Mitt Romney gave a thrilling speech last week to CPAC, emphasizing all the major aspects of true conservatism in full and clarifying detail. Particularly important was his assertion of culture, our culture, as embodying the virtues and values that underpin our freedom and prosperity. How good to hear this common sense after years of being inundated with the universal-values-transcending-all-cultural-formations idea promoted by President Bush and, from what we can glean from his various pronouncements and his open-borders enthusiasm, now by John McCain. And what a shame that conservatives wasted months supporting the utterly unsuitable Giuliani instead of Romney. Now there is McCain. Like Bush, McCain can assert some conservative views but, also like Bush, he is not really a conservative, either in principle or in temperament. This is why many of us cannot support him. It has been very painful to see conservatism wither under the Bush Administration and it would be even more painful to watch it wither further under McCain. When a president is partly conservative and partly not, he creates a fog in which conservatives lose their way. A Democrat in the WH would mean a revivified and re-energized conservative movement. I am quite amazed at this development. For years, when I thought about it, I fretted mightily at the prospect of Hillary being our first female president, but, thanks to the ill-conceived conservative support for Giuliani, and now the elevation of McCain, I can contemplate it with equanimity.