Pants on fire: Mitt Romney tells another whopper today

by Jack Brummet, primary and caucus stringer

“I am the only candidate in this race, Republican or Democrat, who has never worked a day in Washington,” Mitt Romney said in a speech today.  “I don’t have old scores to settle or decades of cloakroom deals to defend.”

Mitt has plenty of deals to defend.  Just this week, he said he'd a been a fool not to look for Federal money.  Today, in The Morning Call, Colby Itkowitz writes:  "In a 2003 article in Boston-based Commonwealth Magazine, Romney’s chief of legislative and intergovernmental affairs, Cindy Gillespie, discussed the state’s Washington lobbying office and is quoted saying it “exists for one reason: to increase the amount of federal funding coming back to the state.”

In the same Commonwealth article, Gillespie says Romney’s team in Washington would seek aid from the federal highway bill and new homeland security funds.  Of course, Romney also fought hard for (and won) federal funding for his Big Dig project in Boston.

The bottom line is, Mitt Romney, when he was Governor, often worked in Washington, usually trying to cajole money for Massachusetts from the President and Congress.  The record shows many dozens of trips to Washington by Mittens during his governorship.  He wasn't going there for the parties and nightlife in Georgetown.

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Let the cannibalism begin: The Republican/Tea Party Debate!

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

Images from Wikipedia Commons. These images are licensed

under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Governor Rick Perry, between dashing back and forth between the campaign trail and Texas as fires rage across the state (and asking for aid from President Obama, even though Perry recently said he believes the federal government should only be responsible for highways and defense) is being nudged by both his staff and backers to come across as more presidential.  In short, they feel he needs to be a little less shit-kickin' and a little more politic in his unscripted moments.  He needs to defend his exaggerated Texas "accomplishments,"  and consolidate his sudden rise and growing base—while building on his fast start by bringing voters into the tent from all across the Republican party, from the Tea Party and fundamentalist Christians to the old line party hacks and wardheelers.

 

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is desperate to combat the growing feeling that the GOP race has contracted into a two-man race between Romney and Perry.  She is on the precipice of becoming irrelevant and needs to inflict serious damage to Rick Perry to convince the far-right and tea-party to stick by her.  Her strategy of non-stop attacks on BHO isn't going to win many votes.  She now needs to go after her opponents.  Likewise, both Romney an Perry need to back off their attacks on Obama, because their real enemies are in their own party (at least for now).

Ex-Governor Mitt Romney needs to--and, more or less has--drop the front-runner B.S. and get ready for serious combat with his fellow Republicans.  Neither his rope-a-dope strategy nor his above the fray stance is working anymore.  We know Mitt is in it for the long-distance fight.  But, in the meantime, he needs to eviscerate Governor Perry by savagely attacking him on his record on immigration, and his much exaggerated claim that he has created thousands of jobs in Texas.

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