Mitt Romney takes the concept of “party loyalty” to a ridiculous extreme, and ends up saying Ron Paul would be a better President than Barack Obama.

What a beautiful example of absurd cognitive dissonance. Romney, of course, is being the archetypal cynical politician here; he only said this because he knows it will never happen.

But the clear message from Romney is that Ron Paul’s history of racism, antisemitism, paranoid conspiracy theories, and connections to extremist groups like the John Birch Society are less of a problem than a black man in the White House.