The Model Candidate

Bruce at Maggie’s Farm is trying to demean and browbeat righties into supporting Romney:

Moreso than his opponents, Romney is what Republicans need to win, and what America needs to unseat Obama. I’ll vote for whoever gets the Republican nomination. But, I’m not happy at being part of many of my compatriots playing out a self-destructive temper tantrum that could lose the election.

It’s pretty common these days to accuse anyone not on Mitt’s bandwagon of being immature. Romney has the right shape and the right markings to appeal to conservatives, but he does not appeal to most of them. I don’t think it is because the righties are being childish.

And they’re surely not holding the candidates to some new and irrational purity test. The more conservative factions seem to prefer people with obvious flaws and contradictions to the stable, steady Romney. Although neo-neocon has done a nice job persuading me that Romney is more conservative than his record shows, Mitt has repeatedly failed to articulate a conservative vision of any substance and depth.

I can’t call Romney a phony. He is sincere, as far as it goes. But he has no weight. Mitt is a balsa wood conservative. The anti-Romney factions are not willing to support a toy candidate.