Mitt Romney

It's hard to settle on just 2-3 top issues with this guy for me.  He's the quintessential politician, and seems to embody everything that everyone hates about politics.

Most important is the issue of RomneyCare for me.  It has almost nothing to do with the mandate itself, and after speaking to a few people following the Denver GOP First Thursday Breakfast, they actually made it worse with their excuses for his sell-out.

There was a ballot initiative in Massachusetts to implement a single-payer system.  So what did Mitt Romney do?  Work with a bi-partisan effort to implement what we know today as RomneyCare, which helped mitigate some of the worst aspects of the single-payer ballot initiative.

...for those in Colorado, déjà vu, anyone?  Yes, that's right.  It's the same argument we heard from Madame House Majority Leader Amy Stephens that resulted in our "free market" "local, state's rights" solution (erm... government-run, federally funded and Obamacare compliant solution, I mean--oh wait, calling it that makes me a misogynistic anarchist... oops...), known here as SB11-200, or AmyCare.


So here is the question: do you sacrifice your "conservative" principles to make something that is still BAD less bad, or do you stick to your guns and let the bad thing pass?  I couldn't sleep with myself if I allowed the first to happen.  Making bad slightly less bad is like sinning, only less.  It's not acceptable in my book.


My biggest fear would be Romney repealing Obamacare, only to replace it with something slightly less bad.  Next would be if Romney makes this kind of compromise on anything else.  There is a point to working across the aisle and getting things accomplished, but not when that involves sacrificing your principles on the altar of political expedience.


Additionally, I have no confidence in Mitt Romney's appointments to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and fear his picks for federal courts/US Supreme Court.


Finally, I don't know if Mitt Romney has the spine to make the tough decisions necessary to balance our budget, reduce our debt and deficit and cut government back to it's Constitutionally mandated size.  Everything he does seems to be about making sure he gets elected the next time--which is fine, but leaves him looking much like Colorado's Democrat Governor, John Hickenlooper.  Case in point... the same-sex marriage issue.  Romney could have done something to stop that, if he's really anti-gay marriage (as he says he is... when he's not for it, that is), but instead he punted it to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, who he knew would uphold it.  Not only is that weak and spineless, it's despicable.  I cannot respect that.