Monday, February 04, 2008

MITT ROMNEY

There's Mistakes, And Then There's Pandering To Your Audience

Sometimes a candidate gets a little too much grief for misspeaking. The first time Mitt Romney said he was endorsed by the NRA in his gubernatorial run, he was wrong; the NRA rated him a "B," which is not bad. (His Democratic opponent was an "A," surprisingly. The NRA did not endorse in that race.) Apparently some NRA folk did some phone-banking for him, and Romney mistook that for an endorsement, and I guess I can see how that mistake could be made. The key is to note that he was told of his mistake back in December.

And then, in an interview a few days ago with Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, Romney claimed to be endorsed supported* by the NRA again.

When it happens multiple times, one begins to wonder if Romney just wants to assert the endorsement and hopes that the person he's speaking to doesn't hear the correction.

Glenn comes across to me as a particularly fair-minded interviewer, but after Race42008 demonstrates a couple of different positions in a short span of time — telling Tim Russert he would sign the Assault Weapons Ban, telling Glenn and Helen that he would oppose it — Glenn concludes, "I'm beginning to question his sincerity." 

That expression of doubt is all the more stinging because Glenn isn't a shout-and-pound-the-table kind of guy.

Team Romney's touting of their man's record on guns can be found here.

UPDATE: A couple readers point out that Romney says the NRA "supported" him. Most readers say that while that's a bit more accurate, it is a bit of Clintonian parsing to separate that from an insinuation of an endorsement.

02/04 03:10 PMShare