Since I came fully on board for Romney it has been a death of a thousand cuts. Day after day he gives me reasons to not support him and makes me less and less enthusiastic about his candidacy. Today was the last straw, not being able to firmly stand against Public Employee Unions and on the side of every Kasich on the Ohio referendums is it. I can’t take it anymore. I am off the Romney bandwagon.

The problem is I have nowhere else to go. My requirements in a candidate are not very rigorous. I only have two requirements; be conservative and be able to convincingly articulate conservatism. That’s it. I am confident that as with Reagan in the 1980s, if we have a candidate who can communicate our ideas, independents and Democrats will vote for conservative Republicans in droves and we can begin the process or repairing our economy, our government and our country.

Somehow we are left with a situation where none of the people who can actually fulfill these requirements want to be President. Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Tom Coburn, Marco Rubio, etc. Instead we have a field of flawed candidates that leaves me praying for a last minute miracle change of heart by Mitch Daniels’ wife or by Paul Ryan.

Romney’s problems are too numerous to count, but for me it boils down to one thing. Unlike most people, I really do believe he is mostly conservative at heart and not the horrible moderate he is made out to be, but it is plainly clear that enacting conservative policy is less important to him than being elected.  When Romney is on and has the right talking points, he can sell the conservative message as well as almost anyone. I think Romney is the ideal person to oversee and audit of all federal agencies to enact budget cuts, eliminate waste and improve efficiency, thus enacting a small part of my conservative vision for America.

Perry’s biggest problem is that he can’t articulate conservative policy so I don’t even really care how conservative he may or may not be. Also, I don’t believe he is a small government conservative. He is probably a step or two to the right of being a George Bush Republican but I am not even sure about that. Bottom line, because of the liberal media we need a President who can use the bully pulpit to sell conservative economic policy and budget/entitlement reforms. Perry isn’t that guy.

Cain’s biggest problem is that he is not ready to be president. It is clear that Cain never envisioned he would get this far and the policies he has actually proposed are not that well thought out. If I decided to run for president tomorrow I would be more prepared from a policy standpoint than Cain. Also, he is so gaffe prone that even if he did manage to understand all the issues and have associated policy prescriptions, he wouldn’t be able to answer his critics or undecideds. People like him, I am not sure that he can convice them to like his ideas.

Gingrich is a bit of a different story because he fulfills my two requirements, being both articulate and conservative, but he has so much history and so much baggage that I really don’t think he can overcome the late 1990s with most independents. That said, I am half-way reconsidering Gingrich because I wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit I support him (Romney) and I wouldn’t have to explain conservatism to my liberal and moderate friends, Newt would do it for me.

Nobody else in the field is worth talking about.

Maybe the conservative media (Rush, Hannity, Redstate, Malkin, HotAir, etc) could convince Mike Pence to run.

In order for the entire GOP caucus to unite around specific alternative proposals to Obama’s, we have to start planning what they will be NOW. A small benefit of already having our leadership in place is we are capable of doing this.

In my opinion we can’t filibuster or influence every Obama/Reid/Pelosi proposal so we will have to choose our battles wisely. The top 4 issues where I think we can fight back with conservative ideas and win are, IMMIGRATION, HEALTHCARE REFORM, TAXES, and ENERGY.

IMMIGRATION

Immigration and healthcare are the two most important issues (outside of judges), because if we fail to block them the changes will be permanent. Immigration will be the easiest issue to get grassroots support for because we have already seen it happen. Unfortunately it may be the most difficult of the 4 to actually block because of the votes we lost in the Senate and because their is serious division on what type of alternative we should propose. (My guess is McCain will try to screw us on this one and keep his promise to work with Obama.)

The two main camps within our ranks (not including the pro-amnesty rejects) will consist of those who want to pursue an attrition through enforcement strategy (Tom Tancredo), and those who want to secure the border and then legalize the illegals who are here.

It will be impossible to stop the liberal plan without being united around an alternative plan, and it will be very difficult to unite around a plan when we disagree so much within our ranks. (On the bright side, of the 4 issues I am most concerned about this will be the easiest to bring some moderate Dems to our side.)

Even though it means a compromise in what I think is best (attrition the enforcement), our only real chance to exert any influence on this issue is to take the position of securing the border first and then legalizing those who are here. I my view that means our alternative plan to the Obama amnesty proposal would include certain benchmarks that have to be met and verified before the process towards legalization can start. This includes a fence, a large increase in the border patrol and a secure national ID card for immigrant workers. The key is making sure the verification can’t be bypassed.

Other important things to include are, a program for future immigration that rewards the skilled and educated as opposed to chain migration, and a huge modernization of INS to streamline the process in the future and to enable accurate tracking of guest workers and temporary visas to ensure they leave when their time is up.

