National Review has not gone “leftist”, they have merely “matured” into “Country-Club” pragmatism. (Or maybe “lapsed” is a better word.)
By appearing to be conciliatory, and even going out on a limb, the National Review staff members are trying to win the love they have so obviously craved for about as long as the Reagan leadership of the party was relinquished in 1989.
The Bush Family is not, and never has been, “conservative” so much as they are “pragmatic”. While they have demonstrated some good canny understanding of the problems of statesmanship, both Bush 41 and Bush 43 have had some huge blind spots, especially when it comes to securing the benefits for American citizenship for those who are actually American citizens, and willing to exercise that franchise.
The National Review has adopted this same unilateral blindness, in their attempts to cover over the very real basic differences between the true conservative, and the pragmatism that has been the trademark of both the Bush Presidencies.
Which tends to make the Mitt Romney candidacy especially appealing to NR.
Hmm, do you - unpublished (aside from frequent posts on FR), unlistened to, unaccomplished in the field of elections or policy, get to dismiss the National Review, the undoubtable founding of the conservative movement for 60 years in America, as not being conservative? Maybe you need to sit down and leanr your place.
NR's endorsement of Willard was well reasoned and based on conservative principles of life, capitalism, anti-illegal immigration, and a strong international policy against terror. You might disagree with their conclusions, but dismissing them as irrelevant because they aren't 'conservative'? You are pathetic.
I have my disagreements with NR going all the way back to Wittaker Chamber's smear job review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (far, far worse than the Raddosh review). They do slip up from time to time, but they are, more than any other journal, the benchmark of American Conservatism.