Anent the "Poll" Post

Oh, by the way--and related to the 'poll' post below--here's an overseas observation which deserves reading.  HT:  ColdFury

...The way to reconcile the similarities and the differences between Bush and Obama is to see both as guardians of the New Deal tradition – with varying degress of enthusiasm and very different personalities. America still lives with mythic, traumatic and nostalgic memories of the 1930s, when Franklin D Roosevelt saved capitalism from the Great Depression.... If Bush was Roosevelt Lite, Obama was Roosevelt Max Strength. His 2008 electoral coalition was pure New Deal: the marginalised, the organised and the educated coming together to outnumber the reactionary and the red of neck. In office, Obama did what Democrats had often promised to do but never succeeded. Real healthcare reform, millions added to the welfare rolls and finally – finally!– someone prepared to take on the Catholic Church.

The problem was that the moment when the hardcore Roosevelt fans finally got the keys to the candy store was the exact moment when it had run out of candy. The money was gone and the economy exhausted. The New Deal order didn’t cause the recession, but it did limit America’s ability to recover from it. The creation of a warfare/welfare state consensus under both Republicans and Democrats lumbered the federal government with crippling levels of debt.

...Today, the real revolutionaries are the Tea Party, who have hijacked the Republican Party and turned it into an imperfect (and often reluctant) vehicle for a return to the fundamentals of Americanism: small, constitutional, limited government. To do this, they had to reject the politics of both Obama and Bush – and Mitt has slowly caught up. There was a significant moment in the second debate when a citizen asked Romney how he would distinguish himself from George W Bush. Romney said, “President Bush and I are different people, and these are different times.” He cited differences over aid to small business, balancing the budget, energy policy and relations with China. Remarkably, Obama then jumped in to defend Bush. (!!!!!!!!)

We've said it a million times; the Statist Pubbies (like, e.g., GWBush, GHWBush, and Tommy Thompson) are dinosaurs.  They are formidable beasts with tons (heh) of momentum--but no gas left in the tank.

Is Romney a convert to Conservatism?  Not likely.  But given the composition of the House, he may be dragged, kicking quietly, to the right place.