After RNC Calls For Hispanic Outreach, Republican Governor Eliminates Latino Affairs Office

The Republican National Committee devoted much of the attention of its “autopsy” report to improving party outreach to people of color. The report noted it is “imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party.” Yet, if the autopsy report had any effect at all, it appears to be short-lived. Since last week, top Republicans have dodged discussing immigration reform with citizenship, while one congressman used a racial slur to describe Latinos.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory’s (R) contribution to this effort is to unexpectedly close the state’s Latino Affairs office, an office that normally engaged with Latino leaders on policy, offfered bilingual assistance for disaster victims, and collected demographic statistics on the state’s 800,000 Latino residents.

The governor’s office said it will shift some of the office’s duties to a general office for community and constituent affairs. “We are committed to serving the needs of all of North Carolina’s citizens,” McCrory’s chief of staff said. “We don’t segment our constituents by race or cultural background, any more than we separate them by age or gender.”

But Latino advocates criticize the decision. Executive Director of Latin American Coalition in Charlotte Jess George told McClatchy, “The message from Raleigh is that Latinos in North Carolina don’t matter.”

Just before closing the Latino Affairs office, North Carolina pursued a controversial driver’s license design that would distinguish young undocumented immigrants’s licenses by a pink stripe and the words, “NO LAWFUL STATUS” printed across. The state somewhat modified the design when it faced community backlash.

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Top Republican Governor Admits Conservatives Have Lost The Battle Against Marriage Equality

Republican Governor Scott Walker (WI) — a likely GOP candidate for president in 2016 — admitted on Sunday that young conservatives support marriage equality for gays and lesbians, suggesting that the Republican party cannot sustain its opposition to same-sex marriage into the future.

Responding to Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-OH) embrace of equal marriage rights during an appearance on Meet The Press, Walker said that the issue of marriage equality did not animate his governor’s race, but admitted to host David Gregory that the next generation of Republicans will expect the party to join the growing popular consensus in favor of full marriage rights and will not be interested in pursuing campaigns against gay people:

GREGORY: Are younger conservatives more apt to see marriage equality as something that is, you know, what they believe, that is basic rather than as a disqualifying issue?

WALKER: I think there’s no doubt about that. But I think that’s all the more reason, when I talk about things, I talk about the economic and fiscal crises in our state and in our country, that’s what people want to resonate about. They don’t want to get focused on those issues.

Walker also questioned why the government sanctions marriage in the first place, noting, “an alternative [would be] to say not have the government sanction it, period, and leave that up to the churches and the synagogues.”

New research released earlier this month found that “while 53 percent of eligible voters support marriage equality, 83 percent believe same-sex marriage will be legal nationwide within five to 10 years.” A majority of Republicans under the age of 30 also said that they “support marriage equality at the state level.”

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Behind Every GOP Governor Cooperating With Obamacare Is An Industry Lobby Profiting From Obamacare

Another GOP governor has pledged to go ahead with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and once again, industry was standing right there with him. AP reports on West Virginia:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia will expand Medicaid as called for by the federal health care overhaul, through a plan unveiled Thursday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin that would extend coverage to an estimated 91,500 uninsured low-income residents….

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., joined Tomblin for Thursday’s announcement at Charleston’s St. Francis Hospital along with chief executives of several hospital systems. Expanding Medicaid is expected to help the state’s hospitals, which face a scheduled in federal reimbursement payments, by providing coverage to thousands of residents now treated at hospitals without compensation as charity care. The financial analysis cites studies estimating the annual savings to hospitals at $20 million to $30 million.

The same thing is happening in Ohio and Missouri. In Idaho, the GOP governor and legislature decided to build an Obamacare exchange thanks to industry pressure.

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GOP Governor Turns To Faith To Explain Why He Supports Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion

Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is one of eight Republican governors who have so far said their state will participate in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. But as the Huffington Post points out, Kasich stands apart in one respect: Of those Republican governors, he is so far the only one to explicitly tie his decision to the values of his religious faith.

While he remains opposed to Obamacare as a whole, the Ohio governor indicated his support for the Medicaid expansion in his annual State of the State remarks last week, pointing to the public health insurance program’s potential to help care for the most vulnerable residents in his state:

The Bible runs [Kasich's] life “not just on Sunday, but just about every day,” he said in his annual State of the State address Tuesday.

