'A surrender to terror'

-- by Dave

"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."
-- Mitt Romney, upon giving up his 2008 GOP presidential bid

Gee, no sooner do we mention "Dolchstosslegende" than we get yet another prominent Republican making hay with it. As John Emerson says, you'd "have trouble imagining an uglier, more demagogic concession speech."

But actually, Democrats had better brace themselves for a lot more of this. If the Iraq-war-supporting McCain is the nominee -- and it's becoming self-evident now that he will be -- we're going to be hearing a lot more of two big themes coming out of the Republican camp for the better part of the next year:

-- The "surge" really is working

-- Liberal Democrats and the media are stabbing our soldiers in the back

Somewhere along the way, you can probably expect the Village to mutate these two themes into a modern-day version of Nixon's 1972 "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War -- to wit, something along the line of, "Well, McCain is a serious guy about the war, which means that after the election, he can actually win and get the troops home," or some other similar nonsense.

Y'see, Sara? CPAC didn't need to have Ann Coulter up onstage after all. There are plenty of Republicans eager to play her role.