Ann Althouse linked this earlier today:

Thinking outside the box may solve problems in the real world. But in the political realm, creative noodling will get you cast into the outer darkness. No matter which way you lean, The Machinery requires cogs, not cognizance.

She was talking about Democrats taking Cory Booker, but it relates well to a post on gay marriage/civil unions that I intend to write in the near future.

“The Left, labor, Democrats, which planned to embarrass” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Mike Allen of Politico on MSNBC this morning (as quoted by Jim Geraghty), ”instead have made him a national figure with a very bright future,”  adding “It was money poured down the drain by Democrats and the Left in a presidential election year.”

Indeed.

Wonder if we’ll ever see a tally of the total amount of money the various and sundry public employee unions poured into the Badger State, first to lobby the legislature and organize rallies against Walker’s reforms, then to launch petition drives to recall the state Senators targeted for replacement in 2011, to do the same this year to recall Walker, his Lieutenant Governor and another batch of state Senators, then to campaign for their chosen candidate in this month’s primary and now to campaign against the governor himself in the actual recall election upcoming.

Money spent in those endeavors is money they won’t be able to spend to help hold the Wisconsin Senate seat for the Democrats or to help in other political contests this year.

Meanwhile, in attempting to demonize and destroy Mr. Walker, the unions have made that reformer a Republican hero.  As Ann Althouse writes:

The recall has put Walker in the position where he must advertise and promote himself, which might have been awkward before — and it was never his thing. TV viewers are getting barraged with Walker ads — and almost nothing for his cash-strapped opponent, and we’re tolerating it because he was forced into having to defend himself. What a nice opportunity for him!

Via Instapundit.

UPDATE:   “The bigger problem for unions”, writes 2010 CPAC Blogger of the Year, Ed Morrissey, ”is the display of impotence“:

They have poured millions of dollars into Wisconsin, pushed people into rallies and protests, and wasted valuable man-hours organizing for recall elections and a special election for the state Supreme Court, only to come up empty thus far.  Until now, people feared the impact of unions in elections, and in special elections such as these even more, as they are more easily mastered by superior organization.  However, Walker supporters cast more ballots in the recall primaries than the combined votes of the top two Democrats, just as they did in the race that pitted Supreme Court Justice David Prosser against Joanne Kloppenburg, and in almost every recall race thus far.

On Saturday, Michael Barone linked a Weekly Standard piece by Yuval Levin which he described as a “must read”, adding that “the Romney campaign should definitely read the whole thing, and act on it.” Having read the lengthy essay, I agree.

Yuval offers a sound means for Romney to approach the issues facing the country in the current campaign and to advocate for real reform (some might call it to put forward his hopes for change).

And Levin offers a sharp critique of the incumbent’s sustained support for Washington’s sclerotic status quo:

His express objectives are to protect our existing entitlement system from structural reforms, to increase the tax burden on investment and employment, to further empower and liberate regulators, and to bring more of our economy into the public sector. His economic policy is unimaginative in the extreme—combining early-20th-century social democratic theory with mid-20th-century pork barrel politics. His answer to the government’s fiscal woes is to squeeze the military and the taxpayer to buy a few more years of denial. In every respect, he stands for stagnation and stasis, for defensive consolidation rather than aggressive growth. He thinks the best we can do is to manage decline.

Simply put, President Obama has no interest in a new way of thinking about America’s prospects, and therefore essentially nothing to offer to assuage the public’s growing anxiety. All he can do is try to direct that anxiety away from himself. He is at best irrelevant, at worst a great impediment, to the effort to keep America growing in the new economic order we are entering.

Like Barone, I urge you to read the whole thing.

May build on this post later.  Was just at a brunch where a very intelligent man refused to accept that Sarah Palin had a record of accomplishment as Governor of Alaska.  Why is it that some Democrats (and a few Republicans) refuse to acknowledge — or even familiarize themselves with this woman’s record?

Is it because she is a woman?

I mean, when John McCain tapped her as his running mate, she enjoyed a 75% approval rating . . . among Alaska Democrats.  When Katie Couric interviewed the then-Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, the CBS News anchor didn’t once ask her interlocutor about her record.  Or what she had done to win support among Democrats as well as Republicans.

