Finally, we have reached the turning point of Mitt Romney’s quest to become the Republican nominee for President of the United States of America.
His actions over the next twenty-four hours will tell us whether his campaign should go on or whether he should simply pack up and go home.
Mitt Romney has been presented with the perfect opportunity to show himself to be the rock-ribbed, decisive conservative that he claims to be, or prove himself once and for all to be the weak, flippy-floppy, Democrat-leaning pushover that his record as Governor of Massachusetts suggests.
Top Advisor to the Romney campaign, ex-Senator Norm Coleman has publicly stated that ObamaCare won’t ever be repealed “in its entirety,” and that “you can’t whole cloth throw it out.”
This is particularly important because Coleman is said to be Romney’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services as well as a friend.
Ed Morrissey has a good write up on this over at Hot Air. Go read it all.
The Romney campaign has responded to Coleman’s deep betrayal of Republican voters and, one would think, Romney himself thusly:
that while the candidate respects Coleman, he disagrees with this assessment, according to Ramesh Ponnoru.
Wow, you’d think from that bloodless response that Coleman disagreed with Romney over whether red M&Ms or green M&Ms were tastier not the key issue in the upcoming election.
Not only is Coleman saying that Obamacare won’t be repealed in its entirety, he’s suggesting that it shouldn’t be repealed at all.
And this is the guy with the inside track as Romney’s head of Health and Human Services.
Let me cut to the chase here: the proper response to this outrageous breach of faith with the Republican voter and Romney himself is to publicly fire Norm Coleman from the Romney campaign.
Not to politely disagree with Norm Coleman.
Not suspend him from the campaign.
The proper reaction is to Fire Him Now.
And the firing needs to be done in public or at least publicly announced by Mitt Romney himself with the assurance that Coleman will absolutely not serve in any capacity at all in an upcoming Romney administration.
The repeal of Obamacare will require a real heart-felt, hard-nosed fight from Republicans. They must be willing to use all means fair and foul to do so- up to and including the temporary repeal of the filibuster to get it done.
The reason for the continuing softness of Republican support for Mitt Romney has to do with whether or not he has the guts to take on a hard fight and make the hard choices to get our country back on track.
Many of us believe when it comes down to a choice between carrying out the wishes of the Republican base or catering to the demands of cronies and rent-seekers like ex-Senator Coleman that Romney will choose the easy path of half-measures that leave policies like Obamacare in place with taxpayer money going now to Republican cronies instead of Democrats.
This is unacceptable and will lead to the death of the Republican Party. If the middle class, if those of us who work-hard and play by the rules are going to keep having our freedom and income stolen to be given to another set of rent-seekers and cronies, why vote Republican?
And more to the point, why nominate Mitt Romney to be our standard bearer?
Romney now has the chance to prove his conservative bona fides and political toughness.
He can fire Norm Coleman now. Do it publicly. And publicly assure the Republican base that not only will Norm Coleman not Head the HHS, Norm Coleman will have no place or position in a Romney administration.
Or he can prove himself to be what many of us fear- a weak, watery, Democrat-leaning blancmange of a man.
The choice is yours Governor Romney.
And the clock is ticking.
I think Romney won’t fire Coleman because Coleman accidentally said what every establishment Republican thinks – including Romney. I predicted in 2009 that the Democrats will drag out the baby-killer accusations as soon as anyone dares to seriously threaten Obamacare. Establishment Republicans are very scared of that. They would much rather lie down and let the Democrats rape them time and again rather than be accused.
Between this and the poor remarks, we have much more to fear from Romney than Gingrich! Gingrich might get hammered with the Nixon comparisons but Romney will play right into the out-of-touch-rich-guy narrative.
Heck, he’ll feed them lines without realizing the campaign will be lost in the edit room. I think Obama will paint Romney as a right-wing John Kerry and the only thing they’ll have wrong is the word “right”.
My advice to Romney is don’t try to use shocking phrases for effect. Any 2 words can be lifted and become the lead soundbite. In an America where 140 words constitutes an essay, no one in the press cares about context.