Mitt did the right thing by “suspending” his campaign.  Given his incandescent intelligence, he saw the writing on the wall, and was able to deduce that his chances of winning the nomination were slim after McCain took most of the heavily-populated East Coast states and Huckabee undercut him by taking the South on Super Tuesday.

       This recent development all but assures McCain the GOP nomination, and puts the pressure on Huck to be honest with himself in that there is no way he can win, though word around the blogosphere and talk radio has it that the Arkansas governor is vying for the Veep slot.

       It is true that the bass-playing, Baptist preacher from Hope, Ark., did Mitt no favors by siphoning off key voters because Huck appealed to a niche within the conservative coalition.  But that was not the only thing working against the former Massachusetts governor; let’s start with his own geographic origin.  The fact that Romney hailed from the Bay State is an automatic cause for concern for many GOP voters.  Massachusetts is the state of Kerry and the Kennedys, usually not the breeding ground for a Reagan conservative.  Sadly, most voters’ memories are too short to realize that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was the state of origin for Calvin Coolidge, arguably the greatest President of the 20^th Century after Ronaldus Magnus.

       As far as seeing Mitt step down, it is a rather sad after we conservative activists – i.e., the backbone of the GOP base – worked hard to spread the message on why he was the man to lead the party into the future, only to see things come to a premature end.  In hindsight, we are now able to recognize the obstacles Mitt and the rest of us were up against in helping to establish his crucial campaign, but it is safe to say that none of us regret having supported someone who did not win the presidential nomination.  Indeed, as Hugh Hewitt points out, all of us are quite proud to have supported such an extraordinary man.  Was the campaign a failure?  Heavens, no:  at least, not in the strictest sense of the word.  He won a large portion of the states, and his losses in key states such as Florida and California were by close margins.  John McCain had to pull off a strong rally just to win his home state of Arizona.

      But what about Romney now and for the future?  Is he now out in the cold?  Hardly.  His announcement at the C-PAC convention that he was stepping down, in many ways, solidified his conservative credentials, such that he struggled to establish during the campaign but was not quite able to get the proverbial ‘brass ring.’  The most ironic aspect of Mitt stepping down from the primary campaign is that this end, in a key way, has become a new beginning for someone destined to be an increasingly important player in the conservative Republican movement, as Matt Lewis explains in his blog.

      The clincher in this ‘new beginning’ for Mitt was his speech at C-PAC.  Free from the Drive-By Media scrutiny that accompanies a major campaign, he was finally able to let his full-blown, unapologetic, peddle-to-the-metal conservative core beliefs loose to a highly receptive audience.  Seeing things along those lines, these moves on his part are very much akin to Reagan’s primary campaign performance in ’76, with the idea that he is now the man to look to for the GOP nomination in 2016, or even, God forbid, 2012.  Meanwhile, the fact that he suspended his campaign means that he will keep his delegates in his back pocket and use them as leverage in the Twin Cities.  Could our man Mitt become the VP to McCain?  If so, then a lot of things we worked hard for could come to fruition after all…a new beginning indeed!