At first blush this isn’t quite as nuts as Patterico makes it sound. On second blush, it is. Here’s Kmiec, immediately after reciting his opposition to (a) abortion, (b) gay marriage, (c) Warrenesque freestyle constitutional interpretation, (d) big government, and (e) hardline enforcement of the separation of church and state:

In various ways, Senator Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view, and as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.

Hark, the cry of the “Obamican,” so enchanted by the Messiah’s professed willingness to listen (to the point where he rejects being labeled a liberal) that he forgets he’s quite literally the least likely member of the Senate to actually take those words to which he’s listening to heart. Ted Kennedy can pretend to listen, too, but only very, very seldom is he going to vote conservative — which is still more often than Obama will, per his voting record. Kmiec reminds me of that McCain advisor who’s vowed not to work in the general campaign if Obama’s the opponent lest it pit him against a man of “deep character and good judgment.” Such is the charisma of the Messiah that simple decency — whatever that may mean post-Wright — is supposedly reason enough to shoo him into the Oval Office, even according to prominent Republicans.

Read further into the piece, though. Patterico’s assumption seems to be that Kmiec, being a law professor and former advisor on judges to the Romney campaign, should cast his vote according to who’d make the best judicial appointments. Eh. He may simply be a single-issue voter whose “single issue” isn’t his area of expertise. For a notable example of that, read this old post. I myself have written plenty of vitriolic posts on this site about immigration “reform” but I’ll still be voting for Captain Amnesty in November for Iraq’s sake.

Now here comes that second blush. Let’s see what Kmiec’s “single issue” is:

As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.

Has it escaped his attention that Mitt Romney is pro-war? To the point where he took great umbrage when McCain dared to suggest that he was any less mavericky on that issue than Maverick himself was? As Powerline says, Romney was “a more consistent supporter of the way Bush has used the presidency in furtherance of prosecuting the war on terror.” Was Kmiec planning to advise Mitt throughout the general campaign and then go throw the lever for Hillary because she wants troops out faster than Romney does?

Exit question: What’s really going on here? Is this just Romney/McCain hard feelings boiling over and Kmiec trying to stick a finger in his eye?