When National Review endorsed Mitt Romney for President, I was a little taken aback. Their justification was:
Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest.
But . . . a lot of those conservative positions such as the right to life he seemed to come by conveniently in time to run for President. In addition, he is still touting his government-centric, mandate-filled, expensive and ineffectual health care reforms in Massachusetts.
But here's my (and your) choices: McCain, Paul, Huckabee, or Romney.
As Mark Steyn wrote in National Review Online Friday:
President McCain? Or Queen Hillary? Henry Kissinger said about the Iran/Iraq war that it’s a shame they both can’t lose. Conservatives have a slightly different problem: It’s a shame that neither of them will lose — that, regardless of who takes the oath come January ’09, the harmonious McCain-Clinton consensus policies on illegal immigration and Big Government solutions to global warming will prevail. Where’s Neither-Of-The-Above when you need him?
The only way McCain is preferable to Hillary or Barack is he will stand fast in Iraq and on the war on terror. But so will Romney (despite McCain's lies on that issue).
And Ron Paul is a nut job and his foreign policy is indistinguishable from moveon.org.
Huckabee is non-viable and not a conservative. And his call to "to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards" makes him sound like a theocrat, whether he is or not.
Which leave me (us) with Romney. Not the best possible candidate and not my first choice. But right now, he's all we've got between America and President Maverick.
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