Conservative magazine endorses Romney
Posted: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 4:57 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
The National Review magazine endorsed Romney and puts him on the cover with the headline “Mitt Romney for President.”
Here’s what the editors write:
“Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. 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.”
*** UPDATE *** NBC/NJ's Erin McPike adds...
As Romney struggles to cope with the Huckabee boomlet and has a released his first attack ad to do it, the National Review just handed Romney an early Christmas present with its endorsement.
In one of the shortest statements the Romney campaign has put forth, spokesman Kevin Madden writes: “Governor Romney has earned the endorsement of the National Review, one of the most respected conservative publications in the nation.”
The campaign sends out scores of notes daily to the media -- maybe to a larger degree than most rival campaigns, as a screen grab of a reporter’s inbox that was posted on a Washington-based blog showed last week following a debate -- and that may be why the campaign deemed it worthy of the high-priority stamp.
The endorsement begins with what is dogging the GOP right now: “Many conservatives are finding it difficult to pick a presidential candidate.” But according to the editorial team, “Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate,” and they say Mitt Romney’s it.
The editors go on to both praise and pick apart the other top candidates, suggesting that Huckabee and Giuliani would draw from different factions of the conservative wing of the party, splitting its potency.
“John McCain is not as conservative as Romney,” the piece goes on, but notes “he is a hero with a record that is far more good than bad.” “Fred Thompson is as conservative as Romney,” but he “has never run any large enterprise -- and he has not run his campaign well, either.”
In its conclusion, the editors write: “More than the other primary candidates, Romney has President Bush’s virtues and avoids his flaws. His moral positions, and his instincts on taxes and foreign policy, are the same. But he is less inclined to federal activism, less tolerant of overspending, better able to defend conservative positions in debate, and more likely to demand performance from his subordinates.”
