Via Greg Hengler. The R-word was, of course, not one that lightly escaped his lips during the race with Coakley for fear of irritating GOP-hating Massachusetts indies whose votes he needed. Today, as you’ll see, he finally came out of the closet. In fact, it sounded so nice he said it twice, and got a nice reaction for doing so — even though, in this year of all years, CPAC’s supposed to be less about being a Republican and more about being a principled tea-party conservative. Ah well. Charm goes a long way.

He was there to introduce Romney, who, alas, had to follow not only Scotty B but Rubio and Darth Cheney as well. Follow the link to Hengler to watch Mitt’s speech or read the transcript at the Corner. Some nice digs in there at Captain B+ and his penchant for blaming all the world’s sorrows on George Bush.