Re: Pulling a Romney

Sez Joe of Mitt:

Tom Edsall at Huffington Post has the latest on what has been the least honorable campaign of any major candadidate (Tancredo doesn't count, though Mitt received the Tank's fetid endorsement).

And I've got to say, having covered a lot of campaigns, I've seen dirtier (Bush in South Carolina in 2000), angrier and far more extreme, but... I've never seen a candidate who showed such arrant disrespect for the public--and for himself.

Romney would beg to differ! According to the NYT's Caucus blog, Mitt lost it a bit tonight, commenting on the back and forth ads between himself and McCain (not counting the one Mitt's own consultants made):

“I begin the ad by indicating he's an honorable man,” Mr. Romney said. “I believe he is a good person. I make no attacks on his character, no attacks of a personal nature whatsoever. I've just seen the text of his ad. It's obviously of a very differnet nature. It's an attack ad. It attacks me personally. It's nasty. It's mean-spirited. Frankly, it tells you more about Senator McCain than it does about me that he'd run an ad like that.

Later, when a reporter followed up with him, he expanded.

“It's reminiscent of what he did against George W. Bush in 2000, which as you recall, he accused President Bush of twisting the truth like Bill Clinton,” he said. “Again, this is the kind of nasty, personal attack, which really doesn't have a place in this process.”

Yeah, it's McCain that ran the nasty, personal attacks in 2000. Riiiiight....