Signs of the Times

Bill Kristol had a cryptic editorial in the Weekly Standard this weekend, wistfully remarking that 2012 is not 1980 and that conservatives may have to resign themselves to "a not particularly distinguished four-year governor who’d zigged and zagged back and forth to be acceptable to large parts of the ... party, and whose political career was at first based partly on his last name."

(He consoles himself with another analogy: could not that description also apply to Franklin Roosevelt? And was not his presidency, "consequential"?)

Meanwhile James Pethokoukis, the new American Enterprise Institute's economics blogger and a highly reliable indicator of opinion trends, has begun to tweet praise of Mitt Romney, including:

If nominated, Romney would have boldest GOP agenda since Reagan '80

Looks like something's shifting at 1150 Seventeenth Street.