Mitt Romney Withdraws

$30 million dollars of his own money, a string of defeats and a couple of victories to show for it and Mitt Romney today announced to a stunned audience that he was withdrawing from the campaign for President of the United States. Forgive me a brief unscripted moment of joy, but this is the news that has made me most excited this today. WOOHOO!! Mitt Romney has moved on, and thank God he won't be in the White House as President of the United States (perhaps until next cycle, but we'll deal with that then.)

I have to hand it to Mitt Romney and provide him a little credit - he knew that it was time to get out. He could have kept going and been the anti-McCain, but he wouldn't have won and just weakened the Republicans because of it. With McCain the presumptive nominee he can now work on bringing the party together and fighting the divided Democrats from a united position. So credit to Romney - he put aside his own ego (which would have been telling him to continue fighting) for the good of his party. They sure need it to unite behind McCain and beat the Democrats in the Fall!

Like it or not, odd-ball conservatives, your nominee is now John McCain. I don't know why you're bitching so much - of all the candidates you had on offer he's best placed to win. Do you really want to nominate someone who's going to lose? Please, you're smarter than that, surely?

But back to Romney and his campaign. He just never connected with the voters, in any of his iterations. Has there ever been a candidate who has remade himself so many times on the campaign trail? The ultimate panderer. Not only were his issues inconsistent from his days as Massachusetts Governor (and we talk about it as though he left office years ago rather than in January of 2007) but he literally re-made his image on the stump several times - going from Powerpoint presentations to untucked shirts. It didn't resonate because it wasn't genuine, and I still believe that his near-bald-faced lies to the people of Michigan about their economic prospects are a pretty horrendous thing to do.

I'm glad that Mitt Romney is out of the race because I don't like him as a candidate (I won't say I don't like him as a person because I don't know him...but his characteristics as a candidate indicate don't bode well..) Farewell Mitt. I'm sure we'll see you somewhere again.