Quick Thoughts

- Romney's last campaign speech was his best. It was classy (or at the very least intelligent) of him to read the handwriting on the wall and realize that it was a mathematical impossibility for him to gain the nomination. His withdrawal positions him well for future involvement in the conservative movement.

- There's word today that former RI Republican Senator Linc Chafee, now an unaffiliated voter, may vote for Senator Obama in the 4 March Rhode Island Democratic primary. People are, for some reason, surprised at this. I'm not (perhaps because if I voted in an open-primary state I would have done the same thing). Chafee did not vote for President Bush's reelection in 2004 (he wrote in George H.W. Bush), and has been an outspoken critic of the handling of the war in Iraq (he was the only Republican to vote against the use of force in 2002) and against the rightward lurches the GOP has taken. Good for Chafee, I say.

- New polls bear out what I've been saying for quite a while: Obama is the stronger Democratic nominee against John McCain than Hillary Clinton. The reason is simple: "independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator."