OC Domer Will Vote for Romney

It's definitely good news / bad news at OC Domer headquarters heading into California's primary election on Tuesday. The good news is that for the first time in a while Californians will actually have a chance to influence the Presidential nomination process in each of the major political parties. For too many years California's primaries were held far too late in the process to make a difference, the races having already been decided long before the polls opened in the Golden State. Hooray for democracy!

The bad news is that the choices being served up by the Republican party in this primary are not very appetizing to conservative voters. I was a "Friend of Fred", having concluded that Fred Thompson was the best available choice for conservative voters. But Fred didn't make it out of South Carolina, a victim of the persistent whisper campaign (repeated in the mainstream media ad nauseum) that Fred was "lazy" and didn't have sufficient "fire in the belly." So the candidate with the best grasp of the issues and the most genuinely Republican platform was shoved aside to leave the field to a group of candidates whose (1) stated positions on the issues, or (2) past record, make clear that they aren't true Republicans. Being a voter who isn't about to pull the lever for either Hillary or Obama, I needed to make a decision.

I flirted for a while with the idea of casting a protest vote for Fred Thompson (or maybe even writing in Newt Gingrich). If the race was decided, or if polls indicated that my vote would not make a difference, I was prepared to go that route. But looking at the latest polls in California, the race has tightened up between McCain and Romney and it appears that my vote could make a difference (despite the fact that the mainstream media is ready to annoint John McCain the GOP nominee).

Given a chance to make a difference, and given McCain and Romney as my choices, it was pretty easy to settle on Romney. In my previous article discussing the GOP candidates I explained my reservations about each of these men. Romney's record as Governor of Massachusetts was not nearly as conservative as his current campaign rhetoric. But he has a few things going for him that John McCain doesn't. He has strong executive experience in both the public and private sectors. He is at least saying the "right" things on most issues of importance to conservatives (even if his record is not always consistent), and he has the looks and charisma to come off as "Presidential" for the general election campaign and beyond.

I still believe that John McCain is a "conservative" more by coincidence that by conscience. Over the course of his career John McCain's positions on the various issues of the day reveal no discernible philosophical pattern. They appear to derive from random tosses of darts at a board. It just so happens that the randomly thrown darts have landed on "Republican" spaces on the dart bard more often than Democrat spaces. As a conservative I take little comfort from the degree to which McCain has always been embraced by the Washington establishment. True conservatives have never been treated so well inside the beltway. It is also discomfiting that McCain has been winning so-called Republican primary elections primarily due to votes coming not from Republican voters but from Independent voters with no affinity for or allegiance to the GOP. Recent reports that McCain has flirted with the idea of switching parties, along with the recent endorsement from Joe Lieberman do not enhance McCain's credentials to be the standard bearer of the GOP and a champion of conservative principles. John McCain would still be better than Mrs & Mr Clinton or Barack Obama in the White House. But as long as I have a real choice about who will be the GOP nominee, John McCain will not get my vote.