For pure political shadenfreude, few developments have been as entertaining as the right-wing family feud over the chaos in Egypt. Among just the neoconservatives, democracy promotion idealists are clashing with advocates of authoritarian stability. On air and online, the Republican partisan pundits are at each others' throats. While Bill Kristol derided as "hysteria" Glenn Beck's "rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines," Beck fumed, "People like Bill Kristol, I don't think they stand for anything any more." And as usual, Mitt Romney has been on both sides, fighting it out with himself.
When it comes to the Egyptian crisis, so far the Mitt Romney preparing for a 2012 White House run sounds nothing like his 2008 version. On Friday, Time noted that "the Romney line on Egypt is difficult to distinguish from the Obama line" and asked, "Will Mitt Romney praise President Obama's handling of Egypt at CPAC?" But as David Weigel pointed out, during the 2008 primary season Mitt Romney's pronouncements on global jihadism sounded a lot like Glenn Beck's warnings now about "how a caliphate could play out."
Last week, Beck repeatedly fretted that the fall of Egypt could be a precursor to a worldwide threat of Islamic conquest:

But let me go to the one word that nobody is really explaining because it's crazy town. It's crazy town. And maybe it is. But the people planning it, the people who want change, they don't think it's crazy.
It's caliphate. And it's a system of government established in Islam. It represents political unity of the Muslim community and it is governed by Islamic law. It is a theocracy. That's all it is.
All Islamic governments would unify under a caliphate. History has seen them before. The last was being the Ottoman Empire. We haven't seen one since 1923. That's the Ottoman Empire shut down.
This is what groups like the Muslim Brotherhood -- who we'll get into in just a minute -- really want. Their offspring, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas. Hezbollah is the offspring, really, you know, of the crazy radicals that want a caliphate in Iran. Muslim Brotherhood, that is Hamas.

If that sounds familiar, it should.
As part of his hard right-turn for the looming 2008 GOP primaries, Romney routinely conflated all Muslims into a single jihadist threat. In May 2007, Romney alarmingly - and erroneously - equated Sunni and Shiite, friend and foe, the guilty and the innocent across the Islamic world. (Ironically, his enemies list included the Muslim Brotherhood, 10 of whose members were invited to President Obama's speech in Cairo in June 2009.)

"But I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there's going to be another and another. This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate."

(Even regarding that "one person, Osama Bin Laden," Romney struggled. After insisting in May 2007 that "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney reversed course just three days later and declared of Bin Laden, " He's going to pay, and he will die.")

As it turned out, Romney wasn't the only Republican spouting the "Islamofascism" talking point. But by the fall of 2007, Mitt expanded his umbrella to include Iran. In an October 2007 campaign ad simply titled, "Jihad," Romney amazingly explained that Shiite Iran wanted to join Sunni Muslims in extending their dominion over the entire world:

"It's this century's nightmare, jihadism - violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism. Their goal is to unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate."

That doubtless came as a surprise to the mullahs in Tehran.
With so many potential enemies, it's no wonder Mitt Romney announced during a May 2007 Republican presidential candidates forum:

"Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo."

These days, Mitt Romney is ratcheting down the rhetoric. Despite mocking the 2009 Cairo speech he deemed part of "President Obama's recent tour of apology," Romney so far has generally refrained from criticism of the White House's approach to Egypt. But with the Republican primaries and their ultra-conservative voters again approaching, it wouldn't come as a surprise if Mitt Romney once again starts sounding like Glenn Beck.