Memo to GOP: Beat Obama

Rick Perry had it right: "I think anyone on this stage is better than what we've got in place."

By William McGurn

As Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum force Republican voters to make their choice in a hotly contested Michigan primary, once again we hear the great lament that we have looked at the candidates and found them all unworthy. Not everyone puts it as harshly as the headline over Conrad Black's piece in the National Post: "The Republicans Send in the Clowns." But it's a popular meme in the campaign coverage.
Like so many others who find the field wanting, Mr. Black laments that "the best Republican candidates—Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and Haley Barbour—have sat it out." We'll never know, will we? Because the "best" Republicans opted not to put their records and statements up for national scrutiny, commit themselves to a grueling campaign trail, and subject themselves to TV debates moderated by media hosts who often seem to be playing for the other team.
So say this for the final four: They had the guts to put themselves out there—and stick with it. That's something a winner needs.

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Rick Perry had it right—any of these guys is better than the president. 

As this campaign has progressed, we've also seen the traditional tensions emerge among the party's different constituencies. The lines cannot always be neatly drawn. For example, though Mr. Romney comes from a blue state and represents the business wing of the party, his positions on social issues are similar to Mr. Santorum's. Mr. Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, boasts a pro-Israel, pro-freedom foreign policy in addition to uncompromising stands on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Mr. Gingrich offers something to all three GOP constituencies and adds an engaging ability to turn questions back on his liberal interlocutors.
Amid the hurly-burly of a closely contested race, it can be easy to miss a simple fact: In all these areas—the economy, national security and social policy—the real disagreements between the candidates are a matter mostly of emphasis and tone. Only Ron Paul, in the area of foreign affairs, offers a truly substantial departure from the broad Republican tradition.
On economic issues, all four men represent a move toward lower taxes and a lighter government hand. On national security, all (again, save Mr. Paul) are opposed to Iran's getting nuclear weapons and in favor of a more robust foreign policy than President Obama's.
Even on social issues, there is not so much difference where actual policy is concerned. That's because the social issues today are not so much about morality per se but about whether these issues are to be decided by We the People or by the edict of some Health and Human Services secretary who decides that church institutions must provide free birth control and sterilizations. Or by a federal appeals court that has overturned a state referendum and crafted an opinion cleverly designed to encourage Justice Anthony Kennedy to throw out a public referendum in California, thereby re-imposing same-sex marriage on a state whose people voted against it.
In the heat of primaries, it's easy to indulge in hyperbole. Thus Mr. Romney finds himself derided as a flip-flopper on abortion; so was Ronald Reagan, who signed abortion into California law. He is accused too of being a phony, of authoring a RomneyCare that has no important differences with ObamaCare, of being at once a country-club Republican beholden to Wall Street and the advance guard for Occupy Wall Street class warfare.

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University of Virginia Center of Politics director Larry Sabato on a new USA Today poll that shows both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum leading President Obama in the 12 swing states and voters overwhelmingly opposed to the President's health-care law.

Mr. Santorum has been caricatured too. He's a bluenose bent on sending the government into American bedrooms, a reactionary who seeks to outlaw contraception, and a theocrat who wishes to bring back Europe's Middle Ages.
Like Mr. Romney, he finds himself the focus of contradictory attacks: derided at once as too doctrinaire on abortion while at the same time too willing to compromise his pro-life principles by endorsing the liberal, pro-choice Arlen Specter—then the senior Republican senator from Pennsylvania—over a conservative, pro-life challenger.
Let's be clear: Today, the most vituperous charges are coming from conservative Republicans. The attacks are already being picked up by the Democratic National Committee. Unless the various constituencies cease their schoolyard sniping, these charges will come back to haunt whoever emerges as the GOP's presidential candidate.
Back in January in New Hampshire, during the first debate of 2012, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, then a candidate for the presidential nomination, said of his fellow Republicans, "I think anyone on this stage is better than what we've got in place."
That's an argument America is more than willing to hear. It does not require the perfect candidate or the perfect political party. It does require candidates and surrogates who recognize that their ultimate goal in these Republican primaries is not to read other constituencies out of the party but to bring them together to defeat President Obama