Another e-mail:
Here another email just expressing some sorrow over Fred Thompson’s candidacy withdrawal. I suppose I hope it will help me feel better.
I appreciated NR’s backing of Mitt Romney and felt NR’s reasons for doing so were solid (and now show prescience), but I was still for Fred. I knew his campaign was a mess, but I somehow found that appealing—a guy who had principles and could make tough decisions, but couldn’t run a large organization meant to win a popularity contest—the more idealistic part of me finds that a good thing. I know the President needs to be persuasive and politically savvy, but there is just something in my gut that wants a guy to make decisions based on correct principles rather than politics (without seeing black helicopters everywhere, too), no matter how naive that is. I want a do-nothing President, unless it is something a President ought to be doing. Fred was that man for me. I was hoping he would find a way to get competitive. I felt like we needed his arguments and insights in the debates. C’est la vie.
So, now I am a Romney man. I do not dislike him, nor do I think he would betray conservatives. I just preferred Thompson. But I can back Romney, and I will. (Although, because I am LDS, I have read a few things indicating that my Church has been secretly enlisting me to push for Romney the whole time. I guess I—and everyone else I know—didn’t get the memo.)