The hang-up conservatives have with Gov. Romney is the conviction that he will say, support, oppose anything advantageous to him politically. The upshot is a fear that, however much he may espouse conservative principles at present, he will abandon them if and when they become politically inconvenient.
His cautious, low-risk campaign has done little to assuage these fears. If anything, it has exacerbated them. Witness the "anyone but Romney" efforts that are intensifying within the conservative movement, all because he has declined to outline or defend conservative initiatives that address the paramount issues confronting the republic.
To address this the governor must continue to do what he did on Saturday: propose entitlement reforms similar in kind to those that have been proposed by conservative luminaries like Paul Ryan. This is by its definition risky, something by which President Obama and the Left will bludgeon him in the general.
Accordingly, it will earn him credit with the Republican base. He will be going out on a limb for something bold and conservative, tying his political fate, in other words, to the fate of conservatism and its prescriptions for improving America.
To be the standard-bearer of conservatives, he must bear the standard. On Saturday he began to do this.
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