I didn’t think it would happen so quickly, but today during his speech in Ohio President Obama accepted my challenge to make this election about the competing world views of liberals and conservatives.
Yesterday, I noted that President Obama’s liberal world view is one in which taxes rise and freedom recedes as government grows and liberal policies of spend, borrow and tax to maintain a huge public sector gobble-up a larger and larger share of the money Americans used to invest in the private economy or spend in their own pursuit of happiness.
Today, during a campaign speech in Ohio Obama outlined the campaign in similar terms. "In this election, you have two very different visions to choose from," Obama told about 1,500 supporters at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. "This isn't some abstract debate. This isn't another trivial Washington argument," said the president. "This is a make-or-break moment for our middle class."
We leave the class-based rhetoric to the liberals and Democrats, but they at least understand that this election may decide the future of the tax, borrow, spend and re-distribute model of government that has prevailed here and in Western Europe for the past 65 years.
When voters in this center-right country have a clear choice between liberal statism and conservative government they almost invariably choose conservative government. The big question now is will Governor Mitt Romney, Republican House and Senate candidates and the Republican leadership in general have the courage to take-up the challenge.
Romney can win, and bring with him a big Republican majority, only if he doesn't fall victim to the timidity of past establishment Republican candidates -- who have campaigned as Democrats light -- and instead offers a world view based on freedom and a small constitutional government in radical contrast to the one offered by President Obama today.
No conservative could EVER support Romney
There are several interpretations on what it means to be a true conservative, and there isn't space enough to explore them here. But a vital, consistent distinction of conservatism in assessing potential candidates for public office involves two immovable traits, cornerstones if you will, that accessorizes all other issues: character and past behavior. Each substantiates the other.
Mitt Romney's character, to be kind, is unreliable; to be blunt, is untrustworthy. This is demonstrated by his behavior up to now, i.e., past performance. It doesn't matter what he says now, who he selects for a running mate, how presidential he looks, etc., he will continue to do what he always has done.
Barack Obama also had a track record. Nothing he has done has surprised me at all, except the swiftness with which has has done it (he's not as bright a bulb as many say he is). Obama's past actions define his character and his subsequent actions have been in lock-step with those of his past.
Mitt Romney's past actions show that he is a liberal through-and-through, and his future actions will be no different.
Based on this truth, no true conservative could ever support him -- not even as a lesser-of-two-evils. A lesser-of-two-evils is still an evil -- a more dangerous one, because a new baseline will have been established, a new definition or image of what a "conservative" is will be the reference point in the minds of the populace.
No, the only options are to mobilize and prevail at the GOP convention for a real conservative candidate; or, if the Republican party has been lost to the Romney-types, get strongly behind a true conservative outside the GOP.
Now. This election.