Romney Stepping Aside
Keith_Indy on Feb 07 2008 at 12:08 pm | Filed under: Election 2008, Keith's Page
Romney is going to quit the race. Or “suspending” his campaigning, whatever that means. Looking at the results so far, this would give McCain the nomination, and leave him to go on the offensive against either of the potential Democratic candidates. Given Romney’s performance as noted below, there’s not really much to do, other then making nice and dropping out.
I would say that ‘conservatives’ have proved that they aren’t the core of the Parties voting base.
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/02/07/time-magazine-blog-romney-to-quit-today/
Mitt Romney will drop out of the Republican presidential race during his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday, FOX News has confirmed.
Romney is “suspending” his campaign and will say so “during his speech,” a top aide told FOX News.
The news was sure to come as a blow to the CPAC audience, who appeared largely unaware of the former Massachusetts governor’s plan in the minutes before his speech.
Looking at the numbers, McCain has done far better then any other candidate in states with closed primaries.
85% of the delegates from states with Closed Primaries is nothing to sneeze at.
| Total | McCain | Romney | Huckabee | Paul | |||||
| Closed Primary | 521 | 443 | 85% | 61 | 12% | 12 | 2% | 5 | 1% |
| Open Primary | 686 | 277 | 40% | 218 | 32% | 182 | 27% | 9 | 1% |
| Total | 1313 | 720 | 55% | 279 | 21% | 194 | 15% | 14 | 1% |
UPDATE:
For the good of the Party, and the good of the country… at least he gets it.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8ULK3JG1&show_article=1
Sphere: Related ContentJohn McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign.
“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,” Romney will say at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
I’d disagree Keith. McCain thus far has not won a majority. The conservative base is, sadly, split. The social-con/anti non-christian (just like us) base went strongly for Huckabee. The fiscal-cons/anti christian (not like them) base went strongly for Romney. The ‘we have to appease/acquiesce the moderates’ went strongly for McCain and by 40/30/30 split, won.
Romney, from hindsight, was doomed because he is mormon, of course the argument was ostensibly, and understandably, that he was elected the governor of ultra-lib Mass. (how dare he!)
Huckabee is doomed because he has run on what the Sully’s of the world would rightly deem a Christianist platform. And that he is totally unprepared to run the nation - Obama like unprepared.
Thompson was too hollywood - he thought folks would flock to him because of his star power. Yea, like they promote Streisand or Spicoli as serious representatives.
The conservative right did not lose, it is split. McCain is the reluctant default of these two obstinate coalitions. More important though, Republicans have done just what the Democrats did in the 1990’s - they circled the wagons around a flawed president irrespective of the issue, and forgot the objective. He [bush] left conservatives with a Damocles choice.
And just like the NYTimes and WaPost, the Weekly Standard is more frightened with the prospect of losing contact ( influence) with the front runner. They are suckups…
I’ll add, as a Romney supporter, I hold talk radio and right blog-o-sphere somewhat culpable. They bought into the hollywood dream of Thompson - they held out, nay actively fought against anyone except Thompson. It is funny, in the clown dying sense, to hear them now lament that had Romney just given the speech he gave at CPAC earlier, they would have been on board. Excuse me, but Mitt has been giving that speech for over 10 months - they just chose to ignore it in light of his requisite speeches to get elected in the bluest of blue states. You reap what you sow.
Bains,
I wouldn’t say that about The Weekly Standard. McCain has always been their guy. Ironically given his play in the press, and reputation as a moderate, McCain is, and was, the neo-con choice. I find it amusing that obvious figures who are not neo cons, such as Rumsfeld, are given the label, while McCain, the political standard bearer of the neo-cons for the last 15 years, is never given that label in common discussion.
[...] Anecdotes, along with many Mormon Romney supporters, is naturally very disappointed about his withdrawal from the Republican race. Like many Mormons Ken is convinced Romney was defeated “for the [...]
“McCain thus far has not won a majority.”
McCain has 55% of the delegates, the only majority that counts right now.
And if conservatives are such an important part of the base, where’s the conservatives candidate?
They didn’t fully get behind Thompson. Romney is just as conservative as McCain in my view, or are we going to ignore the health care plan he passed in MASS. In other words, flawed by way of political actions that were not conservative. So, where were the conservatives? They didn’t come out and convince others of the virtues of any candidate. Everyone seemed to be waiting and seeing how things shook out.
And now some conservazealots, (meaning the less pragmatic, no compromise, you have to be “pure” or your not a Conservative,) are planning on either sitting out the Presidential campaign, or even vote for the Democrat. I suppose ideological purity is a virtue somewhere, but not in politics. Just ask Libertarians. If the conservazealots keep going the way the are behaving right now, they will become as marginalized as Libertarians.
That’s my point Keith. . I could have been happy with either Guiliani or Thompson, but neither caught fire when it mattered. And Huckabee was always McCain’s stalking horse. Further, social-cons could not convince me that Huckabee was a conservative in any area other than the one I’m least concerned with.
I could not convince either the neo-con or the social-con that Romney’s past positions were not core positions, but positions of pragmatism, positions he had to take to get elected in the blueist of states. Now I live in western Colorado, have for nearly three decades, I know Mormons. People used the flip/flop as a convenient bludgeon just as I used the moniker pro-life liberal to
marginalizedescribe Huckabee. But I know that Romney’s flip was away from, and the flop was back to traditionally and strongly held core Mormon values. Did not matter though for a good part of the social-cons animus towards Romney was/is his religion.So now we are saddled with McCain whose only conservative credential is that he will actively fight global jihadism. His flip/flop on illegal immigration brings him to a position that I do not believe is a core value. His rhetoric on global warming is frightening - I noticed he did not mention that in yesterday’s speech. We’ll likely get more Sandra Day O’Conners rather than John Roberts. All because evangelical Christians and non-evangelical Christians were split over… evangelical Christianity. And none of the other candidates were strong enough, or convincing enough, in other areas to allow the issue of evangelical Christianity to take a back seat.
Now I happen to be an atheist, but not an evangelical atheist. I am also a neo-libertarian, perhaps even borderline anarcho-capitalist. I am absolutely disinterested in who is still in the race – they are all bad – differing in decimals, not degrees. Irrespective of primary rhetoric, I doubt that either Barak or Hillary will chose defeat in light of the surge’s success. Bush’s policy appears to be succeeding, and hence a change in policy lays failure on they who change course. So then the last major issue foist upon us, the republican base, is the courts. And on the surface, this appears to be important. Until we elect legislators who write good laws, the courts will always usurp authority. In other words, our pretending that judicial appointments are of paramount import only reflects poorly on our willingness to elect decent legislators.
A long way of saying that I’m on the cusp of a crap shoot. Establishment Republicans keep on reminding me of the down side…
But they offer no up side.
Lance, I was on board with McCain in 2000 - so much so that I voted for Harry Brown in the general. I even defended McCain’s campaign-finance reform in the early years (delphi message boards if you want a trail). McCain has always been Bill Crystol’s fav. While offering fairly good analysis, the Weekly Standard has always been the publication of the country club (inside the beltway) conservative. John McCain’s conservatives. Conservatives that pay lip service to my values, and extract full payment to embark upon illiberal, but enlightened (NYTimes or WaPost endorsed) policies.