National Review abandons Romney

Richard Lowry, the editor of National Review, is unafraid to admit—or too clueless to see how lightweight it makes him look to admit it—that he instantly wrote off Romney after Iowa, and that he was stunned that Romney came in a decent second in New Hampshire:

If you had told me right after Iowa that Romney would get more than 30 percent of the vote in New Hampshire I would have been shocked. I thought he was going to sag significantly from the after-effects of Iowa. . A prominent political reporter told me on Saturday in New Hampshire not to be surprised if Romney sank to third, surpassed by Huckabee.

In other words, Lowry is a creature of the most superficial, conventional take on things. Romney lost Iowa, therefore he must be crushed in New Hampshire. Not arguing for what one thinks is true and right, in the hope that other people will start to see it too, but rather automatically signing on to the latest poll-generated trend—that’s Lowry for you. As a reader observes about him:

He is so empty on TV, he makes Sean Hannity look like an intellectual.

Meanwhile, Richard Brookhiser, also writing at the Corner, quotes “from a conversation last night with someone completely alien to Planet Politics, but smart and insightful in her way” (he’s probably referring to his liberal wife):

“I want to like Romney. I think he’s a good man, a generous man. But his nervous system is pitched too high. He doesn’t let things come to him, but feels he has to try to catch everything, even if it’s way over his head. He feels he has to be perfect.”

Brookhiser then comments:

Everyone, except the hard core of Romney’s supporters who actually like him, knows what this person is talking about, but I have never heard it put quite this way.

We have a GOP field of profoundly flawed, deeply unacceptable candidates. Romney, with his manifest intelligence, leadership qualities, and goodness, towers over all of them. But because he has some slight flaws,—“he tries too hard, he feels he has to be perfect”—that becomes a serious objection to him. Instead of responding to the criticism of Romney by putting it the perspective of Romney’s good qualities, Brookhiser accepts the criticism as definitive.

By the way, have we ever seen any discussion at National Review of Giuliani’s infinitely worse personal flaws? No. But Romney “tries too hard.” This, Brookhiser snottily tells us, is the truth that everyone sees, except for Romney’s putatively blind supporters.

The above is a build-up to the main event, NR’s disgraceful editorial yesterday, where the editors of that magazine all but write off the candidate they endorsed, Romney, because he was beaten by McCain in a non-representative Republican primary in which non-Republicans could vote. NR’s editors could have stood by Romney, they could have said: “We do not accept the votes of New Hampshire independent voters as dispositive for the Republican race. Romney has the best qualities of any of the candidates, and as the primary season unfolds we are confident that more and more people will come to see this.” But the boys of NR don’t say that. Instead, they contribute to the general media effort to cast a pall of negativity around Romney. Their present betrayal was already suggested in their barely luke-warm editorial endorsing him just a few weeks ago. They never were really for him. And now they make it clear they’re ready to endorse McCain—McCain the open borders maniac, McCain who calls the foes of open borders racists, McCain who tried to push through the amnesty bill last spring without a debate, McCain whom NR dubs the “front-runner” solely on the basis of his carrying the odd state of New Hampshire by a few thousand votes.

- end of initial entry -

A. Zarkov writes:

One very important issue is the H1-B non-immigrant visa problem. This program provides cheap technical labor at the expense of Americans, It has nothing to do with getting the “best and the brightest,” as that kind of thing is covered by a special class of visa designed for that purpose. It has nothing to do with worker shortages—there is no shortage, and Congress knows this, but ignores the facts to do industry and academia’s bidding for cheap labor. Since all the lies about shortages and other excuses have been devastated by the facts, the supporters have been more sophisticated in they way they advance the program. Not Romney. Not only does he support the program wholeheartedly, he doesn’t seem to realize his justifications are passe. Look at what Romney said in an interview:

“I like H1B visas. I like the idea of the best and brightest in the world coming here. I’d rather have them come here permanently rather than come and go, but I believe our visa program is designed to help us solve gaps in our employment pool.”

