Mitt Romney's campaign is responding to this video of himself in 2002 saying "I am not a partisan Republican" and "my views are progressive" ...
Mitt Romney said he was 'progressive' as a gubernatorial candidate.
... by
blaming Democrats:
The very last thing the Democrats want to do is run against Mitt Romney. That is why they are focused on his campaign and not on the economy. The Democrats are continuing their campaign of deception in their strategy to ‘kill Romney.’ If anyone has a question of how Mitt Romney will govern as president, take a look at his record of creating jobs, cutting spending, and protecting the sanctity of life and traditional marriage. That was his record as Governor and that will be his record as president.
Of course, nothing in that statement explains why Mitt Romney declared himself to be a "progressive" and I'll bet you $10,000 that it won't convince a single conservative Republican to vote for Mitt Romney. This isn't some slice-and-dice O'Keefe editing job ... this is Mitt Romney in Mitt Romney's own words.
Pointing the finger at Democrats would be absurd even if they had uncovered the clip, but it was posted on YouTube by Andy Kaczynski, a 22-year-old college student whose hobby is finding old video clips of today's politicians. He's says he's a Republican, and he's found plenty of stuff critical of Romney's opponents in both the Republican and Democratic parties, so he's certainly not picking on Romney. Moreover, the first big media outlet to feature the clip was Fox News through it's foxnation.com website.
But the key point is that blaming Democrats doesn't come close to explaining how Mitt Romney could go from calling himself a progressive to calling himself a conservative in the space of just 27 months.
Romney can't plausibly square those two statements without admitting he was lying in at least one of them. And because it's so damn near impossible for him to explain the quote, you can damn well be sure that during Thursday's debate his Republican rivals are going to give him every opportunity to try. In fact, I'll bet they'd be happy to give him the full 90 minutes to try to explain himself, because there's really no way he can.
11:16 AM PT: Dave Weigel unearths a Romney quote from November 10, 2002 in which he again refers to himself as a progressive. This time, however, Romney explicitly modifies progressive to mean "progressive-on-social-issues," suggesting at least the possibility that when Romney called himself a progressive he was referring to himself being pro-choice and a supporter of gay rights. Romney's point was that a governor like himself might not do well in a future national campaign because of his positions on social issues, which makes his flip-flops all the more dramatic. And don't forget that just over two years later, he was calling himself a conservative. It was a remarkable transformation indeed.
11:23 AM PT: And Greg Sargent finds a 1994 pledge by Romney to seek "full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens."