With Mitt Romney winning the Iowa caucus and on track to do well in New Hampshire, conservatives should just give up and rally behind the former Massachusetts governor, MSNBC host Alex Wagner suggested at the open of today's Now with Alex Wagner.
Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele was having none of that:
ALEX WAGNER, host: Here we are, and there's a lot of, there's Mitt-mentum, as it were.
MICHAEL STEELE: Where is it?
WAGNER: I don't know, you, well, there's--
STEELE: Where is it?! Twenty-five percent does not momentum make.
[...]
WAGNER: But there is some thinking that, at some point, conservatives have to rally around this guy. We know that Politico --
STEELE: Why?! Why?
WAGNER: Because--
STEELE: Why can't conservatives just make up their own mind? Why do they have to sit and wait for you or me or Karl Rove or anybody to tell them who they should want?
We saw in this process that the base of the party said we will do this our way in our time. We're, they're in no rush to do this. They want to vet these guys. There's a serious discussion undergoing in the RNC, in the party right now.
It didn't begin in this cycle. This goes back to 2005. It goes back to the second term of the Bush administration, about the difference between foundational principles versus Big Government Republicanism.
And their concern is that Mitt Romney is just a facade for what will be a next generation of Big Government Republicanism, so you have to appreciate that in the first instance.
