Romney’s twisted world

Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008 | 2:08 a.m.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in announcing last week that he would no longer seek the Republican presidential nomination, said something so ridiculous and dangerously irresponsible that we couldn’t let it pass without comment.

Although Sen. John McCain has yet to mathematically wrap up the Republican presidential nomination, Romney claimed it was time for the race to end, lest the terrorists win.

“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 Sen. Clinton or Obama would win,” Romney said. “And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

Come again?

Does that mean Mike Huckabee, who has decided to stay in the race, is somehow furthering the cause of terrorism? For that matter, are the good people of Kansas and Louisiana who voted in their presidential nominating contests and provided Huckabee with wins in both states aiding and abetting terrorism because John McCain’s coronation as the Republican nominee has been postponed for a few weeks?

In Romney’s world, the Kansans who voted for Huckabee, 60 percent of the state’s Republican caucusgoers, are nothing better than fellow travelers of al-Qaida. And, if Romney had his way, all the Republicans in the other states who have not yet had a chance to vote would be denied a choice.

Romney’s lack of grace in withdrawing from the presidential race he just couldn’t simply say McCain beat him fair and square shows why he failed as a candidate. And it is beyond the pale that he would smear the Democrats vying to be their party’s presidential nominee, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, by saying that electing either of them president would be a “surrender to terror.”

An overwhelming majority of Americans wants us to get out of Iraq in a reasonable and timely manner, and they also understand that President Bush diverted his attention from the real war on terrorism, which was located in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, a region where Osama bin Laden is still believed to be hiding more than six years after 9/11.

Still, we expect that Republicans will try to tar whoever is the Democratic nominee with language similar to what Romney used in his parting shot. That may have worked in 2004, but the 2006 congressional elections showed that such naked fear-mongering wasn’t successful, as Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. And it won’t work in 2008 either.