Mitt Leaves Himself Open to Another Flip-Flop

He's suspending his campaign? What, if every single Republican in next Tuesday's Potomac Primary decides to show him some sympathy, he'll be semi-back in contention and pollute our airwaves again with his phony aw-shucks oration? As Warner Wolf would say: C'maawwn! If you had Mitt Romney plus 440 delegates, you lost!"

In all seriousness, I know he's not stupid enough to try to get back in at some point, but it's just another example of how much he resists just telling it like it is. He didn't drop out of the race, he "suspended" his campaign. Just like as governor of Massachusetts, he didn't raise taxes, he increased "fees." I guess he has never taken a ride on the Straight Talk Express. As Senator McCain mentioned in one of the recent debates, I don't care if you call them bananas, people still had to pay more money.

My disapproval of Romney wasn't about his positions - which, as Mike Huckabee said in one of the best lines of this campaign season, which ones? I never knew for what he stood, and feared above all else his pandering to the base that brought us eight years of George W. Bush - who, while better than his 2004 opponent, definitely could have been unseated within his own party if it were not for Rovian politics. Bush sold his soul to the bastards, and so probably would Romney. I smiled when I heard Rush Limbaugh proclaim that McCain would destroy the party, and jumped for joy when Ann Coulter said she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if it meant John McCain was the alternative. The opinions of those two alone are enough for any sane (liberal/moderate) Republican to plant a John McCain sign in his or her lawn.

One nice thing I do have to say about Romney, though, is that he finally showed a moment of genuineness today. He admitted, the business man he is, that it is time to cut his losses. He acknowledged that staying in a race that he had no chance of winning would forestall the inevitable McCain general election campaign and thus weaken it. Like a good business man, he sacrificed the interests of the CEO for the sake of the shareholders. Maybe if he had run as a moderate Republican with a weak social conservative record but strongly qualified to run an economy, instead of running as what he is not, he would have been addressing C-PAC as the presumptive nominee today. Instead he stood there as a cheerleader for America, hoping someone else can get the job done.