TRAIL MIX: Newspaper Blogs React to Romney Exit and Much More

By: Emily Vaughan Though he won't mention John McCain by name, President Bush will endorse a "strong conservative" candidate at tonight's Conservative Political Action Conference, reports Peter Baker at The Washington Post's The Trail.

Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times' Top of Ticket speculates that the nail in the coffin of Romney's campaign (and at least one of the factors in Giuliani's and Thompson's departures) was the inexplicable and just widespread enough support for libertarian-like Ron Paul.

At least two of the remaining GOP contenders can get some mileage out of a prolonged Republican primary. McCain gets to stay in the news, and Huckabee, though his chances of winning the nomination are nearly non-existent, can continue to prove himself a viable vice presidential candidate, says John Harwood at the New York Times' The Caucus.

Hillary Clinton got almost half her wish: Barack Obama agreed to two more debates, one in Ohio and one in Texas, of the five the New York senator was calling for, according to Mark Memmott on USA Today's On Politics. The theory is that Obama's team was afraid that he might make a bad mistake in a debate -- and he has so much money now he doesn't need the free airtime.

Obama had harsh words in response to Romney's accusation that Democrats were "surrendering to terrorists," saying "It's a classic attempt to appeal to people's fears that will not work in this campaign. And I think that's part of the reason he was such an ineffective candidate," reports Mike Dorning at the Chicago Tribune's The Swamp. That's still a lot milder than the "f-bomb" that Jon Stewart dropped on Romney for the same remark last night on "A Daily Show."

Mike Huckabee may not be the only Republican vying for vice president, at least not if the grassroots movement Think Condi gets its way. Though the secretary of state is unaffiliated with the group, it's founders think Rice, a black woman, would be an advantage against either Obama or Clinton, Susan Davis at The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire reports. Ann Coulter, meanwhile, now says that she might vote for McCain if he picks Romney as his Veep.

Romney is the latest victim of the presidential primaries, but for a
consolation prize, he may get an online group "thank you" note courtesy of SquidNotes, like John Edwards has, says Joe Garofoli at SFGate.com's
Politics blog. The SquidNotes publicity stunt apparently got hundreds of
signatures within minutes, SquidNotes founder John Anderson said in the
post.