Noughties' Truth

Outsourcing to Greg Sargent for the best links of the day.

The one story I can’t go to sleep without mentioning is also excellently summarized by Sargent at The Plum Line.  Mitt Romney is now fully backing the (esteemed?) Paul Ryan’s (Cut) Medicare Plan.

Sargent:

After previously hedging on the Ryan plan, Romney is now fully declaring his support for it, as a way to wound the surging Newt Gingrich among conservative voters. Newt, you’ll recall, famously referred to the Ryan plan as “right wing social engineering,” and Romney, in a post on his Web site, has revived this Newt quote, and issuggesting he’d sign it into law as president, in order to portray himself as the only true conservative in the race.

“With friends like Newt, who needs the left?” the Romney Web site now blares.

The reason this matters: It will give Dems a weapon in the general election against Romney. “In order to make this attack, Mitt Romney has now given himself ownership of the Ryan plan,” Jed Lewison writes. “Let me say that again: Mitt Romney is now one hundred percent committed to Paul Ryan’s proposal to end Medicare and replace it with vouchers.”

Steve Benen added: “This is the line Democrats have waited eight months for Romney to take.”

Even though health-care is a serious issue, one can only laugh at Romney’s feigned amnesia about his own past positions on the issue–on full display here in his recently aired (and immediately yanked) ad attacking Newt.

And, even though he is trying to make the opposite point, Rick Perry is right to point out that the individual mandate was originally a Republican concept. His latest Bush impersonations  campaign ads are funny  depressing when you realize that this stuff is coming from a man who could potentially be our next President.

Maybe its best to just laugh this guy off, and out of the race.

Is it just me or does Perry look like a pitch-man for an erectile disfunction medication? It does appear that he is the only GOP candidate without the problem of flip-flopping!