Do these folks just assume that a woman can’t stand up to a corrupt political establishment and effect real reforms?

On Sunday, I reported that a Democrat who currently serves in Congress — and seeks to represent my district in the next Congress — spoke to a town hall at my synagogue, yet acknowledged he had no plan to address the coming crisis of entitlements. Even though he failed to stand behind any plan to fix the problem, he did find the time to attack the Republican solution.

And this even as the “nation’s Social Security and Medicare programs are sliding closer to insolvency, the federal government warned in a new report underscoring the fiscal challenges facing the two mammoth retirement programs as baby boomers begin to retire.”  These reports, writes Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner, “underscore the dire need to reform the programs if the nation wants to avert a fiscal crisis.”

Democrats like Mr. Schiff and President Obama, however, seem either oblivious to the challenge sor lack the political will to face up to them.  Where Obama has failed, Mitt Romney has at least recognized the imperative to act, having already, as Jennifer Rubin notes,

. . . set out Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security reform. There is no guarantee that he will have the nerve or skill to push those through, but he’s already done more than Obama has in over three years in the White House.

A bit harsher on Republicans than Jennifer Rubin has been, the editors of the Washington Examiner also stress the importance of action:

Conservatives are well within bounds to apply appropriate blame to Obama for his cowardice in confronting the great challenge of the day — an unsustainable entitlement state created by previous generations’ overpromising. But they must not go easy on Republican politicians; if anything, they should push back even harder against Republican attempts to avoid the tough business of reform or to expand unsustainable entitlements for their own political benefit. If Mitt Romney becomes president and has a Republican Senate and House, conservatives will be the last line of defense against a repeat of the Bush disaster.

We need real reform. And the candidate of hope and change has chosen instead to attack Republicans rather than address the nation’s fiscal problems — which have only become worse under his watch.

RELATED: Path to the White House: Ready for entitlement reform?

A lot of bloggers (mostly on the left) are buzzing about an MSNBC report of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s remarks at a “closed-door fundraiser . . . Sunday evening” where the former Massachusetts governor “offered some of the most specific details to date about the policies he would pursue if elected.”

Unlike remarks the presumptive Democratic nominee made four years ago at a similar closed-door fundraiser, Romney’s comments hardly present the image of an elitist politician looking down on American citizens not drawn to his campaign.  Instead, they reveal a conservative reformer, eager to eliminate excessive bureaucracy and to promote federalism:

“I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I’m probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go,” Romney said. “Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I’m not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we’ve got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states.”

Asked about the fate of the Department of Education in a potential Romney administration, the former governor suggested it would also face a dramatic restructuring. (more…)

A number of conservatives, including yours truly, have been wary about backing Mitt Romney because of the health care reforms he signed as Governor of Massachusetts, i.e., Romneycare.  And although he has repeatedly (and explicitly) said that if elected, he would repeal Obamacare, some on the right remain unconvinced.

His campaign has even touted his commitment to repeal as this telling image from the Los Angeles Times indicates:

Note the shadow of the candidate on the sign, hence, the use of the adjective “telling” above to describe the image. Take a look at the sign the campaign produced; it doesn’t just include repeal, it also promise to “replace”.  And focusing on that replacement is key for Romney to turn popular opposition to the president’s health care overhaul to his advantage — even if the Supreme Court overturns the president’s signature initiative.

Topping Jennifer Rubin’s list of the 10 things Romney “needs to do . . .in order to position himself for the final sprint to November” is developing . . .

. . . a health-care plan to replace Obamacare. Whatever the Supreme Court does, Romney should be the one with a constitutional, free-market-based health-care plan. Then he can put the spotlight on President Obama: Is he going to use the post-election “flexibility” to implement a single-payer plan?

Such a plan would help him better appeal to conservatives, showing that he advocates conservative reforms.  And it would help him appeal to independent voters as well who, even before the passage of Obamacare, believed our health care system needed reform, ifnot the overhaul Democrats favored.

Here, Rubin considers some of the ideas conservatives have been considering.  Romney will improve his standing with conservatives as well as with wavering independents if he spells out the kind of reforms he favors to replace Obamacare.

Whatever happened to hope and change?