“And I’ve got to tell you, I can’t look at the disabled, I can’t look at the poor, I can’t look at the mentally ill, I can’t look at the addicted and think we ought to ignore them,” he told the audience of about 1,700 lawmakers, state officials and other guests. […]

“Put it in your family,” Kasich said. “Put somebody that is in your family who becomes the wayward child. And they come home one day, they can’t get a job. Put it on your doorstep, and you’ll understand how hard it is.”

Kasich was raised Catholic and worships regularly in an Anglican church. For more than 20 years, he has met every other Monday with a small group of men to study the Bible. And he has written a book about how the experience has helped him in his search for answers.

That’s a theme in keeping with a broader push that’s been made in the expansion’s favor. Earlier this year, religious and community leaders in Ohio held a rally at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, calling on their state to participate in the Medicaid expansion. And back in September, over 100 national, state, and local faith leaders released a statement employing Republican governors as a whole to accept the expansion. Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of the Catholic social justice group NETWORK, said in conjunction with the release that, “My strong support of Medicaid expansion comes out of my pro-life stance because it is the right and moral thing to do.”

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) wasn’t as explicitly religious as Kasich when he announced his own support for Medicaid expansion, but he did come close. As the Huffington Post noted, Scott said his mother, who passed away last year, taught him that “America’s greatness is largely because of how we value the weakest among us.”

Because the federal government will fund the first several years of the Medicaid expansion, reports have estimated that Ohio will actually enjoy $1.43 billion in net fiscal savings to its state budget over the next eight years if it participates. And failing to expand Medicaid would actually cost the state about $8 billion in additional health care costs, largely because a higher uninsured population would mean greater spending on uncompensated care.

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Governor Trying To Save Republicans From Themselves Comes Out In Favor Of Universal Background Checks

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R), who has been trying to make a name for himself as a maverick in the GOP, on Sunday became the latest Republican to come out in favor of universal background checks on all gun sales.

Jindal is engaged in a dedicated effort to frame himself as a politician outside of the Republican establishment. Last month, he gave a speech begging Republicans not to be “the stupid party.” Presumably as part of the effort, Jindal on Sunday’s Meet the Press, agued that background checks are the most sensible, and agreeable, route to take on gun regulations:

I think there is an opportunity to do something here. If we’re serious about doing something and not just having a political football here, I think we can work with Democrats, we can work even with the administration to say. I think we all agree that we shouldn’t have guns get into the hands with those with serious mental illness. We propose legislation to provide more of that legislation, more of those records into the background check system than is happening today. Let’s fix the current background system.

In January, Jindal pushed to strengthen the system in Louisiana for inputting the mentally ill into the National Instant Criminal Background Check system, but the move was mostly symbolic. Overall, Jindal’s track record on guns has been to side with gun manufacturers over protecting citizens. In 2010, he signed a law that allowed guns in houses of worship. He has also voted to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits, and vehemently opposes any regulation on high capacity magazine clips or automatic weapons.

Currently, background checks are not required on private gun sales, allowing an easy workaround for criminals or the mentally ill to buy firearms. But 92 percent of Americans think that they should be. And Jindal is actually not a maverick on the issue; Republicans have been tapping into this public opinion of late, with several prominent figures including Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Mark Kirk (R-IL) assessing that it’s an achievable goal for Congress to take on.

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North Carolina Governor Signs ‘Unprecedented’ Gutting Of Unemployment Insurance

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) today signed a law that imposes severe cuts to his state’s unemployment insurance program, a change that will also cost jobless workers in the state access to the federal unemployment compensation program.

McCrory’s signature earned him a rebuke from the National Employment Law Project, which said in a release that the law will result in “the most severe cuts to both state and federal unemployment insurance of any state in the nation”:

These heartless cuts, in the state with the fifth-highest jobless rate in the nation, at 9.2 percent, show a shocking disregard for 400,000 unemployed North Carolinians and their families, many of whom will now go from struggling to barely make ends meet to outright struggling to survive. The immediate pain of these cuts will fall on North Carolinians unfortunate enough to lose work through no fault of their own in a weak economy where jobs are scarce. But the entire state will take a hit from the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in spending at local businesses that would’ve boosted the local and state economies.

The law reduces the maximum benefit allowed from $535 a week to $350 while cutting the number of weeks an unemployed worker is eligible for the program from 26 to 20. As a result, 170,000 jobless North Carolinians will also lose access to $780 million in federal unemployment funds. The average unemployed worker in the United States has been off the job for 35 weeks, meaning many jobless workers will now face the prospect of searching for a new job without access to a safety net program.

Republican state senators have touted the law as “re-employment” program, even though research suggests that workers who receive unemployment benefits search harder for jobs than those who don’t. McCrory, meanwhile, praised the fiscal responsibility of the law, which will allow North Carolina to pay back money owed to the federal government a measly three years earlier than it would have under the old program.

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Michigan Governor Supports Extending Medicaid Coverage To Nearly Half A Million Low-Income Residents

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R)

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is set to announce his support for Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. The announcement, which comes a day before the governor will address his budget priorities for the upcoming legislative session, will make Snyder the sixth Republican leader to agree to the health law’s Medicaid expansion.

Implementing this aspect of President Obama’s health reform law will be particularly impactful in Michigan, where an estimated 470,000 uninsured residents will gain health coverage. The health policy groups that provided Snyder’s office with research about expanding Medicaid — including the fact that the state could save up to $1 billion over the next decade by accepting the federal funding to increase their Medicaid rolls — are welcoming the governor’s decision:

Snyder’s support for Medicaid expansion “really is a big deal,” said Marianne Udow-Phillips, director of the Ann Arbor-based Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation, which provided research to the governor’s office. CHRT concluded Michigan would save more than $1 billion in the next ten years as the federal government picks up the cost for health care for those who currently are not covered by insurance.

Moreover, most primary care doctors reported to CHRT that they are able to accept new patients who now would have insurance, she said.

“What’s really powerful about this is that the governor did come at this from a very objective, analytical approach,” she said. “He looked at the facts, he pulled research from our center and … lots of people,” Udow-Phillips said. “I don’t want to say we’re surprised, but we’re very pleased that the facts did speak for themselves.”

The state’s Medicaid expansion will still have to be approved by Michigan’s legislature, where conservative opponents of Obamacare could present a roadblock. State-level resistance to health care reform has considerably slowed the implementation of the Affordable Care Act — but, as Snyder joins the growing list of Republican leaders who are conceding that implementing Obamacare makes sense for their constituents, the tide may be about to turn.

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Michigan Governor Backs Off ‘Unfair’ Electoral Rigging Plan: ‘I Don’t Think This Is The Right Time’

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R)

The prospects of a proposal to rig Michigan’s electoral votes in favor of Republicans took a nosedive on Tuesday as Gov. Rick Snyder (R) came out against the plan this year.

Snyder had previously been considering the plan to shift Michigan’s presidential system from a winner-take-all system to divvying electoral votes by congressional district.

However, in an interview with Bloomberg, Snyder backed off, saying he was “very skeptical” of the idea, noting it would “change the playing field so it’s an unfair advantage.” He finished by saying, “I don’t think this is the appropriate time to look at it.”

HUNT: There is a move in your state by some Republican legislators to change the presidential electoral system from a winner-take-all to doing it by congressional districts. If that happened last November, Barack Obama–who carried this state by a huge margin, almost double-digits–would have won only 4 of the 14 congressional districts. It would tilt the tables tremendously in the Republicans’ favor. You have said you wanted to look at it, let’s see what it is. Gov. McDonnell of Virginia, Haley Barbour and others have said it’s a bad idea. Are you still neutral or are you becoming convinced it’s a bad idea?

SNYDER: I’m very skeptical of the idea and the timeframe that would be done, because I really view it as a question of you don’t want to change the playing field so it’s an unfair advantage to someone. A lot of ways, we want to make sure we’re reflecting the vote of the people, and this could challenge that. So in many respects, the right time to do it is if people are looking as, we should do it before census is taken and before redistricting takes place and it should be a bipartisan effort.

HUNT: So if you do it, you do it much later.

