Mitt Quit

8 February 2008



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Romney Suspends Presidential Campaign

Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts isn’t going to be the first Mormon president, at least, not this election. Yesterday like the businessman he is, he looked at the costs and the benefits of continuing his presidential bid and realized that fact. Rather than throw good money after bad, he has suspended his presidential campaign. John McCain is almost assured the Republican nomination.

Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference, the governor said, “This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters . . . many of you right here in this room . . . have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.” That is, of course, not quite right.

He suspended the campaign because mathematically, he couldn’t pull off a big enough win to stop Senator McCain so long as Mike Huckabee carried the banner of the social conservatives. In a head-to-head race, some evangelicals would still not back a Mormon, but others would give him the benefit of the doubt. The trouble was his rightward tack in the last few years left him looking more like a man dedicated to ambition rather than principle. The American right likes a candidate to have (or appear to have) both.

In the end, Mr. Romney is a businessman at a time when American business has been acting like baggy-pantsed clowns with seltzer bottles at the ready. The subprime meltdown, the falling housing market that resulted, the declining service sector activity are all the result of markets that over-reached (that’s part of their mechanism). What America doesn’t want or need is a CEO when the economy has been trashed by that class of person.

So, it is down to Messrs. McCain and Huckabee (Ron Paul will go all the way to the convention, naturally, as someone has to play the role of fly at the watermelon party). Senator McCain is well ahead in the delegate count. It is only a matter of time before funding for Mr. Huckabee dries up, and he has no personal fortune to throw into the mix. All that will remain is the whining from the right-wing talk show hosts who are threatening to back the Democrat in this race. One doubts their sincerity.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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