The decider is you

After months of being unofficially unofficially in, and a few weeks of being officially unofficially in, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said this week he is officially officially in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Even so it's been a tough week for Romney. He's trailing Newt Gingrich in a new national poll, and he can't be happy with a piece in New York Magazine, which ran under the completely unbiased and fair headline "Is Mitt Romney the toothsome, carpetbagging phony he appears to be?"

I'll excerpt the best line in the thing, in case you're the kind who doesn't click on links. Author John Heilemann quotes a "former Democratic gubernatorial candidate from Massachusetts" as saying of Romney's Mormonism "Look, let’s be honest, Mormons are weird."

NaturalBlog is offering 3-1 odds that this unnamed source is former Clinton cabinet secretary and failed 2002 gubernatorial candidate Robert Reich. Tough talk from a guy who did a nude calendar.

But it may be all moot for Mitt, now that his fellow former governor Jane Swift, who he elbowed out of the 2002 Republican gubernatorial race, has backed John McCain. An unpopular and rarely thought of former elected official is picking McCain in Massachusetts? This race is so over.