At NRO, K-Lo is no lily of the field

*

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin" - Matthew 6:28

National Review Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez cannot be accused of being a lily of the field. She works hard, and she spins even harder for Mitt Romney. On the day that voters in NY-23 go to the polls in a contest that has taken on national significance as conservatives take a crucial step in their efforts to recapture the party of Reagan, K-Lo defends Mitt Romney's decision to stay out of the race in a piece titled Where's Mitt Romney?:

Less than a week before election day, while campaigning for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, Bob McDonnell, Romney announced: “I have chosen not to endorse the Republican in the 23,” indicating that he thought that sent a message in and of itself.

His spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom elucidated: “Mitt Romney is a Republican and he tends to support the Republican candidate in races — and when he can’t, because there are too many differences on the issues, he stays out of the race altogether, and that’s the course he’s following in the New York special election. He doesn’t plan to make any endorsement at all.”

By not endorsing anyone in NY-23, the once and presumably future Republican presidential hopeful avoided the Gingrich problem — endorsing the Republican-who-could-comfortably-endorse-a-Democrat (and would!) — while avoiding the problem of opposing the candidate put forth by the party he would probably be approaching before long to support his own candidacy.

One could argue that Romney did what you would expect the establishment Republican candidate to do...

K-Lo calls it the "Let Romney Be Romney" cycle. And that what bothers us most about the former Massachusetts governor. There's always another "cycle" with him. He's been all over the political map on so many key issues that many conservatives feel that they just can't trust him. Mitt obviously believes that he has made the case that he really is a conservative and no longer needs to prove it to anyone.

But conservatives are engaged in a struggle from which they must emerge victorious to put the "Grand" back into the Grand Old Party and return it to its winning (i.e., Reaganite) ways. Romney's failure to stand up for Doug Hoffman stands in sharp contrast to Sarah Palin, who was the first viable 2012 GOP presidential prospect to endorse the conservative candidate. Once Sarah had taken her stand, Tim Pawlenty decided it was safe for him to follow her. Just because Mitt Romney didn't make the same mistake made by Newt Gingrich in endorsing the Daily Kos' candidate in the race, K-Lo wants us to believe that Mitt comes out of this smelling like a fresh lily. Though he may pass the smell test with establishment Republicans, conservatives by and large are not convinced of Mitt's deep and abiding commitment to the cause of conservatism. To win the confidence of conservatives, a presumptive leader must get down in the trenches with them, or at least cheer them on enthusiastically from the sidelines. Mitt Romney did neither.

Mitt's a favorite in the halls of the House that William F. Buckley built, especially with those in charge, like Rich Lowry and Kathryn Jean Lopez, so it's not a shocker when NRO spins for him. Everyone plays their favorites, it seems. Palin bloggers, most of us anyway, at least have her name or some part of it on the banners at the top of our front pages. Other right bloggers at least proclaim their conservatism in one way or another. Has National Review become an organ of the Republican establishment? If it is committed, as was Buckley to the cause of conservatism, why does it make excuses for those who opt out of a key battle for that cause?

- JP