Mitt Romney: Not nearly crazy enough for modern conservatism (Larry Downing/Reuters)
That intangible entity known as "
Not Mitt" continues to flit from host to host, and some conservative groups are
beginning to panic:
Representatives for leading social conservative groups in Iowa held a secret meeting Monday as part of an effort with one main goal: find and support a Republican presidential candidate who can stop Mitt Romney in Iowa. [...]
In attendance were representatives from the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, The Family Leader, the group Iowa Right to Life, and a representative for the Iowa chapter of Concerned Women for America. Some pastors from prominent Iowa churches also attended the meeting.
A secret Republican group bent on defeating a Republican because that Republican isn't seen as ideologically insane enough to truly represent their crazy-ass party? Well, we can't say we didn't see that one coming. The ideological hoops you have to jump through these days in order to be considered a true conservative have become too numerous to count. First, George W. Bush was excommunicated from conservatism, and even called a "liberal" by some. Then it spread to Congress and the Senate. Now you're not a "true" conservative unless you want to roll back eighty years of government, replace the Constitution with the Ten Commandments and fire illegal immigrants out of a cannon into an electrified alligator-filled lake of molten sulfur.
So what's the grand plan by these groups, then? They need to rally their support behind a single not-Romney candidate in order to beat him. Who's in the running?
The effort is said to still be in the discussion phase. Participants were said to have narrowed their focus down to four candidates: Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
Oh, good gawd. Yes: Cain and Paul have already been axed as being insufficiently socially conservative. That leaves us with the Wonder Twins, Bachmann and Santorum, along with Rick Perry and, completely inexplicably, serial adulterer Newt freaking Gingrich.
Bachmann and Santorum I get: Yes, they're all about encroaching "Sharia Law" and making sure your kids don't have to get vaccinated or be subjected to unnecessary knowledge about biology. Rick Perry is a bit harder to puzzle out, because as far as I can tell he's just in the race as a sop to people who didn't think Michele Bachmann was dumb and inarticulate enough. And Newt ... well, what can we say about Newt? I think he's clearly only in the "social conservative" corner to the extent he thinks they can get him votes, and would relegate them to ex-wife status just as soon as he could possibly manage, but I imagine he's still in the running because these social conservatives recognize their other three choices don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. So he's in.
The secret SuperLeague of Ultraconservative SuperJustice is planning more meetings, at which they'll try to come to some consensus about who they're going to rally behind in order to defeat Satan's tool and personal accountant, Mitt Romney. We'll see what they come up with.