Some conservative pundits fret about the caliber of the 2012 Republican presidential field. Steven Hayward is not among them.
He offers the following thoughts at National Review Online:
A year and a half out, all candidates look weak, flawed, or unacceptable to some degree. While Jay Carney points out some problems with Tim Pawlenty’s record, try this thought experiment: What would we say about the prospects of a two-term governor of a blue state, who raised taxes massively his first year in office, signed a bill liberalizing abortion laws, supported the Equal Rights Amendment, signed two sweeping environmental statutes creating huge new bureaucracies, and sharply increased benefits for welfare recipients? A totally unacceptable RINO, correct?
That would be Governor Ronald Reagan, who changed his mind about abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment (as did many Republicans), and learned from having to raise taxes that the usual bulwarks against a ever-growing state are insufficient (hence Proposition 1). Similarly, Pawlenty and others might deserve some slack for being friendly once to cap-and-trade before the full horror of how the idea would work in practice (the Waxman-Markey bill) became apparent. It was the recognition of how the Equal Rights Amendment would go wrong that changed Reagan’s mind along with most other conservatives. Rather than lament that each person in the field falls short on one Tea Party measure or another, conservatives should reflect on how much the entire field has been drawn in a much more conservative direction.
