Why Conservatives must not vote for Mitt Romney

If we vote for Mitt Romney this year—and he wins—we won’t be able to vote for Paul Ryan for president in 2016.

It’s that simple. If Mr. Romney wins in 2012, Paul Ryan’s political goose is cooked.

If Mr. Romney is elected in November, he will be the incumbent in 2016, and we can hardly turn our man out of office after only one term and expect the American people to take our party’s replacement candidate credibly unless Ronald Reagan comes back from the dead.

It could happen, but it is certainly not the shrewd political calculation.

Therefore, Mr. Ryan will either still be stuck in the number two slot during a second Romney term, or worse, be tainted as part of a disgraced, turned-out administration after one term.

And in the increasingly unlikely event of a Romney incumbency four years from now, we also wouldn’t be able to nominate Chris Christie in 2016 either, or Jeb Bush or Mike Huckabee or any of our shallow pool of Latino hopefuls. If we put Mr. Romney in the White House, this year’s crop of rising stars are destined to wither on the vine for up to the next eight years. At the speed the world is changing, eight years might as well be a lifetime. If Mr. Romney wins, every dream we’ve ever had for any current up-and-comer will be pushed back to long-shot status, at best, the day after the election.

Wouldn’t it be better to let our next, less clumsy, more likable, candidate have four years to mature, to sweeten, to learn the ropes and the ins and outs of the new-media environment? More importantly, afford them four more years to polish their craft on a lame-duck president burdened with an obstreperous, proudly uncooperative Congress?

If you love America like I do, and don’t want to see the mainstream conservative movement’s voices stilled for another decade, play the long game. It’s time to cut bait.

Mitt Romney was never one of us and he never will be.

Mr. Romney gives every impression of being another well-connected political legacy with Daddy Issues that he is convinced can only be resolved by hanging his shingle outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The last time we elected such a candidate, he tarnished the Republican brand for a decade and counting. Neither he nor his Vice President were invited to speak at this year’s Republican convention, the first time such an insult has been visited upon a living American ex-President since Richard Nixon’s post-presidency term of exile.

Why must conservatives not vote for Mitt Romney?

Why would we?