Kevin Williamson
NationalReview.com
Is Barack Obama evil—or just incompetent? asked Kevin Williamson. That question now divides the Republican Party. Mitt Romney is drawing his support mostly from people like me, who view Obama as a rather conventional, John Kerry liberal who’s in over his head. We think his policies are mistaken, but we don’t hate him. But many conservatives have convinced themselves that Obama is a radical Bolshevik who “is trying to destroy America,” and they despise him as much as the Left loathed George W. Bush.
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This faction of the Right wants a candidate who’ll turn the 2012 election into “a national repudiation” of Obama, the Democratic Party, and progressivism itself. To these Republicans, I say beware. Romney may be “Mr. Plain Vanilla,” but he’s acceptable to the broad middle of the political spectrum, who care mostly about the economy and jobs—not a grand ideological confrontation. An über-partisan firebrand like Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum might frighten them away. Romney’s supporters may not love him, but we’d be “happy merely to win the presidential election.”
