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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Palin and Romney

If TARP is a deal killer, then Romney is finished. ~David Frum That might turn out to be right, but if Romney is finished because of his support for the TARP then so is Palin. For whatever reason, Palin’s supporters don’t care that during the only national campaign in her career she aligned herself with […]

If TARP is a deal killer, then Romney is finished. ~David Frum

That might turn out to be right, but if Romney is finished because of his support for the TARP then so is Palin. For whatever reason, Palin’s supporters don’t care that during the only national campaign in her career she aligned herself with the party establishment on this and every other issue. One interpretation is that they don’t care because policy is simply irrelevant to her enthusiasts, and that may be partly true, but my guess is that they choose to suspend their outrage over the TARP arbitrarily because they like Palin. Instead of using it to attack her, they try to excuse it. Romney’s supporters can be similarly oblivious to his flaws and mistakes in judgment. They overlook these things not so much because they like him (who actually likes him?), but because they like what they believe Romney represents: success in the private sector and technocratic competence. They look at Romney and think, “This is what we’ve been missing!” It doesn’t bother them that he is exceptionally unprincipled, and for some of them that is almost a plus.

As I have said before, if the TARP becomes an important litmus test in the primaries Republican voters are going to be stuck with very few choices. Most national Republicans with presidential ambitions supported the bailout, and this included governors (Pawlenty) and ex-governors (Romney) who had no particular reason to take a position on it. I don’t know that Daniels took a public position on it, but I would be amazed if he had come out against the bill. In the primaries this year, incumbent Republicans have lost partly because of their support for the TARP because there was a challenger who could make it an issue without being a hypocrite. It would be very difficult for any of the probable contenders under discussion to attack others on support for the bailout.

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