NYT
Oh, Mitt, Mitt, Mitt.
Losing Mitt Romney from the presidential race is not just a matter of another Republican biting the dust. It’s all those dozens and dozens of future incarnations that we may never have a chance to meet. I was hoping that someday we’d get a Libertarian Mitt, or maybe a cowboy.
Worst of all, I’m going to have to get through the rest of the year without ever again referring to the fact that Romney once drove to Canada with the family dog, Seamus, strapped to the roof of the car.
Mitt invested more than $40 million of his own money and $50 million of other people’s on his race, which comes down to about $8 million per state won (North Dakota says thank you!) or around $324,000 per delegate. It was an incredible bargain compared to the $60 million Rudy Giuliani spent on zero delegates, but still not exactly the kind of return on investment he was used to getting in the private sector.
“We’re going to keep on battling. We’re going to go all the way to the convention,” he told his cheering supporters Tuesday night as his loyal wife, Ann, stood by looking somewhat unenthusiastic.
Never Say Die Mitt made his way to Washington for the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual convention on Thursday, where he was supposed to nail down his new identity as the standard-bearer for the right-wing talk-show brigade.
Then somewhere backstage, he took on that eerie glow that precedes a personality change, and it was Cut Your Losses Romney who walked onstage. This was a pretty quick turnaround. Not so dramatic as the time Moderate Mitt (“I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush”) morphed into the guy who said: “I take my inspiration from Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush.” But still.
POP QUIZ: What reason did Mitt Romney give for dropping out of the presidential race?
A) I’m down to my last $40 million.
B) I just discovered Tagg let another illegal immigrant mow the lawn.
C) I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.
Yes! Continuing his near-perfect record of referring to political opponents as sinister forces bent on undermining the nation, Romney said he was dropping out so the Republicans wouldn’t lose the race to the Democratic terror-surrenderers.
Can you see the next nine months stretching out before you, people? Envision the pages on the calendar flipping. Hear the incessant drone of terrorsurrenderterrorsurrenderterrorsurrender? Welcome to McCain vs. Yet-to-Be-Named-White-Flag-Waver.
Other than repeatedly offering to give up any civil liberty the Bush administration felt it might need, Romney never talked all that much about the war on terror as a candidate. He was more interested in denouncing illegal immigration. Until he got to Michigan, where he became Friend of the Workers Mitt. If that primary had gone on any longer, he’d have been picketing with the writers’ union.
John McCain was the happy beneficiary of Romney’s sudden retreat on Thursday, yet he could barely bring himself to mumble something about his former opponent’s “energetic and dedicated campaign” which is a polite way of saying the guy would toss an old lady in front of a tractor-trailer to get what he wanted.
Romney always seemed surprised, and a little hurt, by the very clear contempt the other Republican candidates had for him. He didn’t see himself as a compulsive panderer with no central core. He was a businessman, solving problems. Running for president was no different from manufacturing kitchen flooring, only somewhat more tiring. If your sales department told you that the clients would like your tile better if it was green instead of blue, you changed the color. You weren’t flip-flopping; you were responding to the mandate of the marketplace.
We’re going to miss him — and Rudy and Fred, too. They came into the race to great fanfare, then turned out to be some of the least appealing candidates for high office this side of Ahmad Chalabi.
Watching Mitt wander away, I thought about how at the end of every season of “Survivor” the finalists walk past memorials to departed contestants and try to come up with a pleasant anecdote about the woman who laughed at inappropriate moments or the guy who stole all the food.
Oh, Fred, so ... tall. And that Rudy, always on that cellphone.
And what will we remember about Mitt? His perfect grooming? His granola addiction? The day he equated his son’s campaign work in the Mittmobile to military service? That YouTube tape of him being asked to name his worst fault and telling a story about going to the hospital every Saturday to read to the sick children?
All I know is somewhere in doggie heaven, an Irish setter is laughing.
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