Ann Coulter made waves this week by offering a full-throated endorsement of Mitt Romney. That shouldn’t be surprising, as Coulter has been a long-time Romney booster, having endorsed him along similar lines at the Conservative Political Action Conference in early March 2007 (see video). That was nearly a year before other prominent conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh rallied around Romney in a last ditch effort to stop John McCain.
I’d raise a number of objections to Coulter’s argument, but I want to focus on the points she makes in these two paragraphs:
There may be better ways to stop Obamacare than Romney, but, unfortunately, they're not available right now. (And, by the way, where were you conservative purists when Republicans were nominating Waterboarding-Is-Torture-Jerry-Falwell-Is-an-Agent-of-Intolerance-My-Good-Friend-Teddy-Kennedy-Amnesty-for-Illegals John McCain-Feingold for president?)
Among Romney's positives is the fact that he has a demonstrated ability to trick liberals into voting for him. He was elected governor of Massachusetts -- one of the most liberal states in the union -- by appealing to Democrats, independents and suburban women.
It’s worth noting at the start that it’s ridiculous to say that “conservative purists” somehow sat silent as McCain emerged as the nominee. Conservatives criticized McCain for years – for good reason – and tried desperately to prevent his nomination. A more interesting question is, how could anybody who skewered McCain so ferociously be so forgiving to Romney? This may be jarring to some, but the sad reality is that as bad as McCain’s record may have been on issues that matter to conservatives, Romney’s record is further to the left.
Let’s just start with some of the examples Coulter uses against McCain. She doesn’t think any conservative should do business with Ted Kennedy to pass liberal legislation? Well, here’s what Romney had to say about the liberal lion at the April 2006 signing of the Massachusetts health care law:
I want to thank the many, many, people in this room who were critical to crafting and coaxing the bold health care initiative that I’m about to sign. There are a lot of parents to this initiative, as you know… Senator Kennedy – together we pitched the secretaries on our vision to insure more citizens, and on the need for federal support to make the vision real. His work in Washington and behind the scenes on Beacon Hill was absolutely essential…It’s now my pleasure to introduce my collaborator and friend, Senator Edward Kennedy.
Watch the video here.
Well, Romney may have teamed up with Kennedy to get federal subsidies for his big government health care experiment, but at least he wasn’t for amnesty, right? Well, it depends on how you define “amnesty.” If you think McCain’s immigration stance meets that definition, it would put you at odds with Romney – or at least the 2005 version of Romney. Back then, he told the Boston Globe that McCain’s approach to immigration was “reasonable” and “quite different from amnesty.” (Audio here.)
But at least Romney wasn’t for campaign finance reform, right? Well, actually, back when he was running for Senate in 1994, Romney advocated campaign spending limits and totally abolishing political action committees – ideas that were arguably more radical than the provisions of McCain-Feingold. (Video here.)
Didn’t like it when McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts? Well, Romney didn’t have a Senate vote, but as the Club for Growth recalls, “In 2003, the Governor refused to endorse the Bush tax cuts, earning the praise of Massachusetts liberal congressman Barney Frank, and was even open to a federal gas tax hike.” The group’s white paper also notes that he raised fees by hundreds of millions of dollars in Massachusetts and eliminated “loopholes” without equally offsetting them with lower rates.
Okay, some would argue that failing to endorse the Bush tax cuts isn’t as bad as actively opposing them, and loophole closures and fee increases aren’t that awful. Let’s look at some other issues of importance to conservatives.
McCain may not be Rick Santorum on abortion, but he’s always been pro-life as it's generally understood. Mitt Romney, by contrast, was firmly pro-choice in two statewide campaigns (1994 and 2002), and didn’t declare himself pro-life until July 2005 – about a year and a half before launching his first bid for the GOP nomination.
Then there’s gun control. John McCain voted against the Brady bill and the 1994 assault weapons ban. By contrast, Romney endorsed both policies in his 1994 Senate race, boasting, "That's not going to make me the hero of the NRA." In 2004, when the federal ban expired, then-Governor Romney signed a state ban on assault weapons, declaring, “Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts.” At CPAC in 2007, I asked Romney about his changing views on gun control, and he told me, “My position is the same as it has been, which is I support the Second Amendment, but I also support (an) assault weapon ban."
Beyond these examples, it’s my contention that however bad McCain was on many conservative issues, nothing he did was nearly as bad as Romneycare. The Massachusetts law forced individuals to purchase government-approved insurance policies, expanded Medicaid, and provided government subsidies to individuals to purchase government-designed insurance policies on a government-run exchange. As Romney himself noted, the experiment wouldn’t have been possible without the federal money secured by Ted Kennedy. And it formed the basis for Obamacare, the largest expansion of the federal government’s role since at least the Great Society, if not in all of American history.
Most of Romney’s defenders will point to positions he’s taken during his last two campaigns for the GOP nomination when touting his conservative credentials – being pro-life, anti-gun control, against McCain-Feingold, for repealing Obamacare, etc. But that brings me to Coulter’s other point, that Romney is awesome because he was able to “trick” Massachusetts liberals into voting for him. That argument merely undercuts Coulter’s case for Romney. The Romney of Massachusetts was not the current version of Romney – it was the pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-McCain immigration reform, pro-universal health care version of Romney. If he could trick Massachusetts into voting for him, what’s to say he’s not tricking conservatives now?
Just ask yourself what’s more logical. In his 1994 Senate race, Romney described himself as an “independent during Reagan-Bush.” So, for Coulter’s "trick" theory to hold, it would mean that for decades, the secretly conservative Romney positioned himself as an independent, or moderate-to-liberal Republican, merely so he could win a single-term as governor of Massachusetts. Then, just to have more fun with those Massachusetts liberals, he decided to do things like sign an assault weapons ban and work with Kennedy on the nation’s most sweeping universal health care plan. But, after a decades-long ruse, he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and his inner conservative was liberated. He could finally be himself, and the positions he’s expressing now are his true beliefs. Take that, liberals!
Conservatives are welcome to believe that. But to me, a far more rational explanation is that Romney is the consummate businessman, who doesn’t have strong core convictions, but adapts based on market demand.
To be sure, Coulter’s broader point, “If not Romney, who?” is the argument that I expect to prevail and secure him the Republican nomination. But while conservatives may eventually accept Romney as the best chance of beating the far worse President Obama, they shouldn’t kid themselves into thinking that the positions he’s taking in the Republican primary provide us with any indication of how he’d govern as president.
