Romney Had A Good Run While It Lasted

....but it's now officially over:

A remark by a top aide to Massachusetts Governor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney that he "faked" his position on abortion has created a firestorm of controversy in his home state.

When he ran both against Senator Ted Kennedy and more recently for governor of Massachusetts, Romney unequivocally promised he would "fully protect a woman's right to choose."

Now he insists that his "political philosophy is pro-life."

But his chief political adviser caused a stir among Boston media when he suggested that Romney's pro-choice stand had been for political posturing in the very liberal state.

Michael Murphy, the adviser, caused the brouhaha when he blandly explained Romney's apparent inconsistency on the abortion issue to National Review.

"He's been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly," Murphy told the magazine.

When the Boston Globe ran a front-page headline saying "Adviser Says Governor Faked Stance on Abortion," Romney's staff was apparently worried about the political fallout in Massachusetts.

The political fallout that matters for Romney isn't in Massachusetts, where he couldn't get re-elected to a second term as governor in any case, but to his presidential ambitions. The only thing worse for an ambitious Republican politician than embracing abortion rights is to equivocate on the issue. That guarantees that neither side of the abortion jihad will trust him and that the abortion issue itself, which for all the passion generated on both sides is usually of negligible electoral importance, will become far more emblematic.

Romney's potential '08 presidential candidacy is, despite all the attention he's attracted of late, realistically a long shot. But a sound-bite like this one all but assures that the "shot," as it were, will end up being a blank.