SNYDER: Yeah. I don’t think this is the appropriate time to look at it.

Watch it:

State Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville (R) also cast doubt on the proposal Tuesday, saying of the current system, “I don’t know that it’s broken, so I don’t know that I want to fix it.” The state’s House Speaker, Jase Bolger (R), supports the plan.

This is potentially a major victory for opponents of the electoral rigging plan. In addition to holding the governorship, Republicans currently enjoy an 8-seat majority in the State House and a 15-seat majority in the State Senate.

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Lousiana Governor Changes His Mind, Won’t Eliminate End-Of-Life Care For The Poor And Disabled

In a victory for disabled, terminally ill, and poor Louisianans, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has reversed course and decided not to go through with his plan to eliminate hospice care benefits for low-income residents through the state’s Medicaid program, the Associated Press reports.

The Jindal Administration’s reversal comes in the wake of public outrage and candlelight vigils over a budget “austerity” proposal that one hospice care provider equated to “throwing away poor people.” If enacted, Jindal’s plan would have thrown as many as 5,000 terminally ill and disabled Americans receiving hospice care benefits off of public insurance rolls, raising health care costs by forcing sick patients into expensive emergency room care while saving the state a meager $8 million in 2014.

Instead, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals will continue funding the benefits through federal grant money, giving sick, low-income Louisianans some much-needed peace of mind. “The good Lord took care of us today, so we got a fix,” said state Sen. Fred Mills, a Breaux Bridge Republican who vice chairs the Louisiana state Senate Health and Welfare Committee.

But while the Jindal Administration’s decision today is an uncontested victory for Americans at risk of falling through the safety net, Louisiana’s poor are not out of harm’s way just yet. Jindal has proposed one of the country’s most regressive tax proposals, and has slated massive budget cuts to public education and health care program funding.

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North Carolina GOP Governor Distances Himself From His Party’s Super-Regressive Tax Plan

North Carolina Republican lawmakers, following on the heels of Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) and Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS), have proposed eliminating their state’s income tax and corporate tax, replacing them with an expanded sales tax. Such a move is highly regressive, pushing taxes onto those lower on the income scale who are likely to spend most or all of their income.

The state’s Republican governor though, seems to be wary of the plan, with his budget director admitting that it would “absolutely” be regressive:

Gov. Pat McCrory’s budget director distanced the Republican chief executive from a proposal to eliminate income taxes in North Carolina and expressed his own “great concerns” with the concept being floated by leading GOP lawmakers. [...]

In particular, Pope cited a concern that the higher sales tax is “absolutely, no doubt” regressive, meaning it would hurt low-income taxpayers the hardest. He said it amounts to a gross income tax “without any regard to whether you are making any money.” And he worried about upsetting the current three-tier system of income, sales and properties taxes, calling it “fairly balanced.”

The North Carolina Justice Center’s budget and tax project found that the plan proposed by the GOP would “provide a significant windfall to the wealthiest 20 percent of state taxpayers while requiring low- and middle-income households to pay more. A family earning $24,000 a year would see its taxes rise by $500, while one earning $1 million would get a $41,000 break.” This chart shows the change in taxes as a share of income for various income levels:

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Florida Governor Now Wants To Expand The Early Voting Days He Cut

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) became one of the most notorious figures of the 2012 election after he slashed the period for early voting and enacted a number of other vote suppressing election laws. As a result of these laws, Florida voters were forced to wait in lines for up to 6 hours and as late as 1 am. After the election, several top Republicans admitted these election laws were designed to keep Democrats and minority voters away from the polls.

As his public image sinks, the governor has tried to distance himself from his own laws, blaming the Legislature and even denying to a group of black lawmakers Tuesday that the early voting law was his. On Thursday, Scott went even further and endorsed major election reforms–including a reversal of his early voting restrictions.

Scott now supports increasing the number of early voting days, reducing ballot length, and widening the range of polling places:

The proposal calls for extending early voting once again to a maximum of 14 days from 8, including adding back the Sunday before Election Day, a popular day among black voters; increasing voting hours to 168 hours from 96; allowing votes to be cast at locations beyond election offices, city halls and libraries; and making sure that ballots are kept short. Any change in the law must be approved by the Legislature, which convenes for its one-month session in March.

Mr. Scott’s endorsement comes on the same day as the release of a new report concluding that black and Latino voters were most affected by the 2011 changes. Of the more than 1.17 million ballots cast by black voters, nearly half were during early voting.

If early voting days are restored, the state could avoid a repeat of the 2012 fiasco, in which thousands of Floridians were disenfranchised.

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Florida Governor Inflates Cost Of Medicaid Expansion By 2,600% To Avoid Implementing Obamacare

Internal email messages uncovered by Health News Florida reveal that Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) is knowingly citing inaccurate cost estimates to justify his refusal to expand Florida’s Medicaid program. Though the governor’s office is fully aware that the numbers are wrong, Scott continues to use them anyway, the documents show.

Florida, which has one of the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation, could extend health coverage to about one million low-income residents by accepting Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion. But the governor — an ardent Obamacare opponent — has repeatedly said that expanding Medicaid would just be too expensive, claiming it would cost the state $26 billion over the next 10 years.

As Health News Florida reports, however, that figure from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) is inflated because it doesn’t take into account the full amount that the federal government will reimburse states for choosing to expand Medicaid. A more accurate analysis found that expansion would cost the state around $1 billion:

But those numbers are based on a flawed report, state budget analysts say. A series of e-mails obtained by Health News Florida shows the analysts warned Scott’s office the numbers were wrong weeks ago, but he is still using them. [...]

The Act says the federal government will pay the lion’s share of the cost for new Medicaid eligibles if a state agrees to expand its program — a decision the Supreme Court left up to the states. The federal contribution for the new eligibles would be 100 percent between 2014 and 2016, then would taper after that to 90 percent by 2020 and stay there.

But the AHCA report assumes the federal match for the new patients would be much lower, about 58 percent. It came up with that by averaging the match amount over the past 20 years. The report doesn’t say why the authors made that assumption. [...]

As Health News Florida reported on Dec. 21, the AHCA estimates were huge in comparison to a study released by the Urban Institute and Kaiser Family Foundation, two neutral research groups that specialize in Medicaid studies. Their study estimated that if Florida agreed to expand Medicaid, about 1 million uninsured people would gain coverage at a 10-year cost to the state of around $1 billion.

According to the email chain that Health News Florida obtained, state officials began calling the AHCA’s $26 billion cost estimate into question as early as December 20. One member of the House Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee even pointed out that, since the health reform law specifies that the federal government will help fund Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, it would actually break Florida state law to expand Medicaid without using the federal dollars mandated for that purpose.

Nevertheless, Scott has continued to repeat his false claim that Florida can’t afford to provide its low-income residents with the health coverage they need. Scott met with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday to express his concerns about what expanding Medicaid would mean for his state’s bottom line. “Growing government, it’s never free,” Scott explained to reporters. “It always costs money.” Just not as much money as Scott says it does.

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Virginia Governor Quietly Certifies Restrictive Abortion Clinic Regulations

On the Friday between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) quietly approved new, stringent regulations intended to target abortion clinics. Virginia’s Board of Health adopted the new anti-abortion rules in September, and the governor’s certification is the next step toward making the regulations permanent — and potentially forcing many of the state’s 20 abortion clinics to close their doors.

A spokesperson for McDonnell explained the governor advanced the anti-abortion rules because he believes “these common-sense regulations will help ensure that this medical procedure takes place in facilities that are modern, safe and well-regulated, in order to help ensure the safety and well-being of all patients.” But women’s health advocates designate this type of legislation as the “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers” (TRAP) because — rather than doing anything to ensure women’s safety — they actually over-regulate abortion providers as an indirect method of restricting women’s reproductive rights. TRAP laws force many abortion clinics to close when they find themselves unable to comply with complicated, expensive standards.

Even though Virginia’s Board of Health is intended to operate as a nonpartisan medical body, the fight over enacting the new clinic regulations has become intensely political — a growing trend among state-level boards, which anti-abortion advocates are increasingly using to advance their anti-choice agendas.

