Romney

Mitt Romney bowed out of the 2008 presidential race exactly as he entered it - a complete fraud.

The man went to CPAC to announce that he was quitting, but before he did it, he couldn't resist leading those conventioneers through the beginning of a pretty hard-hitting stump speech. He did not sound at all like someone who was there to throw in the towel. In the first few minutes, I actually thought he was going to create his own Dewey Defeats Truman moment on live television. How perfect, how Romneyesque would it have been for him to clench his teeth and growl, "I'm in it to win it!" just as the lower-third BREAKING NEWS banner was announcing "NBC News confirms Mitt Rommey is suspending his campaign"?

But if you think about it, that speech was the essence of everything that is wrong with Romney as a candidate for high office. He is a charlatan.

Until about 15 minutes into his 18-minute speech, Mitt Romney was delivering what some supporters thought was one of his most emotionally powerful renditions of a campaign address he has made hundreds of times since declaring his candidacy for president almost exactly a year ago.

It was a speech that had an audience of over 1,000 at the annual Conservative Political Action Convention here interrupting him with sustained applause dozens of times — a few times standing on their feet – as he decried “the culture of dependency” fostered by government social programs, the looming “demographic disaster” of unchecked entitlement programs, the looming threat of Asian economic supremacy, the perilous threat of “Islamic jihadism,” and the urgent need to unleash the American entrepreneurial genius by “taking a weed-whacker to government regulations.”

Then he said something that didn’t fit with the uncompromising tenor of the speech up to that point.

What he said was, I quit. Oh sure, he dressed it up nicely, pretending that it was for the good of his party and his country that he was willing to make way for John McCain, but he was really doing no more than acknowledging what was true all along - that he had no chance of getting the GOP nomination.

How fitting then, that he would quit the race exactly as he ran it.

The faux culture warrior who was more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy before he was more anti-gay than James Dobson couldn't resist toying with the emotions of an unwitting crowd.

The latter-day pro-lifer who once wanted abortions to be safe and legal couldn't say no to a few more rounds of applause.

The lifetime NRA member who only got around to joining up as he began planning his presidential campaign couldn't exit stage right without treating himself to one more rousing chorus of MITT! MITT! MITT! MITT!

As the movement mouthpieces on right-wing radio ramped up their assault on John McCain, I could never understand why they tacked toward Romney as the conservative alternative. Why were they so willing to place their faith in someone so conspicuously disingenuous as Mitt Romney, a man whose stated beliefs are tailored to whatever audience he happens to be addressing? I don't suspect Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham will ever give us the satisfaction of an answer. But I do have to wonder what their insights are really worth if they can be taken for a ride by such an obvious flim-flam artist.

The only people on the right who saw through Romney were the Evangelicals who never warmed up to him, despite his shameless pandering to them. Despite a handful of religious conservative leaders who threw their credibility down the toilet to keep McCain from getting the nomination, the rank-and-file were unwilling to look past the real elephant in the race - his Mormon faith. In every contest, they chose one of their own, Mike Huckabee, over Romney.

I take a small measure of satisfaction in having called it early. I first wrote in November, 2006, that Romney had no chance of winning over conservative Christian voters, and without their support he had no chance of getting the nomination. This is exactly how it played out. If he had just listened, he could have spared himself a lot of time, energy, and money.

Oh, well. Live and learn.