ShareThisWhich GOP candidate is best? After a year of debates and campaigning, the process for electing the next president gets under way on Tuesday. That's when Republican voters in Iowa will gather across the state and caucus to decide which GOP candidate should get the party's nomination.
Does any candidate deserve the nomination? If so, who? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, debate the issue.
Joel Mathis
Asking a liberal which Republican they favor in 2012 is like choosing one's favorite flavor of arsenic: You have options, but none will go down very well. Nobody in the field seems likely to attract many Democratic votes in November.
As an American, though, I want to see the GOP put its best and most-qualified candidate forward to challenge President Barack Obama. And that candidate is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas might be appealing on civil liberties, but he also appeals too much to racists and conspiracy-mongers. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann are so retrograde on social issues they don't deserve consideration. Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn't bright, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is Newt Gingrich. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is Romney without the electoral support. So that leaves us with Romney.
Understand: Liberals aren't -- and shouldn't be -- happy with the way that Romney has distorted Obama's record on the issues. The former Massachusetts governor has suggested the president has been on an "apology tour," asking forgiveness for the country's sins. Romney has shifted right on issues like gay civil liberties and abortion rights, in a transparent act of pandering to the GOP base. As a politician, there's not much to like.
But the presidency isn't merely politics. It's governance. Romney probably wouldn't govern the country in a manner that liberals like, but his record suggests that -- unlike the Tea Party Movement activists who comprise much of the Republican base -- Romney actually believes that government can occasionally solve problems. More broadly, his own history suggests that he is a problem solver.
That's how he passed Massachusetts' health care law -- once a model for conservatives, until Obama emulated it. And it's an approach likely to produce better results for the American people than all the "government is the problem" bumper stickers the rest of the GOP field can supply. Romney, then, is the least-bad choice.
Ben Boychuk
If liberals think the Republican field looks bad, try surveying the landscape from a conservative perch. "Least-bad" is the least of it.
Romney remains steadfast in his insistence that health insurance reform in Massachusetts was a conservative policy triumph, while Obamacare is a statist nightmare. The difference? Romneycare only led to cost overruns and rationing for Bay State taxpayers, while Obamacare threatens to ruin the whole country.
Health care may be Romney's greatest political sin, but it is hardly his only one. His flip-flops on everything from Reaganomics to abortion reveal a pandering opportunist. Yet Romney appears to be the "safe" bet.
If Romney is the Establishment choice, that doesn't necessarily make Gingrich the anti-Establishment pick. Which Newt would that be, anyway? The thrice-married former House speaker who appeared in an ad touting climate change with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and who once confessed, "I melt when I am around" former Democratic President Bill Clinton? Or the "historian" who made $1.6 million from Freddie Mac? Or the fan of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Whoever he claims to be, Gingrich isn't much of a limited-government guy, that's for certain.
Paul is a libertarian who has directed millions of dollars in earmarks to his Texas district before casting a largely symbolic "no" vote against every spending bill Congress passed during his off-and-on tenure in the House.
Santorum is a sound conservative with a principled understanding of the limits the Constitution places on the federal government, but who probably couldn't carry even his home state of Pennsylvania in the general election. The same could be said of Bachmann in Minnesota.
And if the Democrats still had a real conservative wing, Huntsman could be its standard-bearer.
That leaves Perry, who, despite his dreadful debate performances, has an excellent policy record, a solid conservative pedigree and a great economic story to tell in the Lone Star State. Among this sorry lot, Perry may be the best option.
(Ben Boychuk (bboychuk(at)city-journal.org) is associate editor of City Journal. Joel Mathis (joelmmathis(at)gmail.com) is a writer in Philadelphia. Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/benandjoel.)
