Michael Gaynor
Will pro-life conservatives like Laura Ingraham and Ron Paul keep Obama in the White House?
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By Michael Gaynor
December 23, 2011

Of the announced candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Romney is the only one Team Obama fears.

It really doesn't make sense.

Why would sincere pro-lifers like Laura Ingraham and Ron Paul help Obama be re-elected?

In the case of Paul, it would be a tragic case of Me-Me-Me.

Paul is 76 and giving up his House seat, so he's keeping his options open and just might run as a third-party candidate, even though that would all but assure the re-election of the most pro-abortion president in American history.

Polls show Paul taking about 20% of the vote in a three-way race with Obama and Romney and his vote coming nearly completely from Romney.

Paul certainly could not win and his actual vote would be dramatically less than current polls show, but even one percent could be the difference between victory and defeat.

The notion that virtually anyone can beat Obama is nonsensical.

Of the announced candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Romney is the only one Team Obama fears.

Polls also show Obama's support for re-election growing and his personal approval remains high. A huge amount of money will be invested in an attempt to re-elect Obama and he's no longer an audacious rookie United States senator will no executive experience.

The only Republican presidential hopeful who can beat Obama is Mitt Romney, and conservatives like Ingraham enthusiastically supported him in 2008 as he contested Senator John McCain for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Guy Benson, in "Can Romney Win Back the Right in 2012?", to appear in the January issue of Townhall Magazine notes that in 2008 Romney benefited from conservatives' "anybody but McCain" sentiment yet now is "the target of a strikingly similar effort."

Benson explains that many conservatives are miffed because Romney dropped out of the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Benson:

"On a frigid Thursday afternoon in early February 2008, hundreds of conservative activists crowded into the Omni Shoreham Hotel main ballroom in Washington, D.C., to hear an address from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor's campaign was still reeling from a bruising Super Tuesday two nights earlier, when his chief rival — Sen. John McCain of Arizona — scored major primary victories from coast to coast. Following a rousing introduction from conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, who called him 'the conservatives' conservative,' Romney strode on stage to raucous applause. The crowd chanted his name and waved red foam baseball mitts emblazoned with his campaign logo.

"But their mood was about to take an abrupt and unwelcome turn.

"'If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention,' Romney said, eliciting cheers and shouts of encouragement from the audience, 'I'd forestall the launch of a national campaign, and, frankly, I'd be making it easier for Sen. Clinton or Obama to win.'

'An uneasy murmur rippled through the room.

"'In this time of war,' he continued, 'I feel I have to now stand aside.'

"Before he could continue, the crowd erupted into groans and shouts of 'no!' But the candidate's mind was made up; the electoral math just wouldn't work. Romney offered a few rah-rah bromides about fighting for conservative principles, thanked the crowd and left the stage. Shell-shocked supporters grimly filed out of the venue, some in tears. A bitter reality was sinking in. The viable 'conservative's conservative' had bowed out, clearing the path for a man who many among the party faithful regarded as an unacceptable 'RINO' (Republican in name only) to capture the nomination.

"Four years later, many conservative activists and media figures are again hoping to fend off a potential GOP nominee they see as insufficiently committed to the movement's ideals. His name? Mitt Romney...."

Romney put personal ambition and ego aside to maximize McCain's chance of defeating Obama, as a genuine conservative who puts God and country first should.

Nevertheless, this year Ingraham (who appparently had not been given a head's up before that "rousing introduction" has been in Anybody-But-Mitt mode and these days she's zinging Romney and helping Gingrich.

BUT...Gingrich is an opponent Obama can beat.

Gingrich is now a 68 year old grandfather with a 45 year old third wife and two ex-wives who he divorced after 19 year marriages when they were fighting cancer and multiple sclerosis, respectively.

As Ann Coulter said, that's not the marital history of a person who will be elected President in 2012.

Gingrich has more baggage than the airlines, from being fined by a Republican House of Representatives and resigning in disgrace to collecting millions of dollars from Freddie Mac at $30,000 an hour as a consultant serving, to use his own words, as "a historian."

In sharp contrast, Romney does not have any such baggage and thus is well positioned to take on the former Senator from ACORN now residing in the White House.

To her credit, this week Ingraham hosted a civil debate on her radio show between conservatives Coulter (a Romney supporter) and Kellyanne (Fitzpatrick) Conway (a Gingrich adviser).

Conway did her best to put lipstick on the pig, but Coulter splendidly explained why Romney is the one to make Obama a one-term president.

Unfortunately, Ingraham is still not ready to back Romney again and did not post the debate as either a "freebie" (free to all) or "smoking sound" (free to Laura 365 members) on her website, www.lauraingraham.com.

© Michael Gaynor

 

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Michael Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member... (more)

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