Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Toughen Up Mitt-ercup


By Michele Malkin
Call the waaaaahmbulance. Mitt Romney is railing against Rick Santorum for robocalls calling attention to his TARP bailout support/auto bailout flip-flop.

Romney is decrying the robocalls aimed at Democrats as “outrageous” and “disgusting” and a “terrible dirty trick.”

Today’s Michigan primary is an open primary.

Inconvenient truth: There’s nothing “dirty” and there’s no “trick” in playing by the rules set by the states. Seventeen states have open primaries. (Think the rules should be changed? Go for it. But not in the middle of the game.) One of those 17 states with open primaries is Massachusetts. And among the many voters who have crossed over to influence the outcome of an open primary is…Mitt Romney.
The Romney campaign has been denouncing Democratic efforts – and now those by Rick Santorum – to get Democrats to vote in Michigan’s open primary.
Mitt Romney himself called it a “new low” in politics in a round of TV interviews.
“President Obama’s reelection team is now actively engaged in changing the outcome of the Republican primary,” declared Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades in an email to the campaign’s list. “This is politics at its worst. It doesn’t get much more pathetic.”
Yet Romney himself gave a similar explanation in his last presidential run for why he crossover voted in in the 1990s in Massachusetts, per this ABC News clip:
ABC News’ Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Republican presidential candididate Mitt Romney offered a new explanation today for why he supported a Democrat in 1992.
That year, Romney, then a registered independent, voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary. He told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in an interview that will air Sunday on “This Week,” that his vote was meant as a tactical maneuver aimed at finding the weakest opponent for incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
“In Massachusetts, if you register as an independent, you can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary,” said Romney, who until he made an unsuccessful run for Senate in 1994 had spent his adult life as a registered independent. “When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I’d vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican.”
Well, this year, there’s a “real contest” in the “Republican primary” and Rick Santorum is fighting for every vote — as any candidate intent on winning should.

Mitt Romney’s longtime argument is that he, not Santorum, is best equipped to appeal to the very Reagan Democrats that Rick Santorum is wooing.

Yet, in the state he considers his “home state” and where he has desperately outspent Santorum by 3-to-1, tonight’s outcome is “too close to call.”

If Romney can’t put away Santorum and can’t handle a run-of-the-mill robocall, how is he going to handle Team Obama’s Chicago goons and the Democrat deacons of truly dirty tricks?

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