This is an excellent example of what’s wrong with the guy. He has very cowardly instincts. What would have been wrong with him saying something like, “Hey, as much as I hate it, I understand what Congress is like. As the song says, you can’t always get what you want, but I think Mitch McConnell and John Boehner took Barack Obama to the cleaners, and we’re nudging the needle in the right direction here. So with reservations about the defense spending and a caution that we must be absolutely vigilant that those wimpy Democrats don’t weaken our defenses and undermine our fighting men and women, I support it.”

Wouldn’t that have worked fine? It’s the establishment Republican position. The two leading Republicans in the country support it. Nearly 73 percent of House Republicans just backed that position, and a similar or probably even higher percentage of senators is going to back that position today. I also can’t imagine that a large number of Republican high-dollar donors are off in Bachmann land. So Romney had the chance to make a distinction between himself and the woman who now appears positioned to be his chief challenger.

So why didn’t he? Iowa.