Preliminary artists concept of cover

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Art department final solution

As expected, the crying, the begging, the pleading, the threats to start wearing tube-tops to work everyday have convinced the Editors at the National Review to give in to K-Lo and just give the damn endorsement to Mitt Romney already.

Many conservatives are finding it difficult to pick a presidential candidate. Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything — all the traits, all the positions — we are looking for. Equally conservative analysts can reach, and have reached, different judgments in this matter. There are fine conservatives supporting each of these Republicans.

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. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization — none of the major candidates has — he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction.

You know, it seems like it was only 85 months ago when they said:

The Editors of National Review will vote, on Tuesday, November 7, for George W. Bush for President, and we urge the faithful to do the same. The (very) late Bishop Butler, acknowledging a protest again Christian canon, said three hundred years ago that, to be sure, if he had been God, he'd have made things a little bit different.

If the editors of NR had been present at the creation, we'd have struck a finer tuning fork to guide George W. But the choice is as it is, and conservatives need to abide by what was a fair and open process that concluded this political season with a significant national choice. Vice President Gore is a demagogue who curries envy and fashions policy to the end of promoting central government as agent of health, prosperity, and education. His policies, on deliberation, distill, then curdle. The call now is for a rejection of self-infatuated exhibitionism, in favor of a more modest statesman, aware of his own limitations and those of aggrandized government. We hope that November 7 will end the reign of Clinton/Gore, and bring on a better, cleaner politics under George W. Bush.

Tepid endorsement that that was, how'd it turn out for you guys?

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.

It is true that he has less foreign-policy experience than Thompson and (especially) McCain, but he has more executive experience than both. Since almost all of the candidates have the same foreign-policy principles, what matters most is which candidate has the skills to execute that vision.

Republicans! : The Our Candidate Is Better Than A Sharp Stick In The Eye Party.