At Least One Statesman-like Act
By Tim Robison
News Editor
For some time I have heard people in the Valley say that they are looking for a statesman-like leader in the 2008 election. The term statesman is a word often imbued with emotion conjuring up images of Washington, Hamilton, and Lincoln.
Frankly, I think it is difficult to bestow the moniker of statesman on any living public official without getting into some kind of serious argument with someone of any number of political stripe or historical philosophy. The people who are universally seen as statesmen tend to be dead and gone for some time before they universally earn that distinction. While this may seem a cynical view of things, you may take heart to know, I do believe statesmen of the future walk among us and in the halls of power. They cannot always be identified without getting into debates but they can sometimes be identified by acts that they perform; acts that, if built upon, will lead them to a place of greatness in our history and collective esteem.
I think we saw one such act at last Thursday’s meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) when Mitt Romney dropped a bomb on conservative Republicans across the country and withdrew from the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. The bomb landed particularly hard here in Moapa Valley where Romney won around 95 percent of the GOP’s vote in the recent Nevada Caucuses.
Of course, many in the media took the cynical view that Romney’s withdrawal was nothing more than his being washed up and making a desperate play for the 2012 presidential election. While I am sure that possibility resides somewhere in the back of his head, I also believe that Romney genuinely played the part of the statesman with his departure from the race. Between Super Tuesday and the GOP Convention in early September, there are around twenty-six primaries and caucuses. While given the percentages, it was not probable for Romney to tie up the nomination in those twenty-six races; it was certainly within the realm of the possible to have kept McCain from sealing the nomination for himself, which could have lead to a battle for the nomination in the convention, which would have produced an exciting convention, for a change.
Look at the facts, Romney had no shortage of cash and in the two weeks between the Florida Primary and Super Tuesday, the conservative tide was mounting for Romney. Attempting to do what Reagan did in 1976, only with more success was completely within the realm of possibility.
In his CPAC speech Thursday Romney said that, “If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”
Whether John McCain can also do a statesman-like thing, look past his differences with Romney, and select him as his Vice Presidential running mate is still to be seen. Whether Romney can do yet another statesman-like act and lower himself to accept the job of VP is also consigned to the future. At least Republicans can be happy that in what looked to be a nasty 2008 election there was at least one statesman-like act that occurred.
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