It's not enough that Mitt Romney has endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan:
I'm very supportive of the Ryan budget plan. It's a bold and exciting effort on his part and on the part of the Republicans and it's very much consistent with what I put out earlier.
It's not enough that Mitt Romney's own plan would, according to an independent analysis done by the
Tax Policy Center, raise the federal tax burden for those earning less than $200,000 per year, while significantly lowering taxes on those earning more than that. For more details, please see this post by
Meteor Blades.
It's not enough that Mitt Romney declared:
"Planned Parenthood, we're gonna get rid of that."
It's not enough that Mitt Romney wants to
repeal the Wall Street reforms and
repeal the health care reforms that Barack Obama signed into law.
None of these things are enough for the Tea Party folks.
"These guys [newly elected Tea Party candidates] are going to force Romney to the right," said Andrea Shell, a spokeswoman for Tea Party group Freedom Works. "That is our entire mission."
(snip) "If we can elect a really conservative House and Senate that will force Romney to go along with our bold conservative agenda," Shell said. "He's going to have to really, really go to the right. He'll be working with guys in the House and Senate. He won't be able to get away with too many middle of the road policies, especially on things like the deficit."
FYI,
FreedomWorks, which has former U.S. Rep.
Dick Armey as its chairman, is perhaps the most important Tea Party group in the country.
But one conservative disagreed. Sort of. Newt Gingrich said:
"If the Tea Party says it wants Romney to move right, I think, that's where Romney is going anyway."
This from the man who once derided Mitt as a "
timid Massachusetts moderate."
Remember also what Grover Norquist said about Romney in February:
"We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff."
I don't know what Mitt Romney believes in his heart of hearts. I don't know who the real Mitt Romney is, whether it's the Romney of 2012 or the Romney of 1994, the one who
said he'd be: "better than Ted (Kennedy) for gay rights," or the man who was "effectively pro-choice" as Governor until his
conversion on the issue of reproductive rights in 2005. Frankly, I don't care.
What I do know is this. If Mitt Romney is elected President, he will preside over an administration whose domestic policies, both in the economic and social arenas, are going to make George W. Bush look like Bill Clinton.
Don't say you weren't warned.
PS-I'm also very excited to announce that my book Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity has now been published by Potomac Books. For anyone interested, I wrote about the book a bit in this recent post.