A political move so stupid that it could only be evidence of a brilliant strategic plan.

Mitt Romney goes to the wall for doomed GOP Senator Bob Bennett:

There he stood, a Harvard MBA man, a man of numbers, backing a collapsing equity. Mitt Romney took to the podium in Salt Lake City, the place where he rose to prominence in 2002 as Olympic chief, and urged the GOP delegates to back Sen. Bob Bennett, Utah's three-term incumbent. Despite Romney's pleas, Bennett ended the day with a worthless bronze, dumped from the primary. For Romney, however, the moment was a silver — not a victory, but an impressive showing.

The article does two really interesting things with this piece of information. First, the article adds two and two together and gets five: that Romney's support for Bennett is due to a refreshing sense of personal honor. In reality, it's more a case of the first officer of the "Titanic" bravely rearranging the deck chairs after the captain jumps overboard.

Second, it makes an excellent case that Mitt Romney is exactly the type of mainstream Republican moderate that we've always suspected. The ultimate problem with Mitt Romney -- and with Rudy Guiliani and with Fred Thompson and with Rick Lazio, etc. -- as presidential candidates is that they were all early adopters of the McCainite politics that collapsed so catastrophically in 2006 and 2008. The one thing that is guaranteed to re-elect Barack Obama as president of the United States is for the GOP nominee to run on the bold slogan of mainstream McCainite Republicanism: "I'll never be THAT stupid ever again. I promise."