From Jim Geraghty over at NRO’s Campaign Spot:
…CNN polled New Hampshire Republicans, and found more or less what we would expect: Mitt Romney at 32 percent, Ron Paul at 9 percent, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani at 6 percent, Sarah Palin at 5 percent, and a lot of candidates tied at 4 percent: Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Mitch Daniels [who announced he wasn’t running on the last day of the poll], Jon Huntsman, and Tim Pawlenty. Another 17 percent are undecided…
Geraghty’s opinion is that Romney’s numbers reflect name recognition and that everyone else needs to brush up on that. Geraghty is usually extraordinarily perceptive on these matters, but that is just silly – Palin and Giuliani have near universal name recognition in the United States and among Republicans only someone like Cain might still be a bit of an unknown. No, this isn’t name recognition – this is support. Probably soft support as it is very early and Romney’s main strength is “acceptability”…we’ll see how he does in the rough and tumble. But, still, this is good news for him.
My main issue with Romney isn’t RomneyCare or his straying in to liberal positions while he was governor of uber-liberal Massachusetts – it is that he seems a man who wants to meet the Democrats on the level and part on the square. In other words, he wants to get along with people and work across the aisle…you know, like a respectable Republican should. The problem with this that President Bush tried to do precisely that and Democrats lacerated him for his efforts and, additionally, now is not the time to be nice. It is time for a revolution – we need to gut liberalism. We need to crush it, destroy it, discredit it and remove it from power…cut off its funds, end its special privileges and so thrust it in to outer political darkness that it can never threaten the United States, again. I don’t believe Romney is up to this task – or even realizes that is the task of the next President.
Perhaps Romney can convince me otherwise. If he does wind up with the GOP nomination, I hope he does so convince me. But until he does, he won’t get my support in the primary…of course, up against Obama he’ll have my enthusiastic support because we simply must get that dunderhead out of office. But I’d rather be enthusiastically supporting a candidate who knows what needs to be done.
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