The End of Fiscal Conservatism

The only party that has represented economic conservatism in the U.S. in the 20th century has been the GOP. At least they've always talked about it. Quite often, they have done something different.

With McCain's win in Florida, the fate of the party has now been sealed so that fiscal conservatism and conservatism in general are now the outcast extremist views of the party. This could have been predicted based on the original field of candidates and how they were being received in polls, but now the remainder of the primary season has been spelled out.

Rudy will leave and almost all of his votes will go to McCain. Huckabee has no money, but he will do well is several states on Super Tuesday. When he drops, his supporters will also go to McCain. That will leave Romney and Ron Paul. Paul is in for the long haul since he has the money and enthusiastic supporters like me. He will not get more than 15% nationally when all is said and done though. Romney, on the other hand, is doomed now.

A Florida win would have been enough to convince the three minutes before you enter the poll booth crowd to vote for Romney and given him a serious boost for Super Tuesday. The problem now though is that with the 2nd place finish, he is facing races in Super Tuesday where he is mostly 2nd or 3rd behind the McCain and either Huchabee or Giuliani. The Giuliani votes will now go to McCain in significant numbers which will likely mean overwhelming victories for McCain in nearly all of the Super Tuesday states. At that point, Romney will have to drop out.

I would not vote for Romney now under any circumstances based on the closer look that I've taken at him this past week, but he was the closest thing to sounding like a conservative of the four remaining candidates who had the big numbers. When the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and George will are essentially screaming from the hills that McCain and Huckabee are not conservatives and no one is listening, then we know that the conservative movement in the GOP is now officially dead. Politics has always been a personality contest. Genuine conservatives got to be in the limelight from 1981 to 2001 because the personalities in charge at least paid lip service to conservatism. Now we still have the lip service, but the platforms being called conservative are the exact opposite of what they stood for 20 years ago.