Fuck you, Mitt Romney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

That was Jon Stewart's message to Romney last night, and many of us had been thinking it all day long, in one form or another, upon hearing or reading Romney's CPAC speech, which included this:

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.

Yes, that's right, the Democrats are coddlers of terrorists and enablers of terrorism. And Romney was just doing what was best for the country. Like I said, fuck him. This is why -- or one of the main reasons why -- I truly despise the Republican Party and pretty much everything that goes on over on the wingnut right, where they either believe this bullshit, have repeated it so often that it has come to be the bullshit truth to them, or they know it's not true but feed it into their smear machine for partisan gain (and to their fellow partisans, who lap it up and lick it clean).

As Christopher Orr put it at The Plank, Romney was just doing the Republican thing, trying harder to be "a shrill, divisive, pandering hack" -- he hasn't been enough of one, perhaps, but he's looking to the future, specifically to his own future in the GOP. (The rest of the speech, including a ridiculous attack on France (a popular target for the ignorant, xenophobic morons to whom he was pandering), was similarly appalling -- and appallingly stupid.) Put another way, Romney may have suspended his campaign, but he's still campaigning -- not for '08 but for '12, or maybe '16.

As my friend Steve Benen put it, "we might still have Romney to kick around again at some point down the road" -- it's nice to have something to look forward to, isn't it?