Nobody Loves Mitt Romney
Hillary and Obama’s slugfest has been capturing the headlines, but the invective aimed at Mitt Romney by his competitors has been equally vicious.
With so much attention recently on the sniping between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, the almost visceral scorn directed at Mr. Romney by his rivals has been overshadowed.
“Never get into a wrestling match with a pig,” Senator John McCain said in New Hampshire this month after reporters asked him about Mr. Romney. “You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
Mike Huckabee’s pugilistic campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, appeared to stop just short of threatening Mr. Romney with physical violence at one point. “What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process,” Mr. Rollins said.
Yikes. One wonders what the oh-so-Christian Mike Huckabee thinks of his campaign manager’s violent tendencies. And there’s also the question of why Romney inspires such visceral dislike.
I think Ramesh Ponnuru probably has it right:
[Maybe they] resent it when he attacks them for being to the left of positions he has very recently adopted.
I don’t doubt that’s true. Of course, even with Romney’s new-found conservatism, it’s hard to see where either McCain or Huckabee have any real standing from which to attack him from the right given that none of the three are paragons of conservative virtue.
