The Horror

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

George Will, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post, is not pleased with the GOP’s front runner, Mitt Romney. In his latest column, Will slams Romney for Romney’s support of ethanol subsidies. Will notes that Obamacare is a cousin of Romneycare. Will also goes after Romney’s waffling on support of the opposition to the repeal of the law that Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich enacted, limiting the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

The money quote from Will is:

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.”

…

Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

Data has a well-known liberal bias.

Romney is not ideological enough for Will. Competence is not a requirement for a Republican presidential candidate, in fact, competence is the Dukakis kiss of death in Will’s world. Like Obama, Romney has a JD from Harvard.

This is what conservatism has come to, an ideology whose policies are unaffected by facts.

H/T: TPM, Paul Krugman.