Breaking news: I cast my vote for Mitt Romney this morning in the Empire State. (Something that won’t surprise anyone who reads NRO’s “The Corner.” While I’ve flirted with Thompson, McCain, and even Giuliani along the way, I’ve long leaned Romney — having first been impressed with him when he was governor of Massachusetts, battling cloning and showing competency, intelligence, and conservatism.)

I often give talks to high-school groups about conservatism. I tell them conservatism is a temperament. It’s a philosophy. It’s a movement. But at its heart, it’s a temperament.

Today on Super Tuesday, this primary season isn’t over on either side. So I voted for the candidate with the most conservative temperament. Is he perfect? Who is? Is his record perfect? Whose is? But on a slew of issues Mitt Romney’s record and talk reflects a conservatism about him. And this is not a wholly new place for him to be. As NR pointed out in our endorsement of him in December, Romney didn’t do a 180 on every policy issue to become a conservative yesterday, or a year ago when he decided to run for president:

Some conservatives question his sincerity. It is true that he has reversed some of his positions. But we should be careful not to overstate how much he has changed. In 1994, when he tried to unseat Ted Kennedy, he ran against higher taxes and government-run health care, and for school choice, a balanced budget amendment, welfare reform, and “tougher measures to stop illegal immigration.” He was no Rockefeller Republican even then.
We believe that Romney is a natural ally of social conservatives. He speaks often about the toll of fatherlessness in this country. He may not have thought deeply about the political dimensions of social issues until, as governor, he was confronted with the cutting edge of social liberalism. No other Republican governor had to deal with both human cloning and court-imposed same-sex marriage. He was on the right side of both issues, and those battles seem to have made him see the stakes of a broad range of public-policy issues more clearly. He will work to put abortion on a path to extinction. Whatever the process by which he got to where he is on marriage, judges, and life, we’re glad he is now on our side — and we trust him to stay there.

I don’t understand the tendency among some of my conservative friends to “settle” early on. I think that this instinct — to first dream of Ronald Reagan’s reincarnation and then to immediately transition into settling, casting aside a viable conservative option — misses the point of primaries. Senator McCain has served our nation valiantly, both on the battlefield and off. But he’s also sponsored and led on legislation that calls into question his conservative temperament. Some conservatives suffering from Bush fatigue may think that it is wise to settle early — that they’d rather not be disappointed again — they’d rather know early on, say, that amnesty will be par for the course, and at least now they’re prepared.

But I would rather stand on principle than settle today. That’s why Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and all the rest are standing where they are today. And I don’t think that constitutes “derangement.” I think that’s good citizenship. I think that’s how you keep ideas central, and keep ideas politically viable — whether you win or lose a given race.

By contrast, yesterday, in endorsing McCain, one former conservative Senate aide argued:

A McCain presidency would revitalize the conservative movement, and the values-voters movement — too often co-opted by this White House into silence — without losing the hope of restoring the Constitution and the Supreme Court to the American people.

In other words, he contends that social conservatives will do better under a president who doesn’t care about social issues than one who does, but sometimes strays on issues. I think this may, in fact, be a calculation on the minds of some conservative voters, based on what I am reading in my e-mail. If “values voters” are thinking that way today, they ought to be called “victim voters.” The wisdom in punishing the more conservative candidate for the shortcomings of a president who ultimately will be remembered for making some key historically important decisions escapes me.

As I said yesterday, if John McCain goes on to become the nominee, I wasn’t planning on sulking — even before I was advised not to on the oped page of the New York Times. Fact is: I do not want Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be president. (Hey, I voted for “the tax collector of the welfare state.”) But I do want the Republican nominee to play it straight. In recent days and weeks, Senator McCain has insisted that Mitt Romney is a defeatist and that John McCain is the “true conservative.” Both are dishonest. I wish the senator would stop insisting on using the word “conservative” — insisting on a temperament and mantle that is not naturally his. It might go a long way with the likes of me.

For now, may the best candidates win. And tomorrow morning, whatever happens, I think the editor of Talkers magazine is wrong. Rush Limbaugh won’t have to “reposition” himself if John McCain wins the Republican nominations. Because Limbaugh was simply doing what he does: looking out for conservatism.

For today, I know I cast my vote here in New York on principle. Tomorrow, whatever happens, I hope we’ll all move forward with the best interests of America foremost in mind. For as Mitt Romney put it late last year: “How we respond to today’s challenges will define our generation. And it will determine what kind of America we will leave our children, and theirs.”