WOLF: Time For A Romneycare Mea Culpa

Conservative voters have a message for the Republican establishment: Not so fast. The Washington-knows-best GOP insiders who gave us John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush are now pushing Mitt Romney. Conservative voters are pushing back. Hard.

Self-described conservatives outnumber liberals in America two to one - 42 percent to 21 percent, according to Gallup polling - so it’s no surprise that Republican candidates describe themselves as conservative. Heck, even Barack Obama once described former president and New Dealer Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mr. Big Government himself, as an “economic conservative.” (Of course, compared to himself, President Obama is almost right, but that’s another matter.)

Yet, for all these “conservatives,” our out-of-control government continues to metastasize into every area of our lives, from choosing our light bulbs to choosing our doctors.

The word “conservative” is at risk of losing its meaning. Liberals like Mr. Obama have launched a calculated assault on the word, falsely claiming the mantle in an effort to disguise their march toward statism. What’s far worse, however, is when conservatives - or at least people who genuinely believe themselves to be so - erode conservatism from within.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” said French poet Charles Baudelaire. The greatest trick statists could ever pull would be convincing the voters they are conservatives.

Witness columnist Ann Coulter, who until recently was an unapologetic voice for the conservative principles of limited government and the free-enterprise system. There’s a conservative case to be made for Mr. Romney, at least for his recent conversion to conservatism, but Ms. Coulter instead chooses to undercut conservatism to benefit her candidate. She claims that Romneycare, the blueprint for Obamacare, the most dramatic lunge toward socialism in our lifetime, is “a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles.”

Does she have any idea the damage she does to the conservative cause with those words? Shielded by the Coulter seal of approval for government-run universal health care, liberals will have little problem labeling as “conservative” any of their statist agenda - from food stamps to free mortgages.

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