Writing about the president’s speech on Tuesday, Walter Russell Mead found that the president, in attacking the Ryan budget, is defending the status quo:

The Republican budget may or may not be the way forward, and there is doubtless much to criticize within it. Yet Obama’s response hardly advances the debate, reading as it does like a laundry-list of blue dream ideas that have dominated Democratic thinking for decades. Rather than proposing an alternative model for the future to compete with the GOP’s, the President appears content to run on what is essentially a stand pat program: the only thing wrong with the blue social model is that it is underfunded.

. . . .

And he remains a distinctly darker shade of blue than the “New Democrats” of the 1990s for whom reform was more important than shoring up the old ways of life. Yet it remains interesting to see that even President Obama has (particularly on educational issues) been forced by reality in the direction of reform. Beyond the public sector union movement, where all anybody can think about is how to get more funds to shovel into the machine, even the staunchest defenders of the blue social model must these days pay some attention to the need for results.

Via Instapundit.  No wonder Obama in 2012 is “a brand in search of a slogan” (also via Instapundit).  Guess that means that Republicans are now the party of change?  Running on reform alone, Mead writes further, won’t be enough for Republicans to win in November:

His opponents will have to make the contrary cases: that the need for reform is urgent, and that the reforms they have in mind are well thought out, no harsher or rasher than they need to be, and likely to achieve key goals of blue programs (like helping the poor, educating the young, caring for the old and the sick) but in a more sustainable way. (more…)

In my early morning (GayPatriot blog time) post on civility, I mentioned a conversation I had last night with a fellow alum of America’s finest liberal arts college about my opposition to Barack Obama’s reelection.  I focused my arguments on the incumbent’s big-spending ways and his regulatory policies.  He has neither a plan, I reminded my interlocutor, to deal with the skyrocketing federal debt nor the coming insolvency of federal entitlements.

As this wavering Obama supporter acknowledged my points, he expressed concern about a Republican Party obsessed with social issues, particularly contraception.  I replied that it wasn’t the candidates so much who focused on social issues, but the legacy media which focused on statements one candidate had made.

I then brought up the ABC/Yahoo/WMUR January debate in New Hampshire when former Bill Clinton advisor, now ABC News anchor, George Stephanopolous brought up the topic of contraception; I encouraged my friend to read what the likely Republican presidential nominee had said in that forum.

Discussing that debate, I expressed relief at Rick Santorum’s loss earlier this week in Illinois because that former Pennsylvania Senator, in the words of Erick Erickson (a blogger quite sympathetic to the concerns of social conservatives), like “Dug the dog in Up getting distracted by every random squirrel, Rick Santorum loses all ability to focus when social issues come up.”  With the Senator as the nominee, we would have a more difficult time defending our party as one focused on restoring fiscal sanity.

With Romney as the nominee, however, it will be a lot easier to make the case for change to intelligent urban- and suburbanites aware of the incumbent’s fiscal failures.

As a reminder, below the jump, I provide Romney’s response to Stephanopoulos’s question about contraception.  He doesn’t say anything that would offend social moderates — or sensible social liberals — concerned about our nation’s economic wellbeing: (more…)

If, back in 2008, our legacy media had taken the time to look into Sarah Palin’s actual record in Alaska politics, three names of corrupt politicians would forever be associated with her, Frank Murkowski, Greg Renkes and Randy Ruedrich.  And the reason we would associate their names with hers was not because she turned a blind eye to their double-dealing, but because she exposed it.

She stood up against corruption in her own party.  Each of those men is a Republican.  As she put it in her post yesterday on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government:

Barack Obama and I both served in political office in states with a serious corruption problem. Though there is a big difference between serving as the CEO of a city, then a state, and regulating domestic energy resources, and being a liberal Community Organizer, bear with me on the comparison. The difference between my record and Barack Obama’s is that I fought the corrupt political machine my entire career (and I have twenty years of scars to prove it) on the local, state, and national level. But Obama didn’t fight the corruption he encountered. He went along with it to advance his career.

Read the whole thing.

And yet our friends in the legacy media bought into the claim that that career Chicago poll was some new kind of politician.  They neither asked nor looked for any evidence to buttress his claims.

Sarah Palin, by contrast, had a real record of reform.  It’s just that some journalists thought her tanning bed of greater interest.

But, we’ve been through this before.  That said, it serves as an important reminder about necessary battlefield preparation for the coming presidential contest.

