Considering Mitt Romney’s status as the party’s presumptive nominee for the August convention in Tampa, Republicans must begin to consider him as the party’s standard-bearer and place their trust in this man.
Although he’s taken a thrashing throughout the primary season, Romney can be trusted by conservatives and the faster this reality is embraced, the more resources they, as a party, can devote to the fight against President Barack Obama.
The Republican National Convention, an election-year gathering of thousands of delegates elected from lower assemblies, will meet from August 27-30 in Tampa, Florida.
However, Romney, all things holding, is almost sure to be the presumptive nominee by then, having defeated most of the opposition posed by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
From around 2007 onward, Romney contended for the GOP’s nomination for President. Many in the “establishment” say he’s bided his time and waited his turn to run. He can now be trusted as a stable candidate, who’s neither a firebrand nor a “flavor of the month,” characteristics we’ve consistently seen among other candidates during this long campaign cycle.
While Romney has been accused of “flip-flopping” on numerous issues, we must make a distinction between political pandering and a genuine change of heart. In the case of the former governor, I suggest that his views are fundamentally pragmatic, and that certain issues may shift from time to time with him.
Remember that his strong faith defines him, giving him a strong basis for his thoughts, and while his ideology does not shift, his policies might.
I further posit that, to refine an earlier point, Romney is a strong pragmatist.
He seems to be committed to living in the real world, through his experience running a successful corporation and deftly managing the Salt Lake City Olympic Games of 2002.
Some commentators and activists who were involved in 1980 have drawn comparisons between Romney and famed conservative hero, President Ronald Reagan. Running for president in 1980, Reagan was slandered as a “moderate,” and it was said that he had governed from the center when he was at the helm of a liberal state, California. Reagan, of course, ended up being a galvanizing figure to the American right and still defines many issues to the party today. Does this criticism sound familiar?
It is similar to what has been hurled at Romney, a man who governed moderately while chief executive of a liberal state, Massachusetts.
Reagan was not considered exciting early in 1980; Romney has been lackluster in 2012 as well, but the former went on to carry the White House in a landslide.
Finally, the party must place its fundamental trust in Romney in order to ensure he defeats President Obama this November.
Without the full support and votes of both activists and establishment, the full talents of the volunteers and trust of conservatives, Romney cannot and will not defeat Obama. For Republicans, trusting Romney is a matter of electability and ensuring the direction of the country changes. Without it, he fails.
Since he is not the kind of candidate who is thrilling or hyper-exciting to voters, the basic level of interest we must show in him is trust, and a sense of faith that he will make the right choices if elected, in light of his business background and experience.
