{"id":906,"date":"2011-11-25T13:33:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T20:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libertymusings.com\/blog\/?p=906"},"modified":"2011-11-25T13:33:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T20:33:27","slug":"charge-ahead-to-defeat-with-mitt-romney-lets-do-it-again-with-another-moderate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.libertymusings.com\/blog\/charge-ahead-to-defeat-with-mitt-romney-lets-do-it-again-with-another-moderate\/","title":{"rendered":"Charge ahead to defeat with Mitt Romney. Let’s do it again with another moderate."},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read a truly ignorant column by Victor Davis Hanson posted on TownHall.com about Mitt Romney as the castor oil candidate<\/a>. We don’t like how he tastes, but he is good medicine for us.<\/p>\n

Now I’ve been around long enough to understand the power of wishful thinking and how it can distort judgment, but I must confess that I am amazed at how much traction this squishy moderate Republican thinking gets after it has led the Republican party to defeat time after time. I’m having a strong case of deja vu here, remembering 1996. We had a Democrat president who was weakened by serious scandal. Many Republicans were salivating at the upcoming election and the chance to boot him out.\u00a0Many of them, again, felt like the best chance of beating him was with a mild-mannered moderate. And so we got Bob Dole leading us on the charge, and he crashed and burned. But what should we have expected? Didn’t Gerald Ford flub his campaign against one of the worst presidents in American history, Jimmy Carter. But wait, there is more. In 2008, another moderate, John McCain, who should have wiped the floor with the fringe leftist Barack Obama, screwed up that campaign and got us into our present mess. But the pinnacle of ridiculousness is all these people like Victor Davis Hanson who haven’t learned that Reagan was right. For a successful conservative campaign, you need bold colors, not pale pastels. The problem with the popularity of Republicans on the national scene is not their conservatism. Conservatives outnumber liberals two to one. It’s their moderation, their wimpiness, their timidity.<\/p>\n

So this piece by Mr. Hanson represents a serious case of wishful thinking. The seriousness of his wishful-thinking affliction is revealed in his factual error about Michele Bachmann’s campaign. I will elaborate on this in another post. Please see my follow-up post, Michele Bachmann has not stumbled<\/a>.<\/p>\n