From National Review Online, a Judge Robert Bork radio ad:

The Judge and the Governor [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Judge Bork makes a Romney radio ad to air in Iowa.
Listen here. Text is (here exclusively for a few for NRO readers):

ANNOUNCER: “Robert Bork was Ronald Reagan’s conservative nominee to the Supreme Court.”

JUDGE ROBERT BORK: “Hello, this is Judge Robert Bork.”

“These are very important times, and our next President will be called upon to make decisions on some big issues.”

“The National Review endorsed Governor Romney, calling him a ‘full-spectrum conservative.’ I agree. Mitt Romney is the best person to unite the strong Reagan coalition of social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives.”

“We need strong leadership on the economy, taxes, immigration, and foreign policy.”

“And our next President may be called upon to make more than one Supreme Court nomination. Governor Romney will appoint judges who interpret the law, not activists who legislate from the bench.”

“I admire that Governor Romney stood up to the activist court’s ruling on legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. His strong leadership served as a model for the nation.”

“This is Judge Robert Bork. I urge you to join me in supporting Mitt Romney for President.”

GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney, and I approved this message.”

ANNOUNCER: “To learn more, log onto MittRomney.com. Paid for by Romney for President.”

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/

…

This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. That is my hope, what I ask Iowa to produce, and I claim here to speak for thousands, millions. We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.

…

Mitt Romney? Yes. Characterological cheerfulness, personal stability and a good brain would be handy to have around. He hasn't made himself wealthy by seeing the world through a romantic mist. He has a sophisticated understanding of the challenges we face in the global economy. I personally am not made anxious by his flip-flopping on big issues because everyone in politics gets to change his mind once. That is, you can be pro-life and then pro-choice but you can't go back to pro-life again, because if you do you'll look like a flake. The positions Mr. Romney espouses now are the positions he will stick with. He has no choice.

Mike Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column.

National Review fences with the Union-Leader:

John McCain’s aides complain that Mitt Romney is running a negative campaign. Those same aides have been attacking Romney themselves, but for the most part they can outsource the negativism to their friends in the press — starting with the Union Leader, a prominent conservative newspaper in New Hampshire that has endorsed him. (We have endorsed Romney.)

The Union Leader’s advocacy of John McCain has become so fierce and lopsided that it has practically transformed itself into a pro-McCain 527 organization. It has not formalized the arrangement, which is lucky for it: If it had, McCain would, on his campaign-finance principles, have to try to shut it down.

Touché.

Read on for more excellent points.

—crossposted at BackyardConservative

I received this email from a person who knows Mitt pretty well. To me it epitomizes why he is so ready to lead, way beyond any other candidate in the field.

Said the Dutch jurist, philosopher and playwright Hugo de Groot,

“A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city; he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason”

Knowing the heart of Mitt Romney as I do, I believe that he passes the de Groot test with flying colors.

Hugo Grotius or Huig de Groot, or Hugo de Groot; (Delft, 10 April 1583 – Rostock, 28 August 1645) worked as a jurist in the Dutch Republic and laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, Christian apologist, playwright, and poet. Link

I have made the case here in the comments section before that no one is truly objective. We all have our paradigms we must work in. Yet, one character trait of Mitt is that he truly strives to approach everything he can in a dispassionate objective manner. I am sure he has his preconceived opinions of things, as we all do, but no one can doubt his ability to put away the passions and see the whole picture, giving equal time all thought and view points.

In truth we don’t need someone who bases policy on the emotions of populism or the emotional wreckage of past experiences. What we do need is someone who can turn data into the right results. Passions and emotions are good, but as de Groot says, they should be subject to reason.

Huckabee blooper–doesn’t know East from West in Pakistan. And is his support slipping in Iowa? Dean Barnett digs into the numbers of the LA Times poll. Here’s the video on Pakistan.

In the ever expanding list of campaign innovations, Romney adds Personalized Phone Calls and Personalized Voice Mail Messages from the candidate himself.

The personalized phone calls only take a few seconds and are free! Check it out. You simply input the person’s name and phone number and they receive a phone call from Romney. You can also personalize what issue matters most to that person and your relationship to the person being called. It also seems to show your phone number as the originating number. It is a lot of fun.

In addition, for $25 you can have a personalized voice mail greeting from Mitt Romney for your phone. If anyone has signed up for this, tell us about it in the comments.

Since the beginnings of the campaign, my constant observation of McCain and his Internet surrogates is that they have always tried to write an underhanded narrative of Romney. It’s actually been the case since day one. It never has needed a basis in reality, in their minds the narrative just has to be repeated often enough for it to be true.

Today is no exception. There is a narrative coming out of the McCain Campaign against Romney. It’s the “Romney is in a tailspin” narrative. It’s really not surprising. McCain has jumped a few points in New Hampshire, by spinning a comeback story to the press before it happens, then they report it, and then it happens. I am guessing that McCain is hoping to spin the tailspin narrative to the press for Romney before it happens… hoping to make it happen.

