NRO on the Romney-McCain Wars

National Review Online has a good editorial up on the attacks by John McCain and his minions on Mitt Romney (Misled in New Hampshire). (For the record - and they acknowledge it in the editorial - NRO has endorsed Romney.) The piece notes that the McCain campaign, and media outlets operating on his behalf in New Hampshire and elsewhere, have been hammering Romney as a "flip-flopper" - but that the same accusations can be made towards McCain, in a much more meaningful way:

There is a lot to like about Senator McCain, and we do not fault the Union Leader for endorsing him. We do fault its double standards. The newspaper counts it as a damnable “flip-flop” every time Romney has changed his position or even his emphasis. McCain can switch his views on the very same issues without a disparaging word from the Union Leader.

Take taxes. Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, stayed neutral in the battle over President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. We wish he had spoken up in their favor. Senator McCain, alas, was not silent: He voted against the tax cuts, as he had voted against the 2001 tax cuts. He flip-flopped on estate taxes, defending them after having voted to get rid of them. As he geared up to run for president this time around, however, McCain became a born-again supply-sider. Now he wants to keep the tax cuts he originally opposed.

The Union Leader has blasted Romney for changing his mind on immigration. It accused him of lying, too, for saying that McCain wanted to let illegal immigrants earn Social Security benefits while working here illegally. But Romney was right. McCain has voted to let illegal immigrants who meet certain conditions become citizens and then receive benefits for their prior illegal work. Few Senate Republicans joined him.

In short, these instances cited by NRO are just a few of the reasons why I am not enthusiastically endorsing John McCain. The Senator took a decade and a half of  voting on his reasonably consistent conservative principles and threw it away in 2000. He fell in love with himself, and with his positive media image - failing to realize that the only reason that the media was enamored with him was because he first opposed, then hated, President Bush. Aside from some national security issues, he turned into a liberal from the 2000 elections until the time he started planning for his 2008 Presidential campaign.

If he becomes the Republican nominee, of course I'd support him - especially in light of what the Democrats have to offer. But I wouldn't trust him to uphold any conservative principals, in light of the sea changes his political posturings have gone through the past few years.