For many observers, the key question of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington was: How would Mitt Romney be received? Would the conservative crowd embrace him enthusiastically, or hold him at a distance?
As it turned out, the crowd embraced Romney enthusiastically. The former Massachusetts governor received an unquestionably warm reception at CPAC, and his speech was interrupted several times for applause.
Then the questions set in.
First, Romney seemed to try too hard to remind the crowd that he is, in fact, a man of the Right; he used the word “conservative” or some variant 24 times in the speech. To some ears, it sounded as if Romney was trying to prove his credentials simply by calling himself a conservative over and over. If he didn’t feel he had something to prove, would he have used the word so much? As the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein pointed out, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a hugely popular figure among conservatives, didn’t use the word at all in a CPAC speech Friday night.
Second, Romney’s explanation of his path to conservatism had nothing specifically conservative about it. He began by joking that he never read Burke or Hayek in college. “When I was your age, you could have told me they were infielders for the Detroit Tigers,” Romney told the students in the crowd. Instead, Romney said, “My path to conservatism came from my family, my faith, and my life’s work.”
“I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism,” Romney said.
Romney told the crowd his life is built around his religion, his long and successful marriage, and his five children and many grandchildren. What could be more conservative? Romney also said he has lived his conservatism in business. “In business, if you’re not fiscally conservative, you’re bankrupt,” Romney told the crowd. “I did things conservatism is designed for — I started new businesses and turned around broken ones. And I am not ashamed to say that I was very successful at it.” That line, coming after criticism from Newt Gingrich and others of Romney’s business record at Bain Capital, won Romney his loudest and most extended applause of the speech.
But the problem with Romney’s my-life-is-conservative argument is that there are liberal Democrats who also get married, stay married, have children and do well in business. One can do all those things and support higher taxes, a more intrusive government, and a weak foreign policy. And as far as business is concerned: Hasn’t anyone seen businesses, firms that are still in operation, waste millions of dollars on ridiculous expenditures? Fiscal conservatism doesn’t always reign in the business world. And finally, as Klein also pointed out, Romney led just as exemplary a personal and business life in 1994 and 2002, when he ran for office in Massachusetts as a moderate. Was he just as conservative then?
Finally, there was the tone-deafness implied in Romney’s use of a single word: “severely.” Romney’s prepared remarks called for him to cite a number of things he did as governor of Massachusetts — balanced the state’s budget, opposed gay marriage, supported pro-life issues later in his term — and conclude: “I was a conservative governor.” But on stage, Romney embellished his conclusion just a bit: “I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” he said.
To conservative ears, the word sounded odd. “Severe” is a word liberals use to describe conservatism, not a word conservatives use to describe themselves. “I have never heard anybody say, ‘I’m severely conservative,'” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program shortly after Romney spoke. “I’m not challenging his claim to be conservative, don’t misunderstand…I’m just observing here. I’ve never heard it said, ‘Yeah, I’m a severe conservative.'”
So after an undoubtedly friendly reception, Romney’s speech left questions in some conservative minds. Why, after all these years of campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, does he still feel the need to say the word “conservative” so many times that it calls attention to itself? And why, when he wanted to emphasize the strength of his conservatism, did he describe it as “severe”? The CPAC crowd was obviously receptive to Romney’s message and his record. Why reach for more?
