Romney is out. I suspect that he saw his defeat as inevitable and wanted to stay in the good graces of the GOP elite by not delaying the inevitable.
His parting words included this gem: “In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.” Meaning, of course, that he thinks Clinton or Obama would “surrender to terror.” How, exactly, is it proposed that they would do this? By getting us out of Iraq? That wouldn’t be surrendering to “terror” — it would be acknowledging the high cost (money, lives) of a military effort far removed from American security implications and entered into under false pretenses. Iraq wasn’t a breeding ground for terrorists before we went in there (a fact which does not justify Saddam’s reign of terror, mind you). At any rate, the vast majority of combatants in Iraq aren’t terrorists in the “people who want to attack America” sense — they’re insurgents fighting to grab power in a country known for sectarian violence and power grabs. It’s a huge stretch to call withdrawal from Iraq “surrender to terror.” Regardless, neither Obama or Clinton has pledged an immediate withdrawal of all our troops from Iraq. Clinton won’t commit to a timetable at all. Obama wants it to take place over 16 months.
Sure, there is a difference between Clinton and Obama’s stances and that of John McCain (who advocated staying in Iraq for a hundred years, and then when challenged, upped the ante to “a thousand” and then “a million”). But that doesn’t make Clinton and Obama’s stances equivalent to “surrendering to terror.”
Even if he knows it’s not true, it doesn’t make for good strategy towards getting McCain elected. American voters are no longer motivated by the politics of fear and the invocation of the 9/11 specter (look at Rudy’s campaign and exit polls in Florida for the proof of that). Voters are motivated by the economy that is tanking, thanks in no small part to the war in Iraq and the “borrow and spend” mentality of the Bush administration.
Maybe Romney knows all this — after all, his best hope is for McCain to lose in 2008 and for Romney to make a bid in 2012 as a challenger.
Any guesses as to how many likely Republican voters won’t be voting for McCain? I know I sure won’t. There are lots of people saying it, but how many of them will succumb to “lesser of two evils” thinking and hold their nose for McCain in November? Will it be enough to offset all the “moderates” that McCain will woo?