Though they haven't gotten much attention yet, his warmongering ways will be a liability in the general election, just as Goldwater's were in 1964.

Reuters (Romney); Getty Images (Goldwater)

Mitt Romney is delivering up so much delicious red campaign meat to Obamaland these days that I had to wonder whether they're already making plans for the reelection dinner party in Chicago. So I called a friend who is working for the president's reelection, and this person joyfully confirmed: yes, ol' Mitt is the gift that keeps on giving.

If Romney keeps giving like this, he may give the Obama campaign more than enough fodder to take out his candidacy on foreign policy alone. Most recently I wondered whether the Obama team would turn him into Michael Dukakis on the basis of his aide's Etch A Sketch gaffe. Now I wonder whether the better play isn't to cast Romney as Barry "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" Goldwater, whose trouncing by LBJ in 1964 had a lot to do with public fears that he was a warmonger.

I had already written about Romney's lurch rightward on foreign policy. Previously he has virtually threatened war with Iran and the perpetuation of war in Afghanistan. But Romney's remarks to CNN about Russia, calling Moscow "without question our number one geopolitical foe" and saying that the Russians "fight every cause for the world's worst actors," seemed to mark a new level of indiscretion for the hyperventilating former Massachusetts governor.