WWMD (What Would Mitt Do?)

When True North was first formed, the one constant (amongst the Nucleus) was the concept of principles first conservatism. For the Nucleus that is a very important thing for ANY upcoming candidate. That is what makes this WSJ story about Governor Mitt Romney so troubling.
Mitt Romney loves data and lusts after process.

In a recent cover profile in The Weekly Standard by the magazine's Fred Barnes, Mr. Romney is portrayed as the man who would be the CEO of America. Says Mr.
Barnes, quoting Mr. Romney, a Harvard M.B.A.: "His idea of the perfect deal is not when one side wins but when 'you find a new alternative that everybody agrees is the right way to go. That doesn't always happen.' "
Indeed.
Mr. Barnes says Mr. Romney's "approach to government is not ideological." A Romney adviser is quoted as saying of his candidate: "He's super-pragmatic. He's an eclectic conservative." And Mr. Romney himself says flatly that as president he would "insist on gathering data . . . and analyze the data looking for trends."

I can be as pragmatic as the next guy but there are certain core principles that my pragmatism will never over-ride.

There is a reason why you should have core principles that pragmatism never over-rides...

One of the subtle images of Mr. Romney's recent speech on religion is perhaps not understood by Mr. Romney's advisers. Where did Mr. Romney go to deliver his talk on principle? And who introduced him? The site was the presidential library of former president George H.W. Bush--the former president himself in his always gracious fashion introducing Romney.
Yet Mr. Romney did not need a visit to the Bush Library to understand why the Library does not contain the papers of a two-term president. The reason, of course, is that then-Vice President George H.W. Bush campaigned for the presidency in 1988 on the principle he phrased as "read my lips--no new taxes." He won. Yet in the name of precisely the process Mr. Romney lovingly describes--gathering data and looking for trends--the first President Bush was persuaded by Romneyesque
advisers like then-Treasury aide Richard Darman to surrender bedrock conservative principle and raise taxes. The senior Mr. Bush was advised to choose data and process over principle. He did--and in short order had lots of time on his hands to decide the process for building a library about a one-term president while Bill and Hillary Clinton took charge.

Process and data can only take you so far...especially in politics. At some point in time you have to decide that there is a line that you will not cross. Governor Romney has yet to show principled voters where that line is for him. He needs to find it soon - voting in Iowa is less than 3 weeks away.