It's been a good month for Mitt Romney. First, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie-a man many thought was well situated to become the fattest President since Taft-ended speculation on his bid and threw his (considerable) weight behind Governor Romney with an endorsement.
And now, Gov. Romney receives an infinitely more consequential and singificant endorsement: The Fusionism blog is giving it's coveted endorsement to the former Massachusetts governor.
Make no mistake: Mitt Romney is not our ideal candidate. Like many on the right, we have been searching high and low (and mostly to the right) for viable Romney alternatives for months. Some Fusionism favorites included Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and the aforementioned Gov. Christie. We also considered many in the current field; Pawlenty piqued our interest early, but ended his run before we'd figured him out. Perry looks like a great conservative alternative--if, that is, you don't mind the fact that he was the chairman of Al Gore's Texas campaign in his failed 1988 presidential bid and that he shares scads of superficial similarities with a certain other recent President who shall remain nameless (yes, I said superficial. Look, I don't think he's a GWB clone at all, and I know their animosity for each other is real, but you can't mis-under-estimate the power of superficiality in presidential politics. Hence our present Poser-in-Chief). Bachmann, too, is an excellent choice (as one friend of Fusionism is constantly reminding us, she looks like a centerfold and sounds like Reagan...or do I have it backwards...)but Fusionsim has long advocated that executive experience is a must-have for the presidency, an area where Ms. Bachmann is woefully lacking (and yes, this would have been an issue with Paul Ryan, absolutely). Cain is the candidate in the current field that exerted the strongest pull against our Romney preference, but 9-9-9 makes us cringe. While we inherently root for "outsiders," the reality is that building coalitions in Congress is a critical component of any president's success and Cain seems poorly disposed to be able to do that.
So, while all the candidates in the field have their merits (my apologies to the also-rans for not affording them longer put downs, but briefly, Santorum: wrong man for the moment as his focus is moral decline not economic recovery; Gary Johnson: hey, what happened to him anyway?; Newt: seriously? pay off your Tiffany's bill, then we'll talk; Ron Paul: more on him in a future post-a special case that merits its own space; that Utah governor guy: sorry, the other mormon got here first) they all certainly have their flaws as well.
Still, we are not choosing Romney by default. Although not a conservative and certainly not a libertarian, Mitt has his own strengths that earn him Fusionism's nod nevertheless. The core case for Romney is competency. We are careening off the tracks with an absolute administrative novice at the helm. Mitt actually has experience running large enterprises, and in many different fields in (Massachusetts Governor) and out (Bain Capital) of government and in some cases had to put things back together after his predecessors blew everything up (Salt Lake City Olympics). After watching the debates--each of which, so far, seems to have been won by Romney--it's hard to deny that anyone on the stage exudes competence the way Mitt does. He's not the smartest (that's Newt), not possessed of the most Gipper-esque charm (Cain), not the most ideologically pure (Santorum, Paul, or Bachmann depending where you fit on the Fusionism conservative-libertarianism scale, and not the smoothest (ok, yeah, he's the smoothest, but that's a low bar). But if we were going out of town for the weekend and were leaving someone in charge of watering our pants and walking our dog and were in the unfortunate circumstance of having to choose our house sitter from the Republican presidential primary field, we'd pick Mitt Romney. And that matters.
We are choosing our chief administrator here, not a philosopher king. We're going with the best, most competent, administrative type with the most even temperment in the field. We'll save our ideological votes for the legislative races.
So, Stuff the Ice Chest!
