In the course of our fun little "Dems for Mitt" game, many were just shocked, shocked that we'd engage in such political knavery, such positively Nixonian dirty tricks!
So I just want to take this opportunity to point out that we didn't start this fire, that we learned this tactic, in fact, from the particular object of our Michigan affection...the Mittster himself!
Seems that Romney himself, then an independent disavowing the Reagan-Bush legacy (remember that Mitt Romney?) "crossed over" in 1992, to vote for Paul Tsongas:
ABC News' Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Republican presidential candididate Mitt Romney offered a new explanation today for why he supported a Democrat in 1992.
That year, Romney, then a registered independent, voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary. He told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, in an interview that will air Sunday on "This Week," that his vote was meant as a tactical maneuver aimed at finding the weakest opponent for incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
Not quite the same as our goals (chaos and hilarity), but close enough, I think.
At least, that's what he says now...
But 12 years ago, the Boston Globe reported that Romney was giving a different explanation for his vote for Tsongas.
You don't say.
"Romney confirmed he voted for former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas in the state's 1992 Democratic presidential primary, saying he did so both because Tsongas was from Massachusetts and because he favored his ideas over those of Bill Clinton," the Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh and Frank Phillips wrote on Feb. 3, 1994.
Frankly, that might be true. It's hard to keep track of what is true (and when it was true) in the ever-mutable environment of Willard World.
So to those of our counterparts, particularly on the right, who decry the employment of strategic votes for political (gasp!) reasons...
I humbly submit that this is a tactic we learned precisely from that perfectly coiffed political amoeba they saw so fit to bestow upon us...Mitt himself.
To quote a writer I like:
The villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.
-The Merchant of Venice, 3.1.60-61