In the wake of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s disastrous debate performance, many conservatives are facing the reality that they may be stuck with Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee just as they were stuck with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2008. Tim Carney describes in his column how this came to be even though Romney, like McCain, was the driving force behind a law that was anathema to conservatives. The difference is in 2008, there wasn’t a realistic chance that any Republican would win given the anti-Bush sentiment, whereas this time around, things are reversed, and it’s President Obama who is the vulnerable incumbent. So there’s a pretty decent chance that if Romney is the nominee, he’ll be our next president.
The questions for conservatives wrestling with the prospect of a President Romney are: how do they prevent him from governing as a big government Republican once in office, given his liberal past and penchant for shifting positions? How do they ensure that the guy who was the architect of the Massachusetts health care law actually fights to repeal Obamacare? How do they get a calculating politician who attacked his rival for daring to criticize Social Security to actually reform entitlements? Though it can’t make up for true presidential leadership, the one way conservatives could attempt to force Romney to govern as a conservative or temper his big government impulses, would be to pack Congress with as many conservative, or Tea Party, members as possible.
The reason is that recent politics has taught us is that there’s no incentive for the opposition party to cooperate with the party in power. Given that a President Romney would draw near universal opposition from Congressional Democrats, he’ll need to rely almost exclusively on Republicans to get anything done.
If Romney were to become president, the White House would arm-twist Congressional Republicans in an attempt to get them to compromise. Rank and file Republicans would be told that they have to vote for the president’s agenda, that if they don’t, it will weaken the party politically. They’ll be told if they just pass this one thing he wants, he’ll get to Obamacare and entitlement reform — eventually. They’ll be assured that soon, Romney will do something about spending. Of course, we all know that nothing would actually happen, especially with a politician like Romney.
Thus, the only way of preventing this outcome is to elect Republicans who are driven by principle rather than a lust for power, and are willing to stand up to a president of their own party. Because Romney likes to take the the path of least resistance, Republicans in Congress will have to erect legislative barriers to him acting as a big government Republican.
The track record on this isn’t too impressive. Generally, Republicans only attempt to oppose big government when a Democrat is president, and go along with the spending when a Republican is in charge. We didn’t have a Tea Party during the Bush administration, and Republicans in Congress went along with him in enacting the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society in the form of the Medicare prescription drug plan, expanding the role of the federal government in education, and passing one pork-laden spending bill after another.
Knowing that 2012 was going to be a great opportunity, conservatives went into the primary season hoping a candidate would emerge who was untarnished by scandal, energetic, intelligent, competent, articulate, charismatic, solidly conservative, and capable of beating Obama. Though each candidate has brought various strengths and weaknesses to the race, no one candidate has truly satisfied conservatives. If Romney wins by default, a lot of conservatives will be especially disillusioned. And they’ll resent being told that they have to fall in line and campaign for the lesser of two evils. That’s why I think if Romney ends up being the nominee, Tea Partiers and conservative activists will have to turn their attention to House and Senate races, in the hopes of electing candidates that will make him govern as more of a conservative than he’d otherwise be inclined to be.
