I couldn’t help but laugh. The irony is just too rich. Erick Erickson, the conservative blogger at RedState.com, could be shifting towards Hunstman after repeatedly criticizing him. As reported in the Miami Herald:
“I’m starting to think I need to walk it back on my rejection of Jon Huntsman,” Erickson wrote at the tail-end of a lengthy analysis titled “Mitt Romney as the Nominee: Conservatism Dies and Barack Obama Wins.”
“I’m starting to think even he (Huntsman) would be more faithful in his conservative convictions than Mitt Romney,” wrote Erickson, who has repeatedly criticized Huntsman and is far from endorsing him.
Though polls show Romney is the best Republican to beat Obama in a matchup, Huntsman said the candidate’s flip-flopping will ultimately be fatal.
In other words, Erickson would need to change his stance…to perform a flip-flop. This after supporting Romney in 2004.
Predictably, commenters immediately jumped on Erickson for his critique of Romney as a flip-flopper:
All politicians change their positions, most adults that live in the real world aren’t so naive to think otherwise. What’s funny is, Erick Erickson was Romney’s biggest booster in 2008. Does that make Erick a flip flopper, or a closet liberal for supporting Romney? What about Jim DeMint’s endorsement of Romney in 2008? Also a flip-flopper?
This is all to regurgitate the often repeated critique of GOP Presidential Nomination front-runner Mitt Romney that he’s a flip-flopper on issues important to the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
Jon Huntsman, on the other hand, is often critiqued as too moderate to survive a Republican primary battle, but according to an analysis by Nate Silver, would probably do better against Obama in the General Election…though, depending on how the economy is doing, several of the GOP candidates could win. (By the way, Obama needs, according to that analysis, at least 4.4% growth in the economy to bring his chances of reelection up to 50% against Jon Huntsman, but only needs GDP growth to be 3.2% to go neck and neck with Romney).
But back to the point: flip-flopping.
Does it matter? Do we really want a President who is so ideologically firm that he is unable to learn? Adjust to more information?
Further, are we really convinced that the President has as much latitude to do what he wants as we think? Once we get out of the twisted, warped world of campaign rhetoric (sometime around November 5 next November, barring a recount), a President has to govern, and governance does not happen in a vacuum, nor does it happen at the President’s whim. It’s informed by politics, not ideology. As columnist Peter Beinart argues, it may not matter whether Romney is ideological or not: he’ll tend to go the way of the Republican Party.
It doesn’t matter all that much what Romney really believes, or whether he believes much of anything. Romney will be a very conservative president because that’s the only kind of president a Republican can be these days.
Why? Because the President doesn’t make every decision himself. Yes, the buck stops there, but a lot of decisions–most of them, in fact, get decided before they ever get to his desk.
[W]ithin weeks of Romney’s election, his chief of staff would be culling through lists of potential deputy secretaries of the interior. The list would be generated by places like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and Chamber of Commerce. It would consist largely of people who served in the Bush administration, with perhaps a few entrants who stood out at the state level—which is to say, were particularly zealous in serving corporate interests—thrown in. This list would have been approved, if not actually assembled, by the very industries that the Interior Department regulates. It would be similar to the list that would have been assembled for President Perry or President Cain, and it would include no pro-regulation Republicans, because the people who produce such lists are in the anti-regulation business. Once Romney wins the presidency, all this would happen automatically. He wouldn’t have to do a thing.
Could Romney take a more active hand? Perhaps. But will he? Not likely. He’s a manager, not a micro-manager, and he’s going to be making broad policy decisions, leading by consensus.
The race is not about establishing conservative bona fides, meteoric rises in the polls, and flashy slogans, though those all play a role.
Rather, this race is, or should be, about grappling with the difficult issues our country is facing, demonstrating leadership, and stepping into a void that has been created by President Obama.
Of course, I’m talking about, among other things, entitlement reform. But that’s a discussion for another day.
So what’s really going on here? Romney has refused to kowtow to the far right of the Republican Party, who Erickson is often seen as representing. This salvo by Erickson appears to be more sour grapes than a result of any shift in Romney’s ideology.
Mitt Romney was good enough for conservatives like Erickson and Sen. Jim DeMint four years ago–what has changed now? Is Erickson earning the dreaded title of “flip-flopper?”
[The Daily Beast][New York Times Magazine][Red State][Miami Herald]
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