It looks obvious

Yesterday at a conversation with friends I speculated that It doesn’t make sense for Romney to quite the race now. I suggested that he has fairly good chances at a brokered convention as a compromise between Huckabee and McCain and that he enjoy the support of the Party’s establishment which is a big advantage in such event. It seems to me that the chances for a brokered convention are also pretty high with four candidates still running, and with McCain needing about 400 delegates from about 1000 possible delegates.

Today’s news prove my speculation, again, wrong. Oh, well…

I don’t like Pat Buchanan generally, but his take on McCain’s platform is as sharp as its get. Not that the other frontrunner in the GOP race is any better…

During every election season, and the current one is no exception, many candidates promising to “fix” washington and bring new kind of politic - an bipartisan administration that deal with the problems and not with narrow political interests. They promising to heal the nation from the devision inflicted by past administrations and to calm the social conflicts. Yet, they all fail to achieve this promise, which seems so fundamental in their campaign agenda. 

Are they laying? Are all of them simply cynical politician that identify the public yearn for an administration that is busy solving “issues” and are disgusted from the political game? not necessarily. Even a politician like Romney, that seems to have no core believes, probably thinks that he can bring his experience, as a very successful businessman and very competent manager, and make Washington “Work”. But both Romney and Obama will not change Washington.

A realistic observer has to admit that bipartisan politic is bad politic. I’m not talking about the compromises and the back-room deals, those are the oil that smooth the political system. I’m talking about the appearance of the political game. It is hard to generate support, or to bring people to vote for a politicians if it is hard to find the differences between them. Making those difference apparent, often superficially, is very important if one desire to be elected. Take for example the differences between Clinton and Obama, what are they? how really different are they? it is hard to tell, and the candidates will do their best to make it even harder.

But this is not the heart of the problem.

Over the years the political system got involved in issues that are a meter of individual choice, or social standards. Involving the coercion power of the government in order to force one set of standards instead of leaving those decisions to the local community, or better for the individual, is bound to involve increasing tension between different groups. The idea that decisions in one central place - can, or should, be good for everyone is at best wrong. When every aspect of life is being determined by regulations, and the ability to force them, the differences that otherwise aren’t that important for the social life become crucial.

Promising to “heal” the social fractions by government is, in a liberal democracy, a paradox. Interestingly enough there is only one candidate that point to this paradox - but he doesn’t offer a change, he offer a revolution

This is a very persuasive argument why should GOP voters in the Michigan’s primaries should vote for Romney…

And if this isn’t enough, let me remind you his intellectual superiority.

I avoided writing about Romney’s speech about faith and the political system because I don’t really think he has anything profound to say. Unlike Kenedy’s famous speech, a statesman speech, Romney’s address yesterday was a petty craft of a politician. I was glad to read today that Ron Paul had similar feeling toward the non-event:

He seemed only faintly aware it was happening. “Useless politicking!” he exclaimed. “Mormons against radical Baptists. Bah!”

Now that the Huckster’s surge is basically a fact it is only a question of time when the threatened campaigns will move on the attack. We can already see some, small, evidences of the coming offense, but it will be interesting to see which candidate will be the first to openly attack the new darling of the GOP primaries. If I need to bet I will risk and say that it will be probably Romney on the social issues and Giuliani on the fiscal policies. I hope to see a decent criticism, unlike the petty stupidity we saw on the last CNN/YouTube debate, and the fact is that with Huckabee there is enough room for a lot of it.

It will be also interesting to see how will such attacks will effect Ron Paul’s numbers…