When the Board considered the new rules before their final vote, protesters and women’s health advocates were barred from speaking during the hearing, and only a limited number of people were even permitted to enter the room. And it turned out State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) was essentially threatening Virginia’s Board — which ended up approving the TRAP laws by a 13-2 vote — by warning members they could be denied state-funded legal services if they voted to relax the clinic regulations. In October, Virginia health commissioner Dr. Karen Remley resigned from her position on the Board in protest of the regulations, citing her disapproval of the proposed TRAP laws as the primary reason she could no longer serve “in good faith.”

Now that McDonnell has approved the regulations, they will be sent back through the process of review by the Board of Health following a 60-day public comment period. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the permanent regulations are expected to be adopted by this summer.

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Michigan Governor Signs Extreme Anti-Abortion Bill Into Law

Protests against Michigan's HB 5711

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has approved a controversial package of abortion restrictions that will limit abortion access for women who live in rural areas, require doctors to prove that mentally competent women haven’t been “coerced” into their decision to have the procedure, and enact unnecessary, complicated rules for abortion clinics and providers. The governor signed HB 5711 into law on Friday despite widespread protests against the omnibus anti-abortion measure.

Snyder claims that HB 5711 “respects a woman’s right to choose while helping protect her health and safety.” But women’s health advocates warn the law will seriously threaten women’s access to the health services they need by imposing harsh regulations on abortion clinics and providers:

Critics of the Michigan law fear its insistence on new, standalone facilities will hurt women in rural and low-income areas as it could force some clinics to close. They say questioning women on whether an abortion is voluntary subjects them to a type of interrogation.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights group that opposed the measure, said it could force many existing abortion providers in the state to either tear down their offices and rebuild from the ground up — or shutter their practices. [...]

“Safety was never the intention of this law. The only thing this law accomplishes is to make a difficult decision even more difficult,” said Rana Elmir, the communications director for the Michigan ACLU.

Even some state lawmakers who supported HB 5711 acknowledge the law isn’t actually intended to protect women. “This is about protecting fetuses,” one Republican legislator explained.

Michigan legislators were quick to capitalize on this year’s lame duck session to push through controversial abortion restrictions, potentially because five anti-choice state lawmakers lost their seats in November’s election. The majority of Michigan voters support legal access to abortion services.

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“It’s pretty clear Governor Romney is going to be the nominee.”

Yesterday, Governor Romney swept all five primaries, including Delaware, which was Newt Gingrich’s last best hope for continuing his campaign – and in Delaware, he got stomped.  Today, Gingrich announced that he is ending his campaign for the Presidential nomination.

In his announcement, Newt had some pretty interesting things to say – things that we all should be paying close attention to.  From the CBS News report:

“I think you have to at some point be honest with what’s happening in the real world, as opposed to what you’d like to have happened,” Gingrich said. “Governor Romney had a very good day yesterday. He got 67 [percent] in one state, and he got 63 in other, 62 in another. Now you have to give him some credit. I mean this guy’s worked six years, put together a big machine, and has put together a serious campaign.

“I think obviously that I would be a better candidate, but the objective fact is the voters didn’t think that,” Gingrich said. “And I also think it’s very, very important that we be unified.”

(bold is mine)  As has been written here on these pages several times, the voters are the ones who chose Governor Romney.  He is going to be our nominee.  And as Newt says, it IS very important (now that the primaries have indicated our choice) that we are – or become – unified.

This has been a pretty nasty GOP primary season.  There are a lot of us (myself included) who don’t particularly like Mitt Romney as a candidate.  But our candidate he is.  We can lament what might have been and we can fret a bit about what kind of president Mitt might be.  But in the end the mission is now to focus all of our efforts on defeating Barack Obama by supporting Mitt Romney as our nominee.  And it’s not just the “us” here at Redstate and in the trenches of the electorate…it’s also the other former candidates:  Perry, Cain, Bachmann, Santorum, Huntsman -  and Gingrich.  The GOP must now line up behind Romney.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t push Romney to adhere as closely as possible to conservative principles.  He doesn’t just get a pass.  Daniel made a good point earlier in his diary “Romney Must Coalesce Around Conservatives…”  He’s making the case to us, not the other way around.  Let’s keep the pressure on…but remember who the real target is, now that the primaries are pretty much over.

From here on out, I support Mitt Romney for President.

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