Also, we need to at least attempt to sell this to Hispanics. If we can’t narrow the gap among Hispanics we are going to be a permanent minority.

HEALTHCARE REFORM

Healthcare reform should be an easy issue for us to block Obama’s liberal plan, but in order to do so we will have to actually go out and sell our plan (thanks for screwing that one up McCain). We are already united around the basic principles of what our proposal should include (basically identical to McCain’s plan) so that part is easy compared to immigration. Also, a huge advantage that we have on healthcare is the fact that the insurance industry will oppose the enactment of Obama’s plan. Unfortunately many large employers (including the Big Three auto manufacturers) will support his plan as a way to cut costs.

McCain did such a poor job defending free-market healthcare that I think we will have to do more than repackage it in order to gain credibility with voters. The best and easiest solution is to adopt the American Medical Association’s plan and ally ourselves with them. Even though voters don’t trust Republicans on healthcare, they certainly trust their doctors. By proposing to enact the AMA plan, we will be able ensure free-market healthcare at least gets a fair hearing.

Here is the AMA plan.

(Since I am going to graduate from medical school in 6 months this is a huge issue for me. I don’t want to rely on government bureaucracy for my income.)

TAXES

Obama’s plan has varied so much, that it is impossible to predict what he will propose with regard to taxes. That shouldn’t stop us from preparing and proposing an alternative plan. Their are tons of good ideas about what tax reform should look like, but I think we should keep it simple and we should target the middle class. Even though cutting corporate tax rates is a great idea and would arguably do the most good for average Americans, it has no chance of passing and it isn’t a great issue politically.

I think the plan should be a hybrid of some of the ideas proposed over the campaign season.

1 – Increase the child tax credit to $1500-2000 per child

2 – Cut capital gains to 0% on people earning less than $200,000 (Romney’s idea)

3 – Create an optional flat tax (preferably opt-out) with 3 brackets 7%, 15% and 25%

That’s it. Of course the plan will likely include some other small things (ending the alternative minimum tax, etc) but these three points should be all we talk about.

ENERGY

This issue will probably consist mostly of preventing Cap and Trade or some other type of carbon tax. I don’t see us actually getting our proposal through, but we should have a simple, specific plan anyway.

Our plan should include “Drill here, Drill now” and sell it with numbers by pointing out how much gas prices would be lowered and how much money it would keep in the US as opposed to going to Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc. It also should always be talked about as merely a bridge to future cleaner energy, which is the next part.

The plan should include goals for more nuclear power, as well as development of clean coal, natural gas and battery-powered cars. This part of the plan should ideally be left open since we don’t yet know what will be the best new, sustainable, clean energy source.

What are your issues and what is your plan?

We need to get this going as soon as possible in order to present an united opposition. We also need to determine who our spokemen will be for each issue. Finally, we need to prepare our opposition to other liberal policies that might be enacted: card check, fairness doctrine, etc.

Where do we start? Again 2012 isn’t the answer. It won’t matter who the nominee is in 2012 if we don’t work for it starting tomorrow. Here is my list of priorities going forward.

Senate leadership

I like Kyl better than McConnell but really I think we need whoever will be better at organizing and blocking liberal excess in the Senate. This is our key battleground in stopping Obama and his Congressional allies. Also, we need someone who will be an effective spokesman in our efforts to redefine the Republican party in the minds of moderates and independents. Who do you think we should have as our Senate leadership?

RNC Chairman

I think Newt would be the best for this, unless he is planning on running in 2012. We need to redefine the party in the minds of most voters. We need to re-organize our fundraising and we need an effective spokesman to put in front of the media. I think Newt is the best man for the job, but I think Fred and Romney could be very good as well. Since none of those three are likely, who do you think will be the best RNC Chairman?

Canidate Recruitment for 2010

We have a real chance to close the gap in the House and in the Senate, but how well we do will depend on candidate recruitment. Here is a quick list of Senate seats and potential candidates who could be game changers if we get them to run.

CA – Arnold

CO – John Elway

HI – Linda Lingle

IL – ??? No idea but whoever has the seat will have been appointed by a corrupt Governor and it will probably be a bitter Dem primary battle. Any ideas here?

NV – ??? Was going to say Porter, but it looks like he will be a 2008 casualty, and Guinn is too old. If Reid stays in leadership he will probably be a better target, but either way he will be vulnerable. Any ideas?

ND – Hoeven – This seat would be a tough pickup since Dorgan is popular, but it is the type of seat we win in a good GOP environment with a good candidate.

We would need to get a good candidate in KS in case Sebelius runs. Also we need to make sure our incumbents run, especially those in purple states like Grassley, Specter etc.

What other Senate candidates are vulnerable and who can we recruit?

After we do all of this then in January of 2011 let’s start to worry about 2012.