The author of the magisterial Republics Ancient and Modern, Paul Rahe, has had two great pieces in Ricochet of late.
Today, its a comparison of John Lindsay, late 60s/early 70s mayor of New York City, with the One. Lindsay’s is an interesting story on its own terms, and considering it provides Rahe with an effective and fresher-than-usual angle of attack upon Obama and his likely re-election strategy.
And about a week ago, he provided us with one of the more powerful (and yet still perfectly fair) attacks upon Romney, portraying him as The Chameleon.
December 9th, 2011 | 5:47 pm
Carl, the crtique of Romney is basically sound (though the Bloomberg comparison is unfair -to Bloomberg – in that Bloomberg appears to be a committed social liberal.) I’d say that Romney is a somewhat better candidate than Dr. Rahe would indicate. While a Republican winning a governonr’s race in Massachusetts is not an out-of-the-blue event (Romney’s was the fourth of four straight GOP wins), his circumstances were tougher than those faced by the winners of the three earlier races (memories of Dukakis had faded somewhat and the Republican Acting Governor was unpopular.)
I could see Obama beating Romney on points in a debate (many conservtives seem to be really underrating Obama on this score), but it is all relative. There is every reason to think that Romney in debate would be more appealing to the median voter than Bachmann, Gingrich or Perry (all of whom have won all of their elections in right-of-center leaning constituencies.)
December 10th, 2011 | 10:41 am
Agreed, Pete. I just felt that this conservative critique of Romney had the dual merits of being strong, and more documented and fair than most such strong critiques.
In the overall balance, I want Romney to be the nominee, given this set of candidates; I agree with most of what Ramesh Ponurru argued in his pro-Romney NR piece.
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