A GOP Civil War Simmers
One side will blame the loss on Romney's turning too conservative in his rhetoric for even conservatives to believe. The other will blame Romney for failing to sound conservative enough.
Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, a Ronald Reagan speechwriter, spoke for many when she blogged, "It's time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one. It's not big, it's not brave, it's not thoughtfully tackling great issues. ... An intervention is in order. 'Mitt, this isn't working.' "
Farther-right voices like Rush Limbaugh, Erick Erickson and Ann Coulter urged Romney to double down and wage a full-throated charge against Obama's "welfare state."
The current infighting is not new. The tea party wing has been at odds with moderates since their birth in 2009. Nor is infighting unique to Republicans. Democrat-on-Democrat bickering goes back at least to the days of Will Rogers' variously quoted declaration: "I am not a member of any organized political party; I'm a Democrat."
What makes the currently premature Romney post-mortems notable is how fierce the fighting sounds so soon before all of the votes are cast.
"How does a Republican lose in this environment?" fumed blogger Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. "If the GOP standard bearer does lose, there should be Robespierre-like recriminations."
Well, no one expects the tumbrils and guillotine of the French Revolution, I hope. But the current GOP disarray resembles the flurry of factional blame that followed conservative Barry Goldwater's landslide loss in 1964. Conservatives didn't get the victory they really sought until Reagan won in 1980. Revolutions don't happen overnight.
But let's not be too hasty. We haven't even had the debates yet. Elections always have ways of surprising us. Romney still could turn things around, even if it takes a mammoth stumble by Obama for that to happen. Perhaps then, after his victory, we can find out what this moderate-turned-conservative really believes.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com.
(c) 2012 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