NB:  Tweaked the title to make it less clunky

Of all the liberal notions about Barack Obama, perhaps the most specious is that of his bipartisanship.  When House Democrats crafted his “stimulus,” they didn’t consult with Republicans.  Indeed, when one Republican objected to some of its provisions, he rebuked him by saying simply, “I won.”

Earlier this week, Noam Scheiber articulated the liberal notion in a post at the New Republic’s blog, quoting Mark Schmitt, once of The American Prospect, who put it thusly:

[P]erhaps we are being too literal in believing that “hope” and bipartisanship are things that Obama naively believes are present and possible, when in fact they are a tactic…

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith [conservative] opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows.

Is this guy kidding himself?  It’s members of this conservative opposition who are putting forward solutions to our nation’s problem, as per this post today on Hot Air about a proposal to reform Medicare authored by Republicans Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Richard Burr (N.C.):

Coburn said it best when he explained to The Washington Times why they decided to release the plan in an election year, when it’s unlikely to actually go anywhere: “All of us in Congress are running around fixing everything except our biggest problem. If you don’t start fixing Medicare, you can’t save it.”

If the president were truly interesting in seeking bipartisan solutions, he would call these two men to his office and talk to them about their proposal.  He and Coburn became friends while serving together in the Senate.  And he would have called Paul Ryan last year when he put forward a plan to reform Medicare as part of a budget proposal to scale back federal spending.

But, as Michael Barone reports, though he wondered if his aides had looked at the proposals, he didn’t make any effort to contact the Republican leader himself: (more…)

Just caught this on AOL’s home page (edited by the left-leaning Huffington Post):

The bad news headline links this article: Social Security Is Failing Even Faster Than We Thought.  Read the whole thing.

I know that at least one of the presidential candidates has expressed concern for the popular program’s fiscal problems and has put forward some ideas for reform.  Has the president?

In linking a post on the president’s soon-to-be released budget which offers little in the way of meaningful reform, Jennifer Rubin asks the right question:

Smart politics or do the voters penalize political cowardice? “President Barack Obama’s budget proposal Monday will offer several measures to trim the federal deficit in the next 10 years. But it would leave largely unchanged the biggest drivers of future government spending: the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs that are expanding rapidly as the baby boom turns into a senior boom. Calling for major changes in the popular programs would be politically treacherous in an election year because of fierce opposition from seniors, who vote in large numbers. But budget experts of both parties agree the programs’ growth must be curbed at some point or they will swamp the budget.”

Emphasis added.  At a time of trillion-dollar deficits  – and a national debt that has increased by well over $4 trillion since the incumbent was sworn in.  (By contrast, the “national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush . . . [and] is rising at a pace to surpass that amount during Mr. Obama’s four-year term.“*)

Given the challenges we face, a smart Republican would instead of following the president’s example of offering half-measures, take heed to Paul Ryan and offer a real plan for reform:

In other words, a bold reform agenda is our moral obligation. We have an obligation to provide the American people with a clear path that gets our country back on track. (more…)

Charles Lane penned a great column on the Gipper’s birthday about a reformist in the traditional of Ronald Reagan.  The former editor of the center-left New Republic observed that “The threat to such progressive goals as majority rule, transparent government, a vibrant public sector and equality comes from public-sector unionism“:

Of course, collective bargaining in the public sector is inherently contrary to majority rule. It transfers basic public-policy decisions — namely, the pay and working conditions that taxpayers will offer those who work for them — out of the public square and behind closed doors. Progressive Wisconsin has a robust “open meetings” law covering a wide range of government gatherings except — you guessed it — collective bargaining with municipal or state employees. So much for transparency.

Even worse, to the extent that unions bankroll the campaigns of the officials with whom they will be negotiating — and they often do — they sit on both sides of the table.

Indeed.  And the left-of-center pundit commends Wisconsin’s Republican governor for taking on such unions.  Read the whole thing!

Sometimes one headline just says it all: Dems see GOP budget reforms as ‘sneaky’ way to cut spending:

House Democrats on Thursday were resisting two Republican bills that would reform the budget process, and charged that the bills were a backdoor attempt by the GOP to reduce federal spending without having to pass more specific bills that cut the budget.