Every sentence in this statement is incorrect. If you don’t believe me, I can supply overwhelming evidence to contradict everything he said.

Not only is Romney on the wrong side of this issue, he displays appalling ignorance about the subject. He is either compromised or willing to shoot his mouth off about something he doesn’t understand. This makes him an unacceptable candidate for me. A person’s position of H1-B strongly correlates with his real position on the immigration question. If you are truly worried about foreign erosion of American sovereignty, language, culture and human capital then you should take what he says about H1-B very seriously. He is telling us what he really thinks—if he can think.

BTW, the Democrats are as bad or worse on H1-B, especially Hillary who is utterly comprised by the Indian industrialists.

LA replies:

Yes, and Romney also says he supports an increase in legal immigration. Also, Romney has apparently not addressed the cultural problems relating to immigration. So he’s not good on these issues and I’m not claiming he is. I am pushing Romney because he is the only plausible and acceptable prospect to be GOP nominee and to defeat Obama or Hillary in November. Giuliani, McCain, and Huckabee as nominee, whether they won or lost in November, would destroy the GOP as a vehicle for conservatism. This doesn’t definitely mean that I personally will vote for Romney if he is the nominee, though at this point I am leaning in that direction. As you know I was extremely troubled by his and Thompson’s participation in the Spanish-language Univision debate. At the same time, showing up at that debate is not the same as positively celebrating the Hispanicization of America, as Bush and McCain have done, and is not the same as positively celebrating illegal aliens, as Giuliani has done. Though Romney is not good on the national question, he is not terrible either. He is not deeply convinced and passionate in advocating immigration, the way Bush, McCain, and Giuliani are. When he speaks the classical liberal language of the equal rights of all human beings under God, he always adds, “and our own country first.” This shows he is sensitive to the traditionalist argument that liberal equal rights pursued consistently is a threat to nationhood and therefore must be qualified by non-liberal principles.

I’m advocating Romney’s nomination because he is a good and talented man and because he is the only way to stop the disaster of a McCain or Giuliani nomination, and thus also the only acceptable way to stop a Clinton or Obama presidency.

Richard W. writes:

Great article on National Review. I will never understand how Richard Lowry got the leadership of NR. William Buckley was such a thoughtful giant, RL can’t even fill his socks, much less his shoes.

Your article has made me rethink Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt came out quite early for Mitt Romney. At first I found this irritating (I listen to him on the way home from work). But as time has gone on I have found it refreshing, for the reason you point to in your article.

Everyone wants to be a pundit these days, no one wants to be an editorialist. Back in the good old days we had three classes of people in providing news: anchors (or editors on papers), pundits and editorialists.

Anchors were supposed to be even handed and provide the facts in a reserved way.

Editorialists, such as George Will or William Buckley, were intellectuals who had known opinions and points of view, who would attempt to instruct us on what we should think about the facts presented by the anchors and editors.

Pundits were used sparingly to explain the arcane details of particular subject matter.

There are some great political pundits out there: Michael Barone towers above all others, even the irritating Dick Morris has interesting insights from his time as a top strategist for Clinton.

The problem is that the anchors, for the most part, don’t want just to report the facts, but are by and large not well read or smart enough to serve as editorialists. So they have all become instant pundits.

They all know just enough more about the very arcane primary system to appear to be knowledgeable. These pseudo-pundits are the cause of the horse racing all-the-time coverage of the election, particularly on broadcast media.

Hugh Hewitt is doing a fine job of acting as an editorialist. He is telling us what to think. In this case he thinks if we are conservatives we should be supporting Mitt Romney because he is the most conservative of the electable candidates. He has continued to put this vision forward despite Iowa and New Hampshire, and has made some of the same points re: New Hampshire’s inclusion of independents.

If any institution has earned the right to lead conservatives and trusted editorialists, it is the National Review. How sad that they have chosen to report on the election using the same pseudo-pundit viewpoint as the endless parade of vapid just-turned-30 blond women on Fox and CNN.

LA replies:

“The problem is that the anchors, for the most part, don’t want to just report the facts but are by and large not well read or smart enough to serve as editorialists. So they have all become instant pundits.”

