RCP poll

I’m toting up the VFR presidential poll results, but in the meantime, Real Clear Politics has a somewhat more representative presidential poll matching five Republicans against three Democrats. The results are, to say the least, not promising for the conservative side. The signs seem to be coming in from every direction that this is not going to be a good quadrennial event for us and we’re going to need to direct our attention to where it can do some good.

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Five minutes after posting the above, I realized I had fallen into the trap I’ve been warning others against—believing the message we’re been hearing from all quarters that Romney is no good, Romney is a loser. And based on what? On a couple of second-place finishes in two small unrepresentative states, and a few polls concerning an election that is ten months away.

To see the anti-Romney smog machine in action, look no further than the columnist Michael Medved, champion of open borders, despiser of Americans who favor border controls, which ought make him a real reliable authority for conservatives. Medved declares that “Mitt Romney unequivocally qualifies as the weakest candidate the G.O.P. could field.” To explain Romney’s poor showing, Medved appeals to none other than the ultimate liberal paranoid hater of conservatives, New York Times editorial page editor Gail Collins:

“Unfortunately, there’s something about Romney’s perfect grooming, his malleability and his gee-whiz aura that seems to really irritate both the other candidates and the voters,” she writes. “What bothers voters about Romney, as it turns out, is not his Mormonism but his inherent Mitt-ness.”

She’s right, of course. As I’ve said repeatedly over the last several weeks, the problem for Romney isn’t his faith, it’s his phoniness.

Think of it. Romney is matched up against the biggest phony in modern American political history, John “My friends, I’m a proud conservative” McCain. But McCain is a fine fellow, while Romney’s supposed phoniness is not just a flaw, but a fatal defect.

Medved continues:

I know many good people and committed conservatives who say they like Romney and insist, despite his back-to-back losses against flawed candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, that he’d still be the strongest Republican in November.

How then, do they explain his devastatingly poor performance in the latest trial heats—a performance that corresponds to his similarly feeble showing in prior polls (particularly against Obama) conducted by Rasmussen, USA Today/Gallup, and Zogby?

With key primaries coming up in Michigan and South Carolina, support for Romney would seem to indicate a powerful and problematic Republican death wish.

It doesn’t occur to Medved that Romney is a new figure on the national scene, an odd duck in some ways, and takes some getting used to before one sees past the surface—yes, the “Ken Doll,” “plastic” surface—to his genuinely impressive qualities. I thought Ronald Reagan was plastic for years before I saw his true worth. But this is the age of instant valuation, based not on our considered understanding of what is true, but on what the experts of the moment tell us to believe.

Finally, according to Medved, if conservatives don’t reach their decision about which candidate to support solely on a couple of polls, if they choose the man who best represents their beliefs and who seems like the best candidate overall, this means that they have a “death wish.”

In other words, if you’re a thinking, valuing person, and not a piece of fluff being blown about by the opinion-fashion of the moment, there’s something wrong with you. Just as there’s something wrong with Mitt Romney, though for a different reason

Medved, like the liberal he is, doesn’t have arguments. He divides humanity up into those who make it as acceptable human beings and those who don’t.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 13, 2008 11:53 PM | Send