Tuesday, December 11, 2007

National Review Endorses Mitt Romney



I've been reading National Review since I was 21 yrs old. It was an oasis of clean conservative water in a parched liberal desert of political news when I was younger. There was no Rush Limbaugh. There was no Fox News. There was no Glenn Beck. There was only The National Review.


I think NRO is the best conservative online magazine on the net. I don't think I could get through the day without The Corner. I respect their choice. Mitt is my rebound man, no doubt.


They like McCain, but they say McCain is not as conservative as Romney. They have the usual gripes against McCain, campaign-finance law, voting against the Bush tax cuts, and supporting this year’s amnesty bill.
They like Thompson, but they say he has never run a large and he has not run his campaign well at all.


This is what they like about Romney:

Romney is an intelligent, articulate, and accomplished former businessman and governor. At a time when voters yearn for competence and have soured on Washington because too often the Bush administration has not demonstrated it, Romney offers proven executive skill. He has demonstrated it in everything he has done in his professional life, and his tightly organized, disciplined campaign is no exception. He himself has shown impressive focus and energy.


What about flip flopping?


It is true that he has reversed some of his positions. But we should be careful not to overstate how much he has changed. In 1994, when he tried to unseat Ted Kennedy, he ran against higher taxes and government-run health care, and for school choice, a balanced budget amendment, welfare reform, and “tougher measures to stop illegal immigration.” He was no Rockefeller Republican even then.We believe that Romney is a natural ally of social conservatives. He speaks often about the toll of fatherlessness in this country. He may not have thought deeply about the political dimensions of social issues until, as governor, he was confronted with the cutting edge of social liberalism. No other Republican governor had to deal with both human cloning and court-imposed same-sex marriage. He was on the right side of both issues, and those battles seem to have made him see the stakes of a broad range of public-policy issues more clearly. He will work to put abortion on a path to extinction. Whatever the process by which he got to where he is on marriage, judges, and life, we’re glad he is now on our side — and we trust him to stay there.


All of this is true. The only obstacle I see for Romney is this ridiculous Mormon prejudice. Huckabee is taking votes now based on this prejudice. I don't like it at all.


I'd like to see a McCain/Romney ticket or a Romney/McCain ticket.


But you guys knew that.


via Ace