Mitt Romney - Conservative Frontrunner?

The party informs us the nomination process is over. It is time to get behind our leader. The man the party elites have selected shows consistently poorly in must win conservative states, and shakey in battle ground states, but he has won primaries in one blue state after another, states he will never win in the general election.

In excited anticipation of the Romney juggernaut, CNN asked long time aide Eric Fehrnstrom whether or not the candidate has been stained, forced by his fellow Republican challengers to appear too conservative. His response:

"Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch," Fehrnstrom told CNN's John Fugelsang. "You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.

So once Fehrnstrom gets his guy through this Primary trouble, he'll just take him, turn him over, give him a good shake and we're starting over from scratch again.

Could you do that with Ronald Reagan? Sarah Palin? Rick Santorum? I have a hard time thinking of John McCain or George H.W. Bush that way, though a case could be made. But now here is a man who has worked with Mitt since he was governor, and the picture he paints is the one we were always worried about.

Mitt has been proclaiming himself the "real" conservative in the race, with a deluge of campaign ads that have driven down turnout and dispirited the party. He's been blowing soap bubble fantasies, where his competitors are painted as moderate to liberal, while the Governor from Massachusetts passed himself off as the real deal. Yes, if we are to believe the pitch, it seems his true identity was hidden from view as he walked among the ordinary citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But now, now that he is needed, superman like, he will shed that exterior disguise and the man of steel will be revealed. Revealed, that is, until Fehrnstrom decides it's time to turn him over and give him a good shaking.

Please. Romney has impressed me as a man who will say anything, do anything to make himself popular and get himself elected. From my perspective, that does not make for a candidate I would warm to. And all his negative campaigning... stinks.

What are his core beliefs, and what will he fight for, if anything? This is the most critical election that we have faced in my lifetime, and the answer to that key question is... I'm not sure.