Republicans on Thursday afternoon called up the rule for H.R. 3578, the Baseline Reform Act, and H.R. 3582, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act. The first bill would eliminate the assumption that spending on discretionary items will increase with the rate of inflation each year, an assumption that Republicans said fosters budget expansion.

The second bill would require the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the macroeconomic effect of budget bills as part of its regular duties.

Sneaky? Sneaky? Haven’t Republicans said they want to cut spending?  Haven’t Democrats been wringing their hands over the size of the deficit?  And didn’t their 2008 presidential nominee say that “throughout” his campaign, he been proposing “a net spending cut.”

Seems the Democrats’ reaction to this reform proposal reveals their real thinking on spending.

Why don’t the Democrats just up and admit it:  they want to keep spending at the heightened levels of the past three years.  Their candidate’s professed support in 2008 for a “net spending cut” was, to borrow an expression, “just words.”

Mitt Romney, Fred Barnes writes, citing the candidate’s victory speech last night . . .

. . .  insisted the brutal primary campaign, with Romney and Gingrich trading attacks on each other’s character and motives, won’t leave Republicans divided. “A competitive primary does not divide us,” he said. “It prepares us. When Republicans gather in August at their convention, “ours will be a united party with a winning ticket for America.” He didn’t say so, but it’s up to Romney to do the uniting.

And to do that, he needs to show he appreciates the appeal of his rivals and act to quell doubts about his conservatism.  Just saying the party will  be united won’t make it so.

Yesterday, Robert Costa reported one step the once-and-future frontrunner could take toward unifying the party, make a bold statement on tax reform:

As Romney mulls [“'phase two”'of his tax-reform plan"], Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, has some advice: endorse the House GOP’s tax-reform plan instead of proposing a separate legislative outline.

“The smart move is to say, ‘I’m with Paul Ryan,’” Norquist says. “Then it’s not ‘his plan,’ and [Romney] can simply say, ‘I’ve endorsed the House Republican plan’ when prompted about tax reform.”

A bold plan will show a commitment to conservative reform.  Instead of attacking his rivals, Romney should now focus on the issues.

Should he put forward — or sign onto — plans to reduce the deficit, reform the tax code, repeal statist legislation (e.g., Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxely), he will go a long way to rallying the base.  And he should put in a kind word or two (or three) about his rivals.

And with reverence, recall Ronald Reagan.

Maybe it’s just that he’s waiting for others to craft the reforms so he can see how people react before signing on to anything. This way, he accrues the benefit of supporting a popular reform without the political risk of backing a proposal which might alienate his base.

I endorsed Jon Huntsman for President, in part, because of his bold tax reform plan. In his speech last night, the man the former Utah Governor once sought to replace addressed the issue thusly: “It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away.” He went on to repeat his mantra about having the rich pay more.

Note how in the passage cited above, the president asked someone else to write the reforms and send them to him.  He failed to offer a plan of his own.

In a similar vein, here’s how he addressed entitlement reform:  ”I’m prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors.”

Prepared to make?  Prepared to make, Mr. President?  The President of the United States should be doing more than just make preparations, he should be proposing solutions. (more…)

As I was considering which candidate to back in the current presidential contest, I focused not just on political ideology, but also executive competence.  I quickly ruled out Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum — and not just for their lack of executive experience.

Although I was, at one point impressed with Newt Gingrich’s performance in the debates and in interviews, I recalled he did not have a stellar record as House Speaker (a position which has some executive responsibilities).  Indeed, one of the most principled conservatives in the Senate, a man who once served with Gingrich in the House, Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn said he was “not inclined to be a supporter of Newt Gingrich’s having served under him for four years and personally experiences [sic] his leadership“.

Within the field, only four candidates thus, former governors of Massachusetts, New Mexico and Utah, respectively, Mitt Romney, Gary Johnson and Jon Hunstman and the current chief executive of Texas, Rick Perry.  Even before he jumped the shark, Perry quickly disqualified himself with his erratic campaign and over-the-top rhetoric.  When Johnson abandoned his quest for the Republican nomination (without getting the media attention he deserved), that left just Huntsman and Romney.

