate Bob Dole was the candidate in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. Bush ran on the “compassionate conservatism” platform—a clear indication he wasn’t entirely comfortable with traditional conservatism.
Finally, there was the “maverick” John McCain in 2008, who was compelled to reach out to leading conservatives in an effort to make amends for years of seemingly taking pleasure in poking them in the eye.
