{"id":14504,"date":"2008-02-07T14:15:25","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T19:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14504.html"},"modified":"2008-02-07T14:15:25","modified_gmt":"2008-02-07T19:15:25","slug":"if-romney-kept-campaigning-the-terrorists-would-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-romney-kept-campaigning-the-terrorists-would-win\/","title":{"rendered":"If Romney kept campaigning, the terrorists would win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following up on an earlier item<\/a>, Mitt Romney not only ended his presidential bid this afternoon, he did so with the kind of class and dignity<\/a> we’ve come to expect from the Republican presidential field.<\/p>\n

John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign. “I must now stand aside, for our party and our country,” Romney told conservatives.<\/p>\n

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added<\/a>, “If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America.”<\/p>\n

In other words, Romney argued, with a straight face, that if he didn’t drop out, the terrorists win. And since he loves America, he can’t let that happen. If I’d known he was going to say this, I would have waited before publishing my top 10 list<\/a> earlier.<\/p>\n

Of course, this leads to an obvious question: if this speech represents Romney’s departure from the national stage, why on earth would he want to leave on such a ridiculous note? The answer seems pretty obvious to me: this speech doesn’t represent Romney’s departure from the national stage.
\n
\nMike Allen and Jonathan Martin reported<\/a> this afternoon:<\/p>\n

Making the dramatic announcement at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at a Washington hotel, Romney clearly hoped to preserve the goodwill of his party for another possible bid in 2012. He intends to run again in four years, according to a senior member of his inner circle.<\/p>\n

“He should be president. 2012,” the confidant e-mailed after talking to Romney.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This actually explains a lot. Why else argue that a vote for a Democrat is a vote for “surrendering to terror,” unless you wanted to impress far-right activists for the future?<\/p>\n

Romney is a youthful 51 years old, and he may very well buy into the conservative notion that John McCain is going to lose in November. Besides, by 2012, Romney’s shameless reversals on most of the nation’s biggest issues will be further back in people’s minds. When asked about his support for abortion rights and gay rights, Romney will no doubt say, “That was a very long time ago” — and it’ll be far more plausible than it is now.<\/p>\n

In other words, we might still have Romney to kick around again at some point down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up on an earlier item, Mitt Romney not only ended his presidential bid this afternoon, he did so with the kind of class and dignity we’ve come to expect from the Republican presidential field. John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}