Getting the King You Want

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

Today's reading gives me the encouragement I need to butt in here among the parsing posts directed at Mr. Romney.  "When Samuel had listened to all the people had to say, he repeated it to the LORD, who then said to him, “Grant their request and appoint a king to rule them.”   It's one of God's tricky tools - to give us what we beg for.

God's done this to me so many times I've developed a reflex against myself which I tend to extend to discussions like the one at hand about Mr. Romney.  For example, when I find myself extolling the pure virtues of one of my three children by lengthy dissertations on the faults of the other two, my reflex sounds the alert . . . "take care what you wish for, girlfriend."  Or, at least, "hush up for a few minutes and get some balance."

Now, call me silly, but the compounding, pounding posts on "he's no Reagan" Romney have started to seem more like a tirade against the candidate, in favor of the seemingly above-question, non-pandering, Churchillian Mr. McCain.  Perhaps I read too much into your fuss, or got lost in the length and detail, Deal and Marc, but I detect a tilt that some might call "one-sided".   

Surely, you neither intend to deflect the blogging world's discomfort with Mr. McCain by sheer din directed at Mr. Romney.  Whether you tap into Senator Santorum's recent expressions of concern about Mr. McCain ("John McCain looks at things through the eyes, on these kind of domestic policy issues, looks at it through the eyes of the New York Times editorial board, and accepts that predisposition that if you are not, if you stand for conservative principles, there’s some genetic defect."); or Michael Gerson's reservations (I don’t think he buys the kind of supply side ideology that has really determined American economic policies the last 25 years, particularly under both Reagan and the current President Bush. And so that is, I think, the real problem. I mean, he has a soft spot for regulation in his record."); or Judge Bork's warning ("“I don’t think that Senator McCain or Governor Huckabee deserves to be called a conservative.” );  or even speculations about Mr. McCain's commitment to pro-life ("McCain is campaigning on pro-life issues in South Carolina but he's not helping his cause by stoking the fires of speculation that he could pick pro-abortion Sen Joe Lieberman as his running mate if he wins the GOP nomination."),  there's no fair assertion that Mr. McCain is above question among conservative, church-going Catholics.

And talking about questions, I have two.  What do you think about a Mr. McCain-Mr. Lieberman ticket?  And, doesn't Fred Thompson warrant some cyberspace here?  ("The issue for us -- and for the conservative community -- boils down to which of the candidates is most representative of the fundamental conservative principles we believe in. The answer is Fred Thompson.")