Romney: Can he win over conservatives?

last updated 8 January 2015

Mitt Romney’s road to the Republican presidential nomination is now clear, said Fred Barnes in The Wall Street Journal. But without strong conservative support, he’ll never make it to the White House. During the primaries, social conservatives consistently spurned the former Massachusetts governor for a parade of rivals, and rank-and-file conservatives still doubt that he’s sincere about his changes of heart on abortion, same-sex marriage, and big government. He can’t win critical swing states without a big Republican turnout. “If he loses 4, 5, 6 percent of the conservative base, that’s the election,” said former Reagan adviser Gary Bauer. Romney is “boxed in,” said E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post. In wooing social conservatives by adopting hard-line positions on contraception and Planned Parenthood, he alienated many female voters, who now favor President Obama 55 to 39 percent. If he tries to win women back, “Romney will only aggravate his enthusiasm problem on the Right.”

The base may never love Romney, said Byron York in the Washington Examiner, but he’ll get their votes. The GOP “is totally, completely, and unalterably united on the importance of beating Obama.” As long as Romney continues to “emphasize the overwhelming urgency” of ousting a disastrous president, he can count on the support of even ardent Rick Santorum supporters. And “contrary to popular thinking, Romney is not a tough sell to social conservatives,” said Jordan Sekulow in WashingtonPost.com. His campaign just needs to highlight “the tremendous differences” between him and Obama: “higher taxes (Obama) vs. lower taxes (Romney), more government regulation (Obama) vs. free enterprise (Romney).”

Ah, how easily you ideologues can be manipulated, said Conor Friedersdorf in TheAtlantic.com. Look at the last election. John McCain spent most of his Senate career as a maverick Republican who often sided with Democrats. Then he chose conservative populist Sarah Palin as a running mate, and the base swooned. This year, conservatives will find some similarly flimsy reason to rally around Romney. Meanwhile, President Obama will have no problem uniting progressives, “despite his atrocious record of broken promises on civil liberties and executive power, because, well, ‘the war on women!’” This is why presidents and political parties routinely betray their bases once they win elections. Partisans are “easily distracted from core issues, deeply invested in symbolic fights, and always fall in line.”