Thanks to Gary Glenn, American Family Association in Michigan, for this tip:
Romney is polling poorly in Michigan. But why? Is it because voters are not yet "familiar with his positions on important issues"? Or is it because they are? If not, they certainly will be soon. At any rate, Romney doesn't appear to be a viable alternative to McCain in Michigan at this point. From the Detroit Free Press:
Romney's name doesn't help him in poll (2-4-07)
One surprise in the Free Press/Local 4 Michigan poll was the weak showing of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who finished a distant fourth among Republicans and lost by the largest margins in head-to-head match-ups against the top three Democrats.
The poll of Republican voters had a significant plus or minus 8 percentage points margin of error, but Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were both around 30%, far ahead of Romney's 8%. [Newt Gingrich ranked third.] The margin of error in the head-to-head races was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
Romney's father, the late George Romney, was Michigan's governor in the 1960s. Romney has been endorsed by at least 50 state legislators and several members of the state's GOP congressional delegation.
Romney spokeswoman Sarah Pompei said while people in Michigan may know his name, they're not yet familiar with his positions on important issues.
John Haskins comments:
Apparently, there are still plenty of people in the grass roots in places like Michigan who prefer facts and truth to the infallible guidance of the "conservative" nomenklatura, more and more of whom are selling their dubious seals of approval in return for cash, flattery, and promises from Slick Willard Romney.
Facts are very stubborn things, even when much of the "conservative" establishment insists the truth is either a lie or irrelevant. How terribly tragic that "conservatism" -- even the "pro-family" variety -- more and more often comes down to respectable collective denial of legal, constitutional, historical, sociological, psychological, theological and moral reality. Reality has terrible table manners and there's nothing establishment "conservatives" detest more than poor table manners. They'd rather just admit that they're really just liberals who don't like bumps in the road.
Establishment "conservatives" -- whatever that debauched word still means -- share the deathwish of the shriveling, wrinkled, contorted remains of Western Civilization. They just want the irritating doctor to go away. A slow couch-potato death, ameliorated by the narcotics of material wealth, is just plain easier than cutting the cancer out. As Joseph Farah (WorldNetDaily) points out, the fatal flaw in conservatism is that it is conservative where Christ, His apostles and prophets -- not to mention the Founding Fathers -- were radical.
Mitt Romney is an empty mannequin, a stage prop whose purpose is to maintain, for another brief moment in history, the illusion that social conservatism and its pathetic political bedmates are still vibrant and viable. On the contrary, social conservatism is being killed off by its own "leaders," lawyers and pundits, for whom the crusade to save American decency long ago became merely a career.
Thanks in part to true conservatives, like Gary Glenn in Michigan, lots of people in that state are not quite ready for their children's culture to die while they vegetate comfortably before their large-screen TV's.
