Laura Ingraham, on her radio show, criticized NR for “propping up the establishment” by running an article today about Republicans who want Mitt Romney to run again (h/t Breitbart). She added, “[O]ur pal Bill Kristol, he’s actually done recently some pretty fair analysis of where we are in the Republican field and they’ve written some good pieces over there at The Weekly Standard. They’re certainly not in a frothy frenzy like they are over at National Review about Trump. I mean, they are so worried about Trump over there at National Review. Ramesh Ponnuru, I mean, somebody should check on him. I’m worried about him. . . . Ramesh likes Jeb. A lot of these guys over there just like Jeb.”
I have never been worried about Trump, and in fact just wrote an article saying nobody else should be either (a few of the other candidates excepted). It’s true that I have sometimes criticized him. I said in that article that he was “not high on my list” of candidates; I hope that wasn’t too frenzied for Laura. I’ve also found parts of his immigration plan praiseworthy, and criticized Rick Perry for his over-the-top attacks on Trump. As far as I can tell, Kristol and I are on the same page with regard to Trump.
I plead guilty to liking Jeb Bush, for whom my wife works. I also like a bunch of the other candidates. I’ve praised and criticized pretty much all of them (see here for a recent criticism of Bush’s central campaign promise, for example, and here and here for recent defenses of other candidates). That seems to be the same general approach that Cooke, Goldberg, Geraghty, Johnson, Lowry, Williamson, and the rest of us here are taking, although we of course vary in what we find worthy of praise and criticism.
I didn’t take the article she mentioned to be cheering on a Romney run, but reporting on the fact that some Republicans would like to see it. The story was legitimate, interesting, and—when it quoted a Romney fan saying the other candidates needed to copy his “vision”—hilarious. I myself have written that renominating Romney would be a big mistake. It seems to me as well that another Romney run would hurt Jeb Bush; Laura would welcome it on that basis if she were looking at it objectively. (Quin Hillyer has made that case on NRO; maybe he’s propping up the establishment too.)
So thanks, Laura, for worrying about me, but I’m doing just fine.