Yesterday at Powerline we read this:

And when Romney blasted McCain’s over his support for a comprehensive immigration reform measure in the Senate and for his failure to renounce that support, McCain himself responded:

I know something about tailspins, and it’s pretty clear Mitt Romney is in one. It’s disappointing that he would launch desperate, flailing and false attacks in an attempt to maintain relevance. As the Union Leader said today, New Hampshire voters just aren’t buying his act, and these latest attacks won’t help him.

Both responses by McCain have this in common — they fail entirely to address the substance of Romney’s criticism. The reason, of course, is that McCain has no good response. He did oppose tax cuts, support for which does lie at the essence of Reagan conservatism. Similarly, he did support comprehensive immigration reform and his line on that support now is a grudging acknowledgement that the American people (though not necessarily McCain) want border security first.

Mirengoff makes a great point, instead of McCain actually defending himself, he decides to try and spin a story to the voters of the condition of Romney’s campaign. This is basically an utterly useless line for the thinking voter, and frail manipulation for the non-thinking voter.

McCain knows Romney is not in tailspin. Does anyone really think Team McCain is sitting around, slapping high fives and drinking it up to Romney’s tailspin? Does anyone really think that McCain camp has written off Romney and are now focusing on other competitors?

But it doesn’t end here.

Last night on Anderson Cooper, we heard a reiteration of the “Tailspin” narrative when John McCain followed Romney on Cooper’s CNN show:

Romney first:

COOPER: Governor John McCain said today this crisis underscores why the next president must have extensive foreign policy experience. How do you respond to that? Does he have a point?

ROMNEY: Well, I think it’s very important that the next president has experience making important decisions, making them on a deliberate basis, knowing how to bring together brilliant people, listening to them, gathering data, analyzing data and making good decisions based upon that kind of information.

COOPER: So foreign policy experience, per se, is not essential, just experience?

ROMNEY: Well, if — if foreign policy experience were the measure for selecting a president, we’d just go to the State Department and pick up one of the thousands and thousands of people who’ve spent their whole life in foreign policy, and frankly, becoming a United States senator does not make one a foreign policy expert, either.

What you want is people who have the ability to assemble a team of capable individuals, hear them out, listen to data and make important decisions. That, after all, is what Ronald Reagan did. He was not a foreign policy expert. He just happened to lead America to the greatest foreign policy achievement of the last half of the last century.

Here was McCain’s response when asked. I should note, that prior to this response by McCain I thought he was giving a top-notch interview. He was convincing. But then he brought out the “Tailspin”:

COOPER: I talked to Governor Romney a short time ago. I asked him about his foreign policy experience. He said he thought experience is what matters, not necessarily foreign policy experience. He says, frankly, you can get anyone from the State Department. They all have foreign policy experience. They wouldn’t make a good president, necessarily. And he said, frankly, becoming a U.S. senator does not make one a foreign policy expert, either.

What do you make of that?

MCCAIN: I think he’s in a tailspin. I’m familiar with those. I’ve been involved in every major national security issue for the last 20 years. I understand the issues.

On Iraq, I rejected Rumsfeld’s strategy. I strongly supported the Petraeus strategy that’s succeeding. It’s obvious that my credentials are very well known and very important in this very dangerous world, in which we have two wars and a constant struggle against radical Islamist extremism.

Now a few points:

1. In fairness, Romney did throw out the first barb when asked.
2. John McCain took all of 6 words to utter “Tailspin.”
3. With Cooper, John McCain actually gives a substantive reply.
4. Tailspin is a great term. It subtly reminds people of McCain war status while injecting interesting imagery. It wasn’t chosen in haste, you can be certain of that.

Let’s focus on number three. Why does John McCain see fit to offer substance on Cooper’s show, but when questioned on the Bush Tax Cuts and immigration he avoids substance? The answer is obvious, on foreign policy McCain knows a lot. When it was time to answer questions on foreign policy he had awesome answers. When he had time to talk about his constant thumbing at the conservative base he had nothing to offer so he reverted to feigned indignation.

One thing to note is McCain will never attack Romney on substance. I don’t think I have ever seen him do it. I have never heard that Romney’s foreign policy is naïve or not well thought out. The last thing McCain needs is to get in argument where Romney looks head and shoulders above him on anything domestic, or heaven forbid, on a par with him on foreign policy issues. Which Romney comes petty close to doing.

So McCain keeps trying to write the narrative. “Romney’s in a tail spin.” “The sky is falling in Boston.” It’s certainly not true, and McCain certainly does not care. Romney’s numbers are amazingly stable while McCain and all the other candidates numbers have been up and down for the past year. It must leave his campaign thinking their only chance is to spin to the media in hopes of a new narrative.