Taking the Romney Challenge

The Anchoress has laid down the gauntlet:

So, I’m asking respectfully – all you Suddenly Romney! fans – convince me: tell me why I should vote for Mitt “and like it,” and do it without using the words “John McCain.”

I’m willing to be convinced. But it has to be on the Merits of Mitt, and nothing else. You have about 24 hours, starting now. This is a chance for the Romney side to talk up their candidate without falling back on vituperation or the “not McCain” card.

Well, how can I pass up a challenge like that? There are three reasons why Mitt Romney is the best candidate, on the merits, without mentioning The Maverick Who Shall Not be Named. One is an issue. One is a matter of politics. One is a matter of principle.

I’ll start with the issue: immigration. Read on below the break.

Here is what Mitt Romney proposes to do about the immigration problem when he is elected President.:

Secure The Border. Follow through on Congressional commitment to build a physical and technological fence along the southern border, and secure other points of entry.

Implement An Enforceable Employer Verification System. Issue a biometrically-enabled and tamperproof card to non-citizens and create a national database for non-citizens so employers can easily verify their legal status in this country.

Reject Amnesty. Do not give amnesty or any special pathway to those who have come to this country illegally.

Punish Sanctuary Cities. Cut back federal funding to cities that are “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants and refuse to comply with federal law or aid federal law enforcement.

Improve Interior Enforcement. Provide resources to enforce immigration laws throughout the nation, and crackdown on employers who continue to hire illegals with stiffer fines and penalties.

Encourage Legal Immigration. Streamline the system to recruit and retain skilled workers and welcome the best and the brightest from around the world to our universities.

I’ll sum it up a bit more concisely: Secure the Borders, Enforce the Law, and Improve the Legal Immigration System. Note what Mitt isn’t going to do. He isn’t going to repeal legacy citizenship. He isn’t going to send the troops to round up a few million illegal immigrants. He isn’t going to push an onerous system on employers that are going to burden them with exorbitant costs and red tape. His solution is simple and full of common-sense.

So what’s the objection? The Anchoress expresses her reservations thusly:

For crying out loud, tell me the God’s honest truth, here: do you REALLY think Mitt Romney is going to do what you want on Immigration? Of course he won’t. Nothing I’ve seen of Mitt tells me this is a passionate issue for him.

Well, yes. Why wouldn’t I? Romney hasn’t given us any indication that he’s a liar. He hasn’t promised us one thing, then just decided to fly off and do something else just for giggles. Why on Earth wouldn’t I believe him? Now, granted, this is from his own web site, but I don’t see anything in his history on the issue that would indicate that he’s going to stab us in the back.

Oh…passion. Since he’s not spitting flecks of foam all over the microphones from here to Dubuque, he’s not serious, right? Since when did we conservatives decide that we would choose our candidates based on emotions? We are the ones who think. We reason through our decisions because we know that passion is a weak foundation on which to build any policy. We also know that passion can lead to rash and foolish decisions that we will regret later. So why does it matter now, with Romney, on this issue?

If the issue is that there’s no indication that he’s not taking the matter seriously, then consider who he hired to be his adviser on border security and immigration reform. The guy’s name is Kris Kobach and we last saw him defending the tiny town of Hazleton, PA against a combined onslaught of groups led by the ACLU. What so roused their ire was a new law that prohibited folks from knowing renting apartments or employing illegal aliens. The city did that because, as Kobach recounts:

Illegal aliens have committed several murders in the past two years in a town that previously saw murder occur only once about every seven years. Drug-trafficking and gun-running gangs comprised mostly of illegal aliens, MS-13 included, moved to this sleepy town. Drug crimes increased, with illegal aliens representing 30 percent of those arrested.

At the same time, the City’s budget became stretched to the breaking point. Illegal aliens working off the books were consuming city services without contributing anything to the City’s income tax base.

Again, Hazleton wasn’t rounding up illegal immigrants. The city wasn’t sending them to prison for being illegal immigrants. There were no convoys of buses hauling people out of Hazleton. The law said, quite sensibly, if you are here in violation of our democratically-enacted laws, you won’t find a welcome haven here. And Kobach stood up for that small town.

And he’s Romney’s top immigration and border guy. No, Mitt didn’t opt for overt displays of passion. Instead, he chose to bring in formidable expertise. This is something we should back wholeheartedly.

It’s pretty clear to me that Romney had put down his marker without equivocation on the right side of the illegal immigration issue.

Now, let’s talk politics. It is undeniable that Romney has changed his opinion on several issues over the past decade. It’s worth noting, though, that his changes have overwhelmingly moved him closer to bedrock conservative values. In other words, when Mitt has moved, he’s largely moved to the right.

And it’s not like he made all these moves when there was a political edge to be had, which is a common charge against him. Let’s look at one of his most storied changes – abortion. Here’s what he said nearly three years ago.

In considering the issue of embryo cloning and embryo farming, I saw where the harsh logic of abortion can lead–to the view of innocent new life as nothing more than research material or a commodity to be exploited,” Romney wrote in an opinion piece in Tuesday’s Boston Globe. He also said he believes each state should decide whether to allow abortion, rather than having the “one size fits all” precedent of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion.

