so ... Mitt Romney.

[BVS]

Is that like time out for bad behaviour?

[coemgen]

(CNN) -- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will suspend his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, GOP sources tell CNN.

Generally, when a presidential candidate "suspends" a campaign, he may keep any delegates he has won up to that point. If the candidate "drops out," he may only keep district-level delegates he had won and he would forfeit any statewide delegates won.

[coemgen]

Originally posted by BonoVoxSupastar
Is that like time out for bad behaviour?

[U2isthebest]

Originally posted by coemgen
(CNN) -- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will suspend his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, GOP sources tell CNN.

Generally, when a presidential candidate "suspends" a campaign, he may keep any delegates he has won up to that point. If the candidate "drops out," he may only keep district-level delegates he had won and he would forfeit any statewide delegates won.

I just went to CNN.com so I could read the article, and it still doesn't sound good to me. I mean, it doesn't sound good for him. I couldn't be more thrilled. He doesn't have anywhere near the amount of delegates it would take to get the nomination, and it doesn't seem likely he'll rack up too many more in the coming primaries. Mr. Goodhair should just quit while he's behind...way behind.

[coemgen]

I guess he's going for the pity vote now.

[U2isthebest]

Originally posted by coemgen
I guess he's going for the pity vote now.

Yes, I'm sure all the Republicans who didn't vote for him will be begging to change their vote now that he's using political reverse psychology on them. What a genius!

[ladywithspinninghead]

France

Anyway, didn't Edwards suspend his campaign too?

[2861U2]

Romney's speech is really good. He's a darn good speaker, with a lot of passion in what he believes in. I have a lot of respect for him, and for him getting out now. We havent seen the last of him. He'll either get a position in a McCain administration or he'll run for president again sometime.

[anitram]

Originally posted by 2861U2
Romney's speech is really good. He's a darn good speaker, with a lot of passion in what he believes in. I have a lot of respect for him, and for him getting out now. We havent seen the last of him. He'll either get a position in a McCain administration or he'll run for president again sometime.

I think Mitt is eyeing 2012, because he doesn't believe the Republicans will win this year. He's a slick businessman, it's exactly his MO.

[2861U2]

Originally posted by anitram


I think Mitt is eyeing 2012, because he doesn't believe the Republicans will win this year.

That's probably right.

[anitram]

And now he can go back to being pro-choice and pro-gay marriage too.

[LemonMelon]

Originally posted by coemgen
It is done. CNN is announcing Romney will suspend his campaign.

One less frightening flip-flopper.

[2861U2]

This basically means the Republican race is over, if it wasn't already. This is good. McCain can basically start a national campaign now, while the Democrats are far, far from it.

[U2isthebest]

There must be a connection between sweet hair and flip-flopping. Look at John Kerry...

[LemonMelon]

Originally posted by U2isthebest
There must be a connection between sweet hair and flip-flopping. Look at John Kerry...

That pic of him when he was 22 really reminds me of Kerry. Separated at birth?

[diamond]

Shame on all of you

[U2isthebest]

It's crazy, I know. We're glad that a candidate we feel would be a wrong choice to lead the country had decided to drop out of the presidential race. We're on the edge with this one.

[anitram]

Originally posted by 2861U2
This basically means the Republican race is over, if it wasn't already. This is good. McCain can basically start a national campaign now, while the Democrats are far, far from it.

Except that they're going to continue receiving all the free media attention. Who is going to care about McCain's national campaign when there is something much more exciting still going on with the Dems?

[diamond]

A link to Mitt's speech today:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/pos...UxZmU5ZThlNzg=

[coemgen]

Burying Mitt

Romney failed because he ran as something he's not.
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 1:03 PM ET Feb 7, 2008

Here lieth the campaign of Mitt Romney, victim of the mistaken belief that the only way to succeed in national Republican politics was to turn yourself into something you are not. Or maybe the campaign revealed what his closest friends never imaged him to be. They thought he was a decent classy guy. But maybe he really is a soulless throat-cutter who would do and say anything to win.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he was a good fellow who didn't know enough about national politics and listened to people who gave him bad, cynical advice.

Sen. John McCain was in a good position before; now it's hard to imagine that he won't wrap up the nomination in the next week or two. His lone remaining serious opponent, Mike Huckabee, has exceeded expectations, but expecting him to be able to unhorse McCain is perhaps expecting too much.

I have covered a lot of presidential campaigns, and I can't think of one that so lost its way-so expensively-as that of the former governor of Massachusetts. A board room and business favorite, a man with a Midas managerial touch, he was widely admired and even beloved. But he was a Republican of an old moderate school-that of his own father-and, like George W. Bush, Romney the Younger decided that he had to jettison all that he was to become something that he was not.

And so it was that this square peg spent perhaps $80 million-including at least $30 million of his own money-trying to pound himself into a round hole. It didn't work. The irony of his failed campaign: if he had just stuck to selling his managerial mettle, he might well have won the nomination, given the way the country's economic anxieties have become voters' number one concern.

Even as conservative radio talk-show hosts reluctantly settled on him as their savior, they were uneasy about it and about his previous record of social moderation and fiscal flexibility. They sold him hard in the last few weeks, but to no avail. Romney won his home state and the states in the West where Mormonism was familiar, but not much else.

The quality of being genuine is hard to convey, and deciding who should be president based solely on that basis can lead to disaster; you need brains and an ability to go with the flow as well. But voters know a phony above all and Romney came off as one from the get-go. Over the last decade he had changed his views in a rightward direction on so many issues to suit what he thought he needed to win the GOP nomination that he ended up standing for nothing but his own ambition.

He had good staff in the early states, but as soon as the genuine article (or at least a more genuine article) came along in Iowa, in the form of Mike Huckabee, Romney was blown away. Then, having ceded the moderate ground, he lost in New Hampshire to another genuine article, John McCain (who learned his own lessons about the dangers of pandering to the right earlier in his campaign).

It's no accident that the GOP race is down to three men who are clear about who they are: McCain, Huckabee and, yes, Ron Paul.

All of that was Romney's own doing. But he also was damaged by a factor over which he had no control and, to his credit, he didn't seek to mute--his Mormonism. In the Bible Belt, his faith is anathema. And yet when the head of the Mormon Church passed away, Romney left the campaign trail to attend the funeral in Salt Lake that may have damaged him on the eve of Super Tuesday.

It was a class act, one of the few in his otherwise misbegotten campaign. Rest in peace.