Will the right go wrong?

By Michael Gaynor

Too much is at stake NOT to nominate Romney.

The Right goes wrong when it ignores the admonition of the late William F. Buckley to support the best viable candidate and acts unrealistically by making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Team Obama's best hope to keep their stealth socialist in the White House for another term, cement and augment their radical policies and put more judicial activists on the federal benches and more radicals in civil service positions in the federal government, especially the United States Justice Department is divided opposition.

Make no mistake: the Constitution can be amended legitimately, in accordance with its terms, OR surreptitiously, under the guise of judicial interpretation. Obama has appointed two "liberal" judicial activists to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, 57, and Elena Kagan, 51. If he makes more Supreme Court appointments, key parts of the Obama agenda (such as Obamacare's individual mandate) will be ratified instead of ruled unconstitutional.

Polls show that most Americans do not approve of the cunning Obama's performance as President.

But polls also show that most Americans approve of Obama personally.

That's because most Americans don't know enough about Obama, thanks to the liberal media establishment's bias and the failure of conservatives to educate their fellow Americans.

Obama has been lucky. For example, conservative radio and television commentator Sean Hannity focused on Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright soon after Obama declared for President but didn't play the damning videos until a year later. If he had played them in April 2007, Hillary Clinton would have been the 2008 Democrat presidential nominee.

We cannot change the past, but we can learn from it and we better.

Even conservatives can be slow to learn, in their zeal to set things right.

In 2010, many conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh and Hannity, enthusiastically supported Christine O'Donnell in her quixotic quest to begin her political career as a United States Senator from Delaware. To be sure, O'Donnell was much more conservative on the issues than Mike Castle, her Republican primary opponent. But Castle had been winning statewide races in Delaware for decades, as lieutenant governor, governor and Congressman and O'Donnell had failed miserably in her two prior Senate runs. Given Delaware's history and demographics, Castle would have won against the "liberal" Democrat (now Senator Chris Coons). That would have been much better than another reliable Obama vote.

Of the eight Republican presidential hopeful who have been in most of the debates, Mitt Romney is the one most likely to beat Obama. That's because he's the most qualified, by education and experience in both business and government, and he has led an exemplary personal life.

The debates have shown that Romney's main rivals, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, are not ready to be President on day one.

Cain is smart, flamboyant, funny and unapologetically conservative. He especially appeals to some conservatives because he is a black conservative and Team Obama would be hard pressed to play the race card if he becomes the Republican nominee.

But Cain's personality, business experience and color are not enough. His 9-9-9 plan is a good conversation starter, but not a solution. At least the current Internal Revenue Code encourages the birth of children. Cain's plan does not. Simple can be good, but simplistic is not. A President of the United States needs to deal with complexity. Being President of the United States is much harder than turning around a failing pizza business.

Cain's foreign affairs deficits are glaring. In one debate Cain demonstrated that he did not know what "the right of return" is. Both Arabs and Israelis can agree that it is something with which a President of the United States needs to be familiar. Also, presidential candidates need not memorize the names of the leaders of all the other countries of the world to be fit to be President, but disrespecting them by treating their names as unimportant is not a sign of diplomatic skill.

Worse, Cain recently demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of the abortion issue that raises serious questions as to what else he may be confused about. I was pleased when Cain described himself as completely pro-life, but I was shocked to learn that he did not know what completely pro-life means. Completely pro-life does NOT mean that a woman who become pregnant as a result of rape should be entitled to choose abortion. Completely pro-life means that abortion is never a permissible choice. Cain is not a Catholic and I don't expect him to believe as a faithful Catholic believes, but I do expect people, especially presidential hopefuls, to understand what the abortion issue is about and to state their position coherently.

Rick Perry is more problematic than Cain, and nasty, not likeable. He became the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination when he declared...and sank in the polls with each of the first three debates in which he participated.

Rick, people who believe in LEGAL immigration are NOT "heartless." There is no free lunch and the rule of law needs to be respected.

In the last debate, after having been skewered for his support of the peculiar proposition that persons living in Texas who are not legally in the United States should pay much lower tuition at the University of Texas than Americans from other states, Perry desperately and recklessly charged that Romney is a "magnet" for illegal aliens because he employed them.

In doing so, Perry demonstrated either a lack of character or a lack of regard for the facts that no President should demonstrate. Romney replied that he did not think he had ever employed a person illegally in the country, and there is no evidence to the contrary. What Perry and his opposition researcher had in mind were persons who mowed Romney's lawn. Romney had not employed them. He had contracted lawfully with a company, and that company sent some such persons to do the work. The liberal media noticed and reported, and Romney told the company to only send people entitled to work in the United States. The company failed to comply, the media noticed and reported, and Romney terminated his relationship with the company.

There are culprits in the saga — the company and the people working illegally, but Romney is not one of them.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is right that we must make Obama "a one-term president"...and wrong that we can "have it all this year."

We cannot "have it all" on this earth and there is no perfect candidate.

Bachmann and Santorum are conservatives with whom I agree more on the issues than I do with Romney, but I realize that neither of them can win the Presidency in 2012 and beating Obama is vital.

The liberal media has been poisoning the public mind against Bachmann for years, and she is making progress in demonstrating that she is a principled, bold and intelligent legislator, but she has no executive experience and no one has moved directly from the House of Representatives to the Presidency since James Garfield.

Santorum has been boasting of his early election successes in Pennsylvania, but left unsaid that, as an incumbent Senator and member of the Republican Senate leadership, he lost his race for a third term by 18%, the largest margin of defeat ever for an incumbent Republican Senator in Pennsylvania. Santorum will be elected President in 2012 only in his dreams, and he has allowed his frustration over the unsuccessful of his campaign to show.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has great knowledge and experience, and his presence at the debates has been illuminating, but his campaign is quixotic. His "personal baggage" is just heavy.

As for former Governor of Utah Jon Huntsman, his campaign too is quixotic because his fiscal conservativeness and gubernatorial record are not enough. Republicans won't nominate the man who accepted the Ambassadorship to the People's Republic of China from Obama and is MSNBC's favorite Republican presidential hopeful.

Too much is at stake NOT to nominate Romney or to divide the opposition to Obama.

Congressman Ron Paul is a man of high principle and great patriotism, but he's older than John McCain, he's a legislator without the executive and businesss expertise now critically needed in our next President and less likely to win in 2012 than Barry Goldwater was in 1964.

Those "conservatives" who do not realize that the 2012 race is too important to lose and disregard political reality will be responsible if Obama is re-elected because his opposition divides or stays home.

It will be much, much better for America if Limbaugh and Hannity are pushing Romney to the right in 2013 instead of railing futilely against a re-elected Obama pushing "fundamental change"!

© Michael Gaynor