That’s a great insight. It’s exactly what’s happened. Either they replace the presentation of facts with predictions, as you say, or they engage in vapid statements that might be called punditry plus. Thus, for several election cycles now, there are no facts, no real numbers reported on election night, just unbearable ego-driven bloviating from the “anchors” about the “meaning” of it all. In 2004 election night I became so frustrated I turned off the tv, went to the Web, and started gathering my own numbers and writing on it. See these two entries about it:

It really is coming down to Ohio

Election night blog

You write: “How sad that they have chosen to report on the election using the same pseudo-pundit viewpoint as the endless parade of vapid just-turned-30 blond women on Fox and CNN.”

That is a function of the selection of Lowry as editor ten years ago. He has no intellectual equipment for, and no real interest in, anything else.

A reader writes:

Lowry wrote:

“A prominent political reporter told me on Saturday in New Hampshire not to be surprised if Romney sank to third, surpassed by Huckabee.”

This was a ludicrous prediction, really dumb, yet Lowry took it seriously. What a child!

LA replies:

And then, topping it off, he lacks the awareness to see how dumb he was to take it seriously, and to see how dumb he is to confess it to the world. “I, the editor of America’s leading conservative magazine, believed a ludicrous prediction about the outcome of the New Hampshire primary, solely on the basis that a ‘prominent reporter’ made the prediction to me. Furthermore, I was shocked, and am still shocked, that his ludicrous prediction did not come true. After all, he is a prominent reporter, isn’t he?”

A. Zarkov writes:

I am not convinced that Romney is any better than the other Republicans. He will tell conservatives what they want to hear, and then double cross them after he gets elected. It’s time for conservatives take a stand against the perfidy of the GOP. They need to be punished even if that means getting Hillary. It’s an investment in the future.

A side comment on legal immigration. I ask people if they believe that the US has an optimum population level? If it’s finite, then unless the native population starts declining, there is no point in further immigration, legal or otherwise. Romney and others don’t seem to understand this basic logic. People don’t immigrate to the US to consume less than they did in their home country. So if you worry about, global warming, or pollution, or lack of resources such as fresh water, then you must oppose even legal immigration beyond the optimum level. I never get a straight answer. I only get platitudes as how how we are a nation of immigrants. I don’t expect I would get a straight answer from Romney. He is unacceptable.

LA replies:

Speaking as someone who has not voted for the GOP presidential candidate since 1992 (Phillips in ‘96, Buchanan in ‘00, Tancredo write-in in ‘04), I am in sympathy with Mr. Zarkov’s argument and have made it many times myself. However, while it’s possible that Romney will drift in a more open-borders direction once he becomes president, he does not have a record of double-crossing people.

Robert B. writes:

Far from McCain being the front-runner, Romney is the front runner based upon his number of delegates—as he was before the NH primary. The fact is that McCain was tied with Ron Paul before NH and, even worse, Giuliani was behind Ron Paul before NH and barely beat him for fourth.

Likewise, Hillary was trouncing Obama in the number of delegates she had going into NH and would have still been out front had she come in third.

cnn.com has a link to view the delegates that each respective candidate has and from which states.

Spencer Warren writes:

Richard W. writes that William F. Buckley was a giant. He should understand that it was Buckley, in the most inexplicable personnel decision in human history, who made Lowry, a young, nonentity cub reporter, the editor. It also was Buckley who fired John O’Sullivan as editor because he disapproved of O’Sullivan’s focus on the immigration disaster. Thus, Buckley has inflicted more damage on the conservative movement than any liberal in memory. He trashed his own creation, National Review.

LA replies:

I would just add to Mr. Warren’s correct observation that the issue is not just Lowry’s youth at the time he was appointed or even that he was a Beltway reporter rather than a thinking person with a larger view of conservatism, politics, and civilization—basic requirements for the editor of National Review. It is that, in the 11 years he has been editor, going from age 29 to age 40, he has not grown intellectually at all.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 10, 2008 12:02 PM | Send