A Conservative Teacher officially endorses Mitt Romney in the Michigan Republican Presidential Primary of Michigan and encourages all of his family and friends and colleagues to vote for him next Tuesday, February 28. Do not sit at home hoping that change will come to our nation and that hope will be restored- go vote for Mitt Romney in the primary and assure it.
After spending a year following the campaign, after watching all of the campaign commercials, after researching all of the candidates, after recently hearing them all speak in person, after shaking the hands of Romney and Santorum, and after spending a lot of time thinking about what kind of candidate our Founding Fathers would have wanted as President, I have decided that the best candidate that there is from either party to be the next President of the United States is Mitt Romney.
As Rick Santorum said about Mitt Romney in 2008- “this is the guy who is really conservative and we can trust him.” He is conservative in that he believes in and attempts to put in place policies that follow the founding principles of our nation- limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and national security. And we can trust him as a person- he does not back down from his views, he is a decent guy who has spent time volunteering and giving back, he says what he means and means what he says, he stays on his message even without a teleprompter because he believes in his message, and he has a firm handshake.
Oh, I know some of his positions and views and statements are nuanced and guarded, filled with technical details and complicated arguments, and that this at times has made him sound like a technocrat or a cold robot- but I think that it is time for our nation to go back to electing competent, articulate, and measured people to the President and ignore all the candidates with thin resumes who simply preach hope and change.
Our nation can no longer afford to have as President someone who governs based on rhetoric and gimmicks- we need someone able and competent who will issue executive orders, make judicial appointments, act as commander-in-chief, hire the proper administrators, and budget appropriately. Being President is not about being a symbol, or making a statement, or doing the will of some sort of heavenly being- being President is about doing a job, and doing a good job of it, and Mitt Romney is the best one to put at that desk to push papers around, make decisions, talk with people, and do the real work of being President.
Conservatives want a magical being to be the White House who will throw conservative pixie dust around and say pretty conservative things; liberals want a magician in the White House who will dazzle them with tricks and gimmicks and pithy sayings- but real patriots should want someone in the White House who will return our nation back to its first principles and do the right things through competent hard work based on a lifetime of experience in managing and being an executive, and that man is Mitt Romney.
As I wrote in my post Elect a 'Clerk' For President in 2012 and Restore Founding Father's Vision of Executive Branch?:
...The President of the United States should be clerk, and nothing more. Conservatives and Tea Party people should not be looking for the President to be a 'king' who commands us to go forth and do his bidding, they should not be looking for the President to be the source of ideas about how government should run, and they should not be looking for the President to be an outsider who will shake up Washington.I know- you want to go to the polls on Tuesday and feel like with one vote you will once again restore America back to its founding principles and with one magical check mark or bubbling in you will have fixed all of our nation’s problems. There are candidates out there who are basically telling you that.
The office, as designed by our Founding Fathers and illustrated in Article II of the Constitution, is an office that empowers the President of the United States to execute the laws passed by Congress in the most efficient manner, act as Commander-in-Chief of our military, act as the dignified ceremonial chief of state, handle foreign policy with other nations, and discharge effectively the various other duties of the office. A true conservative or someone who wants our nation to return to its Founding Principles should be pushing for the person who is best able to act as a clerk, a manager, and a CEO for America Inc…
… Look, I know this isn't exciting to you guys- you all want a President who will blow your socks off, light up the system, ride in on a horse of hope and change and remake the world. You want a king to rule you and control other people who you disagree with. You wish that someone who will go into the White House and then start just shutting down executive departments, slashing spending on programs, and ignoring the Judicial and Legislative Branches to bring you closer to our Founding Fathers. The problem is, that isn't how our Founding Fathers designed the office of the President and it is not how our Founding Fathers would have wanted the system to work…
But the truth of the matter is that the damage that President Barack Obama did to our nation is not going to be fixed by one President, or even two, and so we should not indulge in these sort of fantasies but rather go about electing someone as our next President who is willing to do the hard and solid and thankless work of stopping the decline that Obama has ushered in and perhaps- and I personally think this is a small possibility- putting in place a culture that will push further down the road for the real changes our nation needs to once more have hope for the future. And Mitt Romney is that guy- he is a hard worker, an able administrator, and a positive person, and just the kind of person who you should vote for on Tuesday.
Many of you conservatives and tea party supporters who read this post will think that we need a President who will be a source of conservative ideas and that Romney isn’t- my reply to you is that our system, as designed by our Founding Fathers which you all pretend to honor, clearly makes the legislative branch the source of ideas and legislation and merely makes the executive branch a clerk and executive. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul would all be great legislators- even President Obama would have made a fine liberal Democrat Senator- but we are electing a President in 2012, not a legislator-turned-king, and the best executive in the race is clearly beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt Mitt Romney.
As Governor of a liberal Democrat state with an overwhelmingly liberal Democrat Congress, Mitt Romney was able to hold the moderate line on a range of issues and push for conservative policies as well and only let slip through an occasional liberal policy (like Romneycare)- imagine what he would be able to do as President of the United States with a Republican Congress animated by conservative tea party values. To make this image come true all you need to do is vote for Romney in the primary elections.
The image of stronger property rights, more protection and support for life, a recovering and prosperous economy, freedom and liberty embraced, and class warfare ended is a lot more welcoming to me than an image of President Barack Obama destroying a far-right wing GOP nominee and then ignoring the GOP Congress and issuing executive orders and making arbitrary policy decisions, and the only way we can avoid this image is by voting for Romney in the primary elections.
Over the past year, Mitt Romney has been challenged from the right and left and has beaten them all, emerging time and again as the front-runner. This was an important process and has forced him to be better- but at a certain point the primary needs to end and the race for the President needs to begin, and that point is now. Romney has responded to Perry, Huntsman, Bachman, Gingrich, Cain, Daniels, and now Santorum, fending off their attacks from the right and the left, and he is now a fine candidate to support. Let go of your anger and fear and embrace the good side of the force- Mitt Romney is the candidate who we can win back America with.
As President, Mitt Romney will leave America better than he finds it, he will work to reduce the intergenerational theft that is robbing our grandchildren of their future, he will work on repairing the destroyed foundations of our nation’s social safety nets, he will continue to keep our military proud and strong, and he will stop the incredible and amazing decline in our nation that has taken place over the past 4 years.
Mitt Romney says that America’s best days are ahead- with him as President and with a Republican Congress dominated by conservatives and tea partiers and with a Democratic minority party that regains its sanity, I think he could be right. He needs your vote though- go to the polls on Tuesday, February 28 and vote for Mitt Romney for Presidential nominee for the Republican Party.
