So Romney exits the stage, paving the way for John McCain to take the Republican nomination, and gets slapped down by Barack Obama in the process.

Romney was the hope of many fiscal conservatives unhappy with McCain's position as the frontrunner, but those hopes never had any basis in reality.  Indeed, of all the front-runners, Romney probably understands the key to economic growth best, when he says "Depress the private sector and you depress the well-being of Americans.  That’s exactly what happens with high taxes, over-regulation, tort windfalls, mandates, and overfed, over-spending government."  His prescription of "lower taxes, including corporate taxes, to take a weed-whacker to government regulations, to reform entitlements, and to stand up to the increasingly voracious appetite of the unions in our government" is right on.

Too bad his record fails to back up his free-market rhetoric.

In an excellent post by Cato's Michael Tanner, Romney is exposed for the fee-imposing, bureaucracy-creating, health-care-socializing, corporate-welfare-giving, tax-and-spend governor he was in Massachusetts.  Considering that he most likely would've been working with a Democratic-controlled Congress if elected President, a Romney presidency would've been indistinguishable from his term as governor.

He won't be missed.