I’m thinking of voting in the Republican primary.
I want to vote against Mitt Romney. I hope for the last time.
I’m writing this on the weekend between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. I’m hoping that by the time we get to “superduper Tuesday” in February that other voters, in New Hampshire and South Carolina, will have eliminated Romney as a potential Republican candidate; but given he has essentially unlimited funds and the absolute conviction that he should be president, I’m not confident that he’ll be safely out of it. An amazing number of people seem to have a hard time seeing past the good looks and the smooth presentation to his fundamental phoniness, even in Iowa where they got to meet him in person, not just on TV appearances. At least in New Hampshire the major newspapers have seen it, and Jane Swift gave her opinion forcefully.
Why do I dislike him so much? Because I saw what he did in Massachusetts, sweeping into the state with all his money and smooth talk, saying things he probably didn’t believe in order to look like a Massachusetts-style Republican and win election. One thing he said was the right to choose is an established principle in this country and he would support it. Another was that he would be a better supporter of gay rights than Senator Kennedy.
Now he supports neither. People on the inside insist he fired one of his appointees because the person had married a same-sex partner, not for the performance-related reason he claimed .
I was no fan of Jane Swift as Governor, but I disliked the way he and his supporters treated her. He is a secretly ambitious man who thinks he has the answers for everything, but whose experience in the private sector did not prepare him particularly well for government.
Romney has also hired Warren Thompkins as a consultant for his campaign in South Carolina. Thompkins is the man who created the ads in 2000 falsely claiming that John McCain had a black baby in order to help George W. Bush win the South Carolina primary.
Sunday, on the news, I heard Romney implying that he is above the partisan battles all the other candidates (to hear him tell it) are prone to. That’s rich. Again, ask Jane Swift; or Shannon O’Brien. Or, for that matter, any citizen of Massachusetts who watched Romney travel around the country, while governor, making his state the butt of his jokes while he courted Republican movers and shakers elsewhere.
My problem, of course, is that I can’t just vote against Romney; I have to vote “for” someone. That’s a hard one.
While I find Romney despicable, Huckabee is scary. Although he doesn’t openly proselytize, he doesn’t understand the importance of keeping religion and government separate – a lesson our founding fathers had learned from Europe’s dreadful experience during the couple of centuries of wars between Catholics and Protestants, but which too many of our contemporaries seem to be ignorant of. A few weeks ago I saw Bill Moyers say, on his show on PBS, that when he grew up as Baptist in Texas, they were taught that Jews were their allies because they both opposed government involvement in religion. He and his interviewee agreed that the Baptists have since forgotten their history as outsider rebels against government-sponsored denominations. Now some of them think it will be their religion that is “established,” and that’s the way they want it.
Rudy Giuliani? I can’t do it. He’s another ambitious and devious man who will cut his opinions to fit the electorate he is courting. Fred Thompson? I couldn’t even stand him on “Law and Order.” Ron Paul has some interesting ideas – and some crazy ones. He won’t get the nomination, so from that point of view he’s a safe protest vote.
In 2000, John McCain bent his convictions to try to appeal to the Republicans in South Carolina, and it didn’t work – all of which he has admitted. On the whole, I think, John McCain is an honorable man and I admire his personal courage and service. Voting for him will probably be the most effective vote against Romney, since he seems to be one of the main challengers. But he is probably the potential nominee who would be the hardest for the Democratic candidate to beat. That’s scary.
Why not vote in the Democratic primary? I might. I like various things about all the Democrats; I just want the party to nominate someone who can win.
Maybe on the Republican ballot I’ll write in Jane Swift (just kidding).