It’s not tough to decipher what he said. He used to believe one thing about abortion but when he dug farther into the issue he realized he was wrong and he changed his opinion. Isn’t that what we want? Now, you may not like how he came to the decision nor may you find the reason for his position the best reason on Earth, but it’s tough to deny that he’s on the conservative side of the issue. And he got there honestly and openly. He didn’t just wake up one day, check the poll numbers, and decide that he needed a new position on abortion. Indeed, his evolution from pro-choice to pro-life is a story of a man making a decision based on emotion and, over time, coming to a new decision based on research and careful consideration. Is that a “flip flop” or is that what we want everyone to do – not just Presidents? I think it’s pretty clearly the latter.

What does that mean politically? Well, it means that Mitt Romney is a man who can be swayed by a convincing argument. That’s something that should gladden the hearts of conservatives, especially since we have almost always been the ones who could bring the convincing arguments to the table. It means that on positions where we conservatives differ from him, he has been, and can be, moved toward our point of view not through sad tales of woe or feel-good platitudes but through cogent arguments.

Now for the principle.

Mitt Romney is hardly a bastion of conservatism. No one can credibly claim otherwise. That’s not as damning as it sounds, though. What Romney lacks in conservative credentials he certainly makes up for in spades on comity with conservatives. If I can’t a President who agrees with me, I can certainly get behind one who thinks of me as an ally and an ideological brother. Of all the remaining candidates, he’s the only one about whom that is true. He may not be entirely on our side, but he seems always willing to listen and to give us our due.

The principle here is that he understands that conservatism is very important to the success and prosperity of this country. And while he may not hold every conservative principle as closely as I or others might want, he has a track record of treating those principles with respect and giving them their due. When he has launched a political attack, it generally hasn’t been conservatives who were his first, second, or third targets. He may not be our bosom brother, but he is certainly our friend.

And there’s no doubt that he believes that strong families are the backbone to our country’s continued health and prosperity. I mean, just look!

I think there’s a very good case to be made for Mitt Romney to be our President. I leave it to you to judge whether I’ve made that case but I’m pretty sure I’ve satisfied The Anchoress’ request. I eagerly await her verdict.

Oh, and one last thing. Mitt apparently has the nod from the Club for Growth. They’re a tough nut to crack and if he has their approval, he must have done quite a few things right.

UPDATE: There is one issue I didn’t tackle and I didn’t omit it on purpose: the military. I know it’s dear to The Anchoress and plenty of others, so let me say a thing or two about that.

I haven’t seen anything to indicate that Mitt isn’t fully supportive of our troops. There have been times when he hasn’t agreed with the course taken by the Commander-in-Chief, but who among us haven’t? Disagreeing with the President is different from not supporting our troops to the hilt. From everything I’ve ever seen, he’s done that.

As for the Surge, well, let’s be real here. No one, and I mean no one, was calling for the surge as we saw it applied. No one. There was a serious debate among those of us who have always wanted victory in Iraq about whether more troops would be a worthwhile thing, especially since the strategy used by generals before Petraeus were lacking in a lot of respects. I’m not willing to say that Romney didn’t support the surge. It seems to me that he was wondering, as were many of us, whether throwing in more troops just because more must equal better was a wise move without a serious and new strategy that would accompany their deployment. Since the surge and, more importantly, since General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy, Romney has been nothing but supportive.

And let’s also be honest in saying that he wasn’t exactly a nervous nellie on the surge beforehand either. He wasn’t champing at the bit, but neither was anyone else. If you think back, I’m pretty sure you’ll remember that the biggest “surge” suggestion going was a whole heck of a lot bigger than the one we have now. That wouldn’t have been a good idea, either. I’m sure we can agree to that also.

So I think we’re pretty darned safe to say that Mitt is going to treat our soldiers well and not spend their lives frivolously. He’s never shown us anything else.

As for the ongoing war against the Islamists, Mitt has been pretty blunt about the nature and identity of the enemy we face. His “new course” for the war is pretty darned ambitious, yet targets the areas of Islamic weakness – the people they cruelly enslave.

Romney also called for the United States to establish a “Special Partnership Force” — made up of Army special forces and intelligence personnel — to work with foreign governments to root out terrorists from their populations. “Their goal is to build national institutions of stability and freedom, and to promote the rule of law and human rights,” he said.

He’s also not much in favor of going meek on Iran either:

This is a time to tighten our sanctions, economic, because they’re having an impact, and to increase our diplomatic isolation of Iran and communicate to the Iranian people, as well as to its religious leadership that there is a downside to having fissile material in your country and, that is, if that material falls in the hands of terrorists who use it, that the world community is not going to just respond to the terrorists, it’s going to respond to who provided that material.

So we’ve got some education to do and we’ve got some tightening to do, but negotiation and engaging with the Iranians at this point is not the way to go and neither is invading them.

Nor has he ever been much for giving the Iranian leaders the red carpet treatment.

I think it’s fair to say that Mitt is serious about fighting the Islamists with all our assets – military, economic, and diplomatic – and not giving them any room to squirm.

No related posts.

Category: Featured, The 2008 Horse Race