For the Republican Nomination

As New Yorkers cast their votes in the Republican Presidential Primary Tuesday, The Sun endorses Mitt Romney as the best remaining Republican in the race. Ron Paul, whose refreshing honesty is no match for his disqualifying radicalism, and Newt Gingrich, whose snide and condescending act tired months ago, represent two unacceptable options for the Republican Party.

This nomination race has at times seemed like a plot hatched by late-night political comedy shows to provide them with priceless fodder. Whether it was Rick Perry’s inability [2] to recall which federal agency he would like to eliminate, Michele Bachmann claiming [3] that the HPV Vaccine caused mental retardation, Herman Cain boasting [4] about how many women he didn’t sexually harass, Newt Gingrich’s moon base [5] or Rick Santorum being considered [6] a viable candidate despite his extreme social conservatism, this nomination battle has varied from the absurd to the farcical to terrifying, and back again. 

It is telling that the only candidate who appeared to be mostly free of the sheer preposterousness that seemed to define so much of the race, Governor Jon Huntsman, the former Ambassador to China, never made so much as a blip on the Republican radar. In an address in New York City this past week, Huntsman spoke to [7] the foreign policy stances of his former opponents for the GOP nomination by saying, “I don’t know what world these people are living in.” Even Huntsman, a proven conservative, questioned the legitimacy of the Republican race. Huntsman is pro-life, pro-guns, pro-free trade, pro-vouchers for public schools and is adored by the conservative-libertarian think-tank the CATO Institute, and even still, he recalled thinking to himself during the first Republican debate, “Is this the best we could do?”

The Republican primary process has resigned us to a former governor of Massachusetts who, at his heart, is a politician’s politician. Romney is too scared to tout his healthcare reforms as Governor of Massachusetts — even though they have proven largely successful. His plan [8] to reduce the deficit includes cutting taxes 20 percent across the board. A decade of the Bush tax cuts leads us to question the argument that tax cuts will somehow improve the United States’ budget outlook.  Romney also proposes increasing defense spending which, along with his tax cuts, would drastically increase the deficit. He claims that he will offset and exceed these spending increases by slashing tax deductions. Yet, in a stunning display of chutzpah, he refuses [9]to say which ones he will cut. 

Romney’s convenient position-taking, which manifests [10] itself in stunning about-face changes seemingly every week, does not give us confidence that he will be the type of politician to push for something he feels is necessary but politically inopportune. On issues ranging from abortion to health care mandates, Romney has shown a willingness to conform with whatever direction he believed the political winds were blowing. 

In conclusion, we are disappointed that the Republican Party did not present the American people with a candidate whose rigidity was at least slightly more pronounced than that of a rubber band. Instead, we are left with a pandering technocrat as not only the presumptive front-runner, but also the only candidate remaining who could even conceivably be trusted with the presidency.