Pet peeve of mine, sorry. I read the WSJ every day, and haven't seen "them" endorse anyone. Just because it publishes an opinion that someone writes on its opinion pages (go figure) does not constitute as much.
They didn’t “endorse” Romney. They have had a couple of editorials endorsing his positions on various things, although exactly how they have determined what his positions are, I can’t fathom.
I know on Saturday they often re-publish an opinion piece from the week. But they obviously have to determine which one it will be, so it’s not entirely casual.
Did they want to get this out there and get discussion going? Was it a quasi-editorial statement? I don’t know.
Aside from all that, though, Peggy Noonan is such a lightweight I don’t even know why the Journal publishes her musings. They’re always overly emotional, highly subjective, and really (in my opinion) not even very well-written.