This quirkiest of Republican presidential primary seasons is about to become serious — deadly serious next week in Iowa and the following week in New Hampshire.

We have referred in the past to the clown car nature of the Republican field as ego-driven candidates like Donald Trump flirted with the process only to be followed by the often engaging but deeply flawed candidacies of Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and finally Newt Gingrich.

It has been an entertaining several months, but really now, does anyone see even the remotest possibility of any of those folks taking the oath of office on the Capitol steps come Jan. 20, 2013?

So this is no longer a parlor game. Beginning Jan. 3 in Iowa this is very real indeed.

And there is only one candidate in the Republican field with the integrity, the experience, the organizational strength and the intelligence to beat Barack Obama and that man is Mitt Romney.

But perhaps more to the point, there is only one candidate who can put this nation back on the path to fiscal sanity and restore it to its central role on the world stage. That candidate is Mitt Romney.

Now we are more aware than most of our former governor’s reputation for being, well, a bit stiff. But this is a contest for what we used to call Leader of the Free World (before Barack Obama downgraded the job), not Mr. Congeniality or the guy you’d most like to have a beer with.

We don’t need a buddy in the White House; we need a leader — one who can work with a deeply divided Congress and a deeply divided nation.

Romney as governor of a thoroughly Democratic state actually managed to get things done during his tenure. That may be a blot on his record to those in the Republican Party who put ideological purity above all else, but in our book that’s actually a plus.

Among those accomplishments was health care reform — sure, call it Romneycare — but it works here for us and Mitt Romney has nothing to be ashamed of for having secured the best piece of legislation he could. And let’s not forget he did it with the threat of a universal health care bill headed for the ballot at the time and rising costs for treating the uninsured. It wasn’t as he would have crafted it, but it was a decent compromise.

It is not, as Romney has repeatedly said, the solution for other states — only a president who believes he has a monopoly on truth and righteousness (like the current one) would presume to impose his will on the entire nation.

And Romney is at the core of his being a small government kind of guy. That isn’t simply campaign rhetoric.

“I don’t think the answer to our economic woes is to raise taxes,” he told Herald editors and reporters at a recent meeting. “People are already paying half of their income in taxes [to every level of government].

“Government is simply taking too large a slice out of our economy,” he added.

He knows that long-term entitlement reform is key to getting the economy back on track. And unlike the president who appointed a commission to propose solutions, then promptly ignored its recommendations, Romney would follow through.

In foreign policy, his experience is limited (although no more limited than the current occupant of the White House when he took office), but he has made it clear that our allies (including Israel) will indeed be treated like the friends they are and those nations who would challenge us will also be dealt with accordingly.

Romney’s appeal at the national level is what it has always been here — he’s a tough, no nonsense CEO who wants to bring a sense of trust back to government. And he can attract to his candidacy that growing number of independent voters who will ultimately decide the presidency in November just as he did when he successfully ran for governor in this bluest of blue states.

Mitt Romney can get the job done — the job of running for president and the job of governing. And the Herald is pleased to endorse his candidacy.

http://bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view/2011_1228nation_needs_romney