I think that some people have either lost a sense of historical perspective here or are expecting an unrealistically quick sea change if their contention is that Romney is unacceptably moderate to get their vote in a general election. Turning back the wayback machine to 1992, recall that our nominee (among other things) was most recently known for 1) raising taxes and 2) nominating a pro-choice justice to the Supreme Court. In 1996 we ran “tax collector for the welfare state” Bob Dole, whose cronies groused openly about removing the pro-life plank from the Republican party platform. In 2000, George W. Bush ran on an open platform of instituting the largest entitlement expansion in decades (Medicare Part D), amnesty for illegal aliens, and loads of other big government ideas. I mean, GWB wasn’t defending having done those things in the past, he explicitly told us that if elected, he would implement them as President. To say nothing of the fact that his wife was openly pro-choice and he flirted openly with the idea of selecting Tom Ridge as VP. In 2008, we ran a guy whose entire national name ID was due to the fact that he was, without a doubt, the handiest and most available useful idiot for the media to grab when they needed a Republican to criticize the Republican party…
I guess what I am saying here is that if Mitt Romney is the standard-fare establishment candidate who we would all only grudgingly settle for after all other options are exhausted, then we should recognize that we as conservatives have successfully moved the party significantly to the right over the last two decades, and it would be absolute infantile madness to disregard this fact and refuse to support Romney (if he is the nominee) in the general election against Obama because more conservative candidates were unable to convince GOP primary voters to vote for them.
