Romney More Like Progressive Nixon Than Conservative Reagan

Mitt Romney is the 2012 version of Richard Nixon. Not the tricky Dick of Watergate or the paranoid of the media and “enemies” Richard Nixon. But rather Mitt Romney is the modern version of progressive Richard Nixon. Nixon was never a conservative and in fact came from the progressive wing of the Republican Party. It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan in 1980 that the GOP became the conservative party that it is today. Prior to that progressives dominated the GOP just like they did the Democrat Party. Nixon comes out of that progressive tradition.

During Nixon’s six years as President he created the EPA, created and enforced wage and price controls and did absolutely nothing to scale back President Johnson’s Great Society welfare programs. He also didn’t do anything on tax cuts and in some cases he raised taxes. As I said, Nixon wasn’t a conservative. The results of his Presidency have been disastrous for the nation, even today. And of course I’m not even talking about Watergate. The EPA costs businesses billions of dollars and costs Americans thousands of jobs. Wage and price controls destroyed the economy into the 80′s and played a key role in destroying Jimmy Carter’s Presidency. (Carter ended up nailing his own coffin shut but Nixon’s policies certainly hurt him)

Mitt Romney isn’t a conservative. He’s talked about cutting taxes but other than that is there any solid conservative position that he holds? He’s flip flopped on abortion, so he doesn’t even have that issue to hang his hat on. He’s responsible for Romneycare in Massachussetts, which like Obamacare is a disaster. He believes in man made global warming/climate change and wants to use government to “fix” it. As Governor of Massachusetts he did little to curb regulations. This guy isn’t a conservative, he’s a progressive from the Nixon wing of the GOP.

How can we nominate a man who cannot even attack Obamacare without being charged as a hypocrite? How can we nominate a man who is just as far left on global warming as Obama is? Obama will have a field day with Romney in the debates when these issues come up. Romney stands with Obama more than he stands with conservatives. Supporting a few tax cuts doesn’t make someone a conservative. Even JFK cut taxes, he was hardly a conservative though. There has to be more to conservative philosophy than tax cuts. Surely big government health care programs, radical environmentalist regulations and the like don’t fit the conservative billing. Romney’s policies are much closer to Nixon’s than they are to Reagan’s or to general conservative philosophy.

The media doesn’t completely hate Mitt Romney, which ought to be a warning signal for conservatives. The left-wing mainstream press will turn on Romney if he gets the nomination but until then they have nothing but glowing things to say about him. That’s because he’s more like them than he is like the Tea Party. All of the conservative candidates are being attacked by the press, including a certain woman who isn’t even in the race. Sarah Palin was attacked for her Paul Revere comment three straight days on NBC’s Nightly News. If that isn’t over the top bias, I don’t know what is. In any event, Palin, Bachmann, Gingrich, and Pawlentey have all come under attack by the mainstream press but not Romney.

We Republicans need to nominate a real conservative this time around. We haven’t since 1984 when Reagan was nominated for re-election. Both Bush’s, Dole and McCain were all from the progressive wing of the party. In varying degrees of course, Dole and McCain more so than President Bush, 43. But they still all came from that wing of the party.

The problem for conservatives is that we’re split up between several candidates and the progressives are locked behind Romney. We need some attrition in our ranks and perhaps Gingrich’s recent troubles will remove one conservative from the ballot. What we cannot do is allow a progressive like Romney to win the nomination. A Romney victory will set conservative, Tea Party politics back 40 years.