So Mitt pulled off a significant win in Florida and is now the clear front runner for the nomination. I wouldn’t go so far as to say his path is clear to the nomination, ’cause I suspect Newt has a lotta hate left left in his boiling pot still to spill over. But, supposin’…

Supposing Mitt is the nominee, now what? So let’s try to be fair.

Mitt says some of the right things now which I am not sure I believe and he says some of the wrong things now which I am pretty sure he means.

So let’s talk about some of the wrong things. Mitt defends the States right to mandate individual citizens purchase things they may not want or need. He rightly differentiates between the Federal and State issues here, but by doing so he misses the big picture.Is such a mandate unconstitutional at the federal level? You betcha. Is it the most unconservative thing you could possibly do at the state level? You betcha. The fact that Mitt continuously defends Romneycare shows that he is no way a small government conservative, but we knew that didn’t we? Will he be better than Obama on this score, probably, marginally. But remember that this mandate is the head of the spear for the current attack on religious liberty in this country.

But the bigger question for me is on the life issues. Mitt says mostly the right things now, but we all know that just a political blink of an eye ago that Mitt publicly and vocally supported things that are as morally repugnant as can be. He supported abortion very vociferously right up until the day he decided to run for president. Most reasonable people find such a a last minute conversion an act of deceptive convenience. Who could possibly blame people for not believing it? I can’t.

Now, I have heard it argued that Mitt never really governed like a pro-abort, that maybe he just said what he needed to say to get elected in a deep blue state. What he is saying now is what he really believes. So that is your best case scenario.

Your best case scenario is that we can HOPE that the Republican nominee was a liar and a fraud on the most critical moral issue of the day and HOPE that he lied just to get elected. And that is your BEST case scenario.

Of course some will try to sell us the remote possibility that his eleventh hour conversion of convenience is completely genuine and the timing is all just one big coincidence, e.g. Florida swamp land for sale.

No, our best case scenario is that on the most critical moral issue of the day we must HOPE that the “pro-life” candidate is a liar and a fraud. Welcome to Republican politics.