Steven Benen notes that Mitt Romney’s justification for dropping out was that we are at war and if he didn’t drop out, he would continue to fracture the GOP, allowing the Democrats to win, and subsequently, the terrorists. Here’s Mitt Romney earlier today, quitting the race:

“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.”

Benen writes:

In other words, Romney argued, with a straight face, that if he didn’t drop out, the terrorists win. And since he loves America, he can’t let that happen.

This gets directly to the narrative that we are already seeing from John McCain and will no doubt become the overarching theme embraced by the GOP in attacking our candidates and eventual nominee. “Democrats will surrender. Democrats will let the terrorists win. Democrats will stab the troops in the back.”

Dave Neiwert had a post up yesterday delving deep into the use of “Dolchstosslegende” by the right. It’s instructive given that Romney’s speech is probably a pretty close approximation to what we can expect to continue to see it coming from Republican candidates and pundits in attacking Democrats. They’ve been using this language extensively already and it’s only going to get worse and come from larger microphones afforded by the Presidential campaign, namely John McCain and his surrogates.

Update:

Right after hitting post, I see that Neiwert actually identified the same thing here as Benen and I, while agreeing that “Democrats had better brace themselves for a lot more of this.” Give Neiwert’s post a read.

Lots of sources are saying Romney will drop out today, possibly in the close of his speech at CPAC.

Somewhere in Washington DC, Soren Dayton is dancing a jig.

Last year I went to CPAC and had a hell of a time monitoring the atrocities. I’m not going this year, but fortunately for me Mister Leonard Pierce of Sadly, No! is there and doing a better recreation of Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism than Matt Taibbi could ever dream to achieve. In his latest update, he writes about Cheney’s arrival into CPAC:

People are clapping rhythmically – well, as rhythmically as this crowd is ever going to get – for Cheney. For Cheney! I keep expecting them to start chanting “WE WANT THE SHOW” like they’re waiting for the Blues Brothers, the presence of whom would color up the crowd considerably. Wyoming senator John Barrasso introduces the fiend of the hour: “The C in CPAC should stand for Cheney!” The C in CPAC should stand for cocksucker, how about that?, I think, as the combination of drugs and fear turn me into a surly 15-year-old. Cheney is damned lucky I don’t have a roll of toilet paper, that’s all I can say. The crowd gives Dick a standing o, and, as a gang of bull-veined dudes in front of me start chanting “FOUR MORE YEARS!”, I get the sensation for the first time all day that I’m at something that could easily turn into a fascist rally. When the applause finally quells, Dick chuckles evilly. Can that be done? Is a chuckle even feasible as the delivery vector for evil? If it is, Dick Cheney is the man capable of pulling it off with finesse. I have to admit, the guy has a certain degree of charm, but it’s the same kind of charm that you might find in Stalin or Dracula: the easy charisma of a man who knows he can, with a wave of his hand, have you ground into paste.

Cheney goes on to discuss national security issues:

National security, though, that’s another matter: he gets another standing ovation for “The absence of another 9/11 is not an accident, it’s an achievement”. (The presence of the first 9/11, apparently, was and accident.) A laundry list of constitutional butt-wipes get standing ovations from about half of the crowd: an expansion of FISA, the torture of terror suspects, and the financial protection of any big corporation who might theoretically have allowed illegal wiretapping to take place. The telecoms, says Cheney, shouldn’t be “hassled” for acting in “good faith”, which usage of the phrase is unfamiliar to me. Terror, terror, terror: it’s the Dick Cheney boilerplate. (Bonus homosexual innuendo, Dick Cheney edition: describing the President’s term in office, he says “We’ve done hard things and done them well.”) Weirdly enough – or maybe not so much – his defense of torture gets a standing ovation, but his praising of our fighting men in uniform does not. It takes a man to fight, but it takes a train to waterboard.

He has four posts up so far, two from today, two from his travels to DC. Here are the links to Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3. I can’t wait for more updates…

Oh and for those interested, you can read my posts from CPAC last year here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

John McCain is the John Kerry of 2008.

In the 2004 cycle Kerry was the presumptive nominee early on, which allowed him to build an A-list campaign with top staff,  he fell far behind in the polls, and in the end was able to surge back to the nomination.

In 2008, McCain has played out on very similar terms as Kerry.

The NY Times pretty much nails Giuliani’s precipitous fall from national frontrunner to punchline for jokes by Ron Paul and Fred Thompson supporters.

In interviews Tuesday, even before he gave a concession speech in which he spoke of his campaign in the past tense, Mr. Giuliani described his strategic mistakes, suggesting that his opponents had built up too much momentum in earlier primaries. But this is a rhetorical sleight of hand; he in fact competed hard in New Hampshire, to remarkably poor effect.

Perhaps a simpler dynamic was at work: The more that Republican voters saw of him, the less they wanted to vote for him.

Giuliani was a bad mayor with fascist tendencies and an egotistical side that would make George W. Bush blush. He took advantage of a national tragedy, first for personal economic gain, then for personal political gain. His campaign’s reliance on 9/11 demeaned the victims of the attack and the nation that moved on from it. The victims’ families asked him to stop. The fire fighters asked him to stop. But perhaps only devastating humiliation in his losses to joke candidates like Ron Paul and Fred Thompson will dissuade him from continuing to profiteer from the attacks of September 11th. After all, it’s all about Rudy in his mind.

I can hardly think of a politician that deserved this public and national a humiliation more than Rudy Giuliani.

John McCain really is insane.

Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday, “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s not going to be over right away. There’s going to be other wars.” Offering more of his increasingly bleak “straight talk,” he repeated the claim: “I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.”

As I keep telling people, if you like neoconservative war mongering under the Bush administration, you’ll love a McCain administration.

People like McCain should be marginalized for their crazy ideas, not considered as potential choices to run the world’s sole super power.