Clear Choice In 2012

Now that things have pretty well shaken out in the Republican race for who is going to run against the current president, one thing we know for sure. The candidate will be a conservative. There is one social conservative (Santorum), one classic conservative (Gingrich), and one moderate-conservative (Romney). Of course there is also a fourth man in the race, but he is really not a Republican and only uses the name of the party to get his Libertarian ideas out there. Ron Paul ran several times in Texas as a Libertarian Party candidate and could not get elected, so he became a Republican just to be able to get elected to something. I do not believe he can ever be a Republican nominee for president. However, with the amount of support he has garnered this time around, he might be tempted to run as a third party candidate, which will virtually assure President Obama's re-election.

In the three races so far Paul has come in second, third and fourth. Many of his libertarian ideas are registering with folks, but his foreign policy ideas are downright scary. In what promises to be a close race, Paul's running as a third party candidate with somewhere near 10% of the vote will be enough to elect Obama to a second term.

While it appears the Obama people think they are going to be running against Romney, already taking out ads against him, they may have counted their chickens a bit early. However, if Romney wins in Florida, that may just about sow it up for him. But Gingrich is surging right now and may pull off an upset in Florida. One wonders if there are really enough Gingrich-type conservatives in Florida to give him a victory such as the one he got in South Carolina. Newt has already confounded the pundits, most of whom have counted him dead in the water at least three times so far. In my view, Gingrich, with all his warts, may be the best one to debate Obama, but Romney probably has the best chance of winning the election.

One thing has been interesting. That group of religious conservatives, including the Southern Baptist spokesman Richard Land, that met in Houston the other day to try to derail Romney failed. This was a clear loss for this group of social conservatives. One wonders how much influence they will have going forward.

Personally, I do not believe we will know who the nominee is until Super Tuesday in March. That is the time when the importance of winning delegates will crop up. Until now it has just been preliminary activity. After Florida things will start to straighten out. The bottom line is that whoever of this group gets the nomination, he will be a better candidate than John McCain was—and more conservative. This will give us a clear choiuce between a Chicago liberal and a conservati8ve. One thinks government is the answer to everything. The other thinks that which governs least governs best.