Romney blurts out the truth. For a change. But it remains true that he was never as enthusiastic/delusional a supporter of the surge as McCain. As Rich Lowry commented many moons ago:
[For Mitt Romney] to speak for 50 minutes or so and not to talk about the Iraq war before a conservative audience at a crucial moment in that war is bizarre and just wrong and almost offensive in my view. This doesn’t seem like an oversight. He went out of his way to check off every conservative box—except the one that is politically risky at the moment.
McCain’s biggest liability in the fall is his total embrace of a permanent Iraq occupation. Romney, as usual, gave himself some lee-way.
The Dish 