McCain-Romney love (slug)-fest: Round Two

by Jill Zuckman

The Republican spat continues.

What began with Mitt Romney jumping on Rudy Giuliani at the Republican debate in Detroit last week quickly expanded this weekend to John McCain taking aim at Mitt Romney for claiming to represent the "Republican wing of the Republican Party" a la Howard Dean and the Democratic Party.

Today, the love-fest showed no signs of abating.

Chuck Douglas, the former New Hampshire Republican congressman serving as McCain's vice chair, derided Romney's claim over the weekend that he made a political contribution 15 years ago to N.H. Democrat Dick Swett out of a personal friendship.

"As a Republican who ran against liberal Democrat Dick Swett, I can assure you that in 1992 Republicans wrote checks to defeat him; and those Republicans weren't voting for Paul Tsongas that year either,'' said Douglas, who lost his seat to Swett in a surprise upset in 1990.

"Mitt Romney actively worked to defeat the Republican candidate trying to reclaim my old congressional seat,'' he said. "Therefore, I'm amazed that Romney would claim to represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party -- because when Romney had a chance to contribute to a New Hampshire Republican, he chose to fund a liberal New Hampshire Democrat instead."

Romney described the contribution as one made out of friendship.

Meanwhile, the Romney campaign criticized McCain for the warm words he offered the Democratic governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, when Lynch showed up at McCain's town hall meeting Sunday in Hopkinton.

"Only John McCain would criticize a fellow Republican one day and then campaign with a Democrat the next. At a town hall meeting yesterday, McCain stood alongside the Democrat Governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, and said 'America needs more of what you've done here in the State of New Hampshire,'" said Romney's N.H. State Director, Jim Merrill. "But New Hampshire Republicans know all too well what Governor Lynch's vision for change has meant for New Hampshire. We need the conservative change in Washington that can only come from Governor Romney."

Not leaving the charge unanswered, McCain's New Hampshire Chairman, Peter Spaulding, dismissed the criticism, noting that McCain was doing nothing more than showing "common courtesy" when the popular Democratic governor showed up at the meeting taking place in his hometown.

"John McCain learned from his political hero Ronald Reagan to extend his hand in friendship to members of the other political party. Obviously Mitt Romney never learned that lesson because he admitted he was never part of the Reagan Revolution, going so far as to reject the Reagan legacy and run to the left of Ted Kennedy," Spaulding said.

"It is beyond the pale that Mitt Romney would attack a fellow Republican for showing common decency and respect for the sitting governor of the state in which he is campaigning. The voters of New Hampshire know there is a difference between working together to meet America's challenges -- as Ronald Reagan showed us -- and changing core positions for political gain as Mitt Romney has clearly done."

We await the next word from the Romney campaign...