The American Spectator

Romney is continuing with his Mr. Outsider theme. That in and of itself should work fine and allow him to boast about his business skills. However, he is still hung up on the lobbyist issue which strikes me as irrelevant (Republicans don’t believe the country is at the mercy of powerful lobbying interests or if they do they think their interests are nicely represented) and distracting. He had this interchange with Chris Wallace this morning:

“WALLACE: Governor, you got into a dust-up with a reporter this week over your comments that you don’t have lobbyists running your campaign and, as you just suggested, that you would change Washington. Here’s what you’ve been saying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROMNEY: I intend to deal with the fact that Washington is broken and that is by cutting through the partisanship, and the bickering, and the score settling, and all the politicians with all their connections with all the lobbyists that have been there for years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: But, Governor, Ron Kaufman, who’s a D.C. lobbyist, is one of your advisers. Another lobbyist, Vin Weber, is chairman of your policy committee. And lobbyists have reportedly donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to your campaign. So, Governor, don’t you have close links to this very same Washington establishment that you say you’re going to shake up?
ROMNEY: There’s no question in a campaign of 200 staff and probably 100 advisers that you’re going to have a number who are registered lobbyists. I have a former senator, for instance, who’s a registered lobbyist. But my campaign is run by my team from Massachusetts and some other folks that we brought in. And this is very definitely an outsider’s campaign, let me tell you. It’s not inside the Beltway. And my life has not been spent inside the Beltway.”

Romney of course has many lobbyists working for him and many bundlers who are lobbyists. So rather than make this the issue he would do better to focus on what he can bring to Washington, which are some business and management skills.