The American Spectator

You have a point, Phil. But this is really nothing new of course for Romney. He is not by disposition a free market proponent. This was the fellow who declared in a debate (one of the 12,451 we have had to watch this primary cycle) that with regard to healthcare: “I like mandates.” I would think the latest silliness(e.g. corporate welfare/industrial policy) which is just Democratic lite, aside from being bad policy, is bad politics for him. What distinguishes his brand of government intervention from Huckabee’s approach? The rhetoric is less overtly populist and more corporate friendly but it does not help his cause I think, nor the party as a whole, to co-opt bad Democratic ideas. It would seem Rudy and Thompson have room to make a pitch to conservatives that separates their views (both have generally avoided big government solutions and sounded skeptical about meddling in the free market) from Romney and Huckabee.