That latter has distinguished himself on the campaign trail by shining in the debates and remaining unflappable in the face of criticism.  He has built a solid organization and showed, with his management of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the ability to turn around a failing enterprise.  That said, while he has put forward some good ideas on how to clean up the messes created by the current administration, he hasn’t been bold enough in articulating the reforms we need to right a rapidly listing ship of state.

Now, I’ve long had concerns about Jon Huntsman one of which our reader Kurt articulates in his comment to my endorsement, contending the candidate was “seeking the approval of the mainstream media” when he could have made “the rounds of conservative media” or tried “to connect with Tea Party groups”.  The Utahan showed as much recently when he joined Newt in piling on Romney’s record of Bain and in apparently questioning the sanity of his own party. (more…)

In his speech Tuesday night (at 0:51 in this video), libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said, “Back in the old days in the early 70s, Nixon said we’re all Keynesians now, which meant that even the Republicans accepted liberal economics. . . . I’m waiting for the day when we can say we’re all Austrians now.” He was referring to the Austrian School of Economics which teaches, among other things, the benefits of free markets.

I too am waiting for that day.  Paul’s hopes (and mine) notwithstanding, it seems that day is far off.  While Republicans no longer accept Keynesian economics, many have resigned themselves to a somewhat intrusive federal government.  House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, for example, a folk hero to many conservatives (including yours truly) has proposed reforming Medicare rather than privatizing this federal (i.e., government) program which provides health insurance coverage for the elderly.

When we talk about scaling back the size of the federal government, we may long for a federal government the size it was when John F. Kennedy took office — or when Calvin Coolidge returned to Massachusetts, but we would settle for using the FY 2007 baseline to set current spending.  The more optimistic among us strive to return to the FY 2001 baseline.e.  That is, even some of the most conservative among us would be content with the spending levels set by the Clinton administration (in cooperation with Republican Congresses).

Bill Clinton, in seeking to “reinvent government,” sought to reform existing federal programs and make them more efficient, a notion not unlike the entitlement reforms proposed by Ryan and some of the Republican presidential candidates.  One such candidate, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman may have put forward a bold economic plan, advocating repeal of intrusive legislation passed in the Obama and Bush administrations, but the only other federal institutions he proposes abolishing are the GSEs (government-sponsored enterprises), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which sparked “the Panic of 2008″.

In short, like Bill Clinton, we conservatives have, by and large, resigned ourselves to reinventing government (though, to be sure, we come at this resignation from the right, he from the left**).  We recognize that the American people expect the state to have a considerable role in our lives, “considerable” here meaning programs created by the “progressive” reforms of the Roosevelts as well as those of the Great Society and Nixon eras, but have become increasingly wary of the more burdensome regulations of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. (more…)

This morning on CNBC, Steve Forbes, who made a bid for the 1996 GOP nomination, offered perhaps the best concise criticism of Mitt Romney (well, except for that of a regular reader V the K, “an opportunistic political windsock, who doesn’t reveal his core but simply responds with robotic talking points“).

Forbes called Romney’s economic plan “weak tea”, saying the former Massachusetts governor needs to “get more bold” lest he continue to sound like failed Republican presidential nominee Tom Dewey.  The financial publisher reminded viewers that instead of offering a moderate message, Ronald Reagan made the case for conservative policies,bold reforms, in terms working class Democrats could understand (am paraphrasing here).

Later, on the show, Larry Kudlow echoed Forbes’s point saying that Mitt Romney needs to get bolder and then, as if anticipating this post, praised Jon Huntsman’s tax and economic package.  Despite the rap on the former Utah governor as a RINO, he has probably put forward the boldest and most sensible conservative economic plan, better, as the Wall Street Journal editors put it in September, “than anything so far from the GOP Presidential field“.

Romney, seemingly true to his executive experience, has perhaps the best campaign organization in the GOP field, Huntsman the best economic plan.  Would it we could combine the two.  Huntsman has the bold kind of economic agenda Romney needs to present.

Should he do so, he might be able to erase some of the doubts conservatives have about his candidacy.  And to erase those doubts, he would need to meet with mainstream conservative leaders — and bloggers — as he puts forward just such a plan.

Both Huntsman and Romney have something other Republican candidates and the incumbent Democrats lack, a record of accomplishment in executive positions.  If only the Republican frontrunner could combine that with a bold economic plan.