The Republican Party is going to lose the 2012 presidential election. Plain and simple. Unless, of course, the GOP is able to rally itself behind a candidate that can capture the interest of swing voters. Unfortunately, with the current climate and division within the party’s base, many of those who would vote conservative are afraid of having to choose between liberal President Barack Obama and a GOP candidate who is too conservative to be elected.
To be blunt, there are a lot of “nutters” running for president under the republican ticket. While at a GOP debate in early November, Rick Perry – the current governor of Texas – could not remember the executive departments of the government he planned on removing. That’s in addition to his inability to speak coherently in regards to former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney’s political flip-flopping on abortion.
In August, at a campaign event in Florida, Michele Bachmann suggested that then-recent East Coast hurricane and earthquake were signs from God that she should be president. On Sept. 12, Bachmann claimed that the human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil caused mental retardation.
The irrationality doesn’t end there. In a March speech at the Cornerstone Church in Texas, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was quoted saying “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time [my grandchildren are] my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.” If not self-explanatory, the convoluted statement suggests that Christianity alone defines Americanism, and contradicts itself by fearing both secularism and Islam simultaneously.
This is not going to work. Our country does not need a radical voice on to which they can attach their ideas and beliefs, but rather a conservative candidate whose ideas align with the people. During the 2008 presidential election, Arizona Sen. John McCain shot himself in the foot when he selected former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate. Between failing to state a Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed other than Roe v. Wade and an inability to differentiate between North and South Korea, her idiocy, quite frankly, terrified the electorate. Now the GOP is forced to choose a presidential candidate in the same environment, disregarding folks that should never be allowed to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world.
With that said, there is only one possible hope for a conservative president in the election ahead. Between the unstable Gingrich, Perry and Jon Huntsman, the silly Ron Paul and the downright-ridiculous Bachmann, the only reasonable choice is Mitt Romney. Let’s face it: With the exception of his stance on LGBT issues, the Mass. health care law and pro-life speeches, Mitt Romney is the GOP’s only hope to “win” the White House, and even that’s a stretch.
Yes people are unhappy. It’s the same discontent that led to a liberal government in the post George W. Bush era. But that discontent is not as great as the fear involved with letting a radical conservative reign from our country’s seat of power. So let’s give the GOP a fighting chance and support Romney as the only logical candidate to face off against Obama in the 2012 election.