Andy Olmsted, RIP

I'd like to leave something as decent as this behind me when I go

can't win for losing

Mr. Romney, hitherto the candidate with the endorsements from the usual suspects who can pay for the election out of pocket money, is positioning himself as the insurgent candidate of change

Mitt Romney, his back to the wall in New Hampshire, is focusing on his Washington outsider status in an attempt to brush back Sen. John McCain's resurgent campaign here.

...

In consecutive events, Romney has spun the results of the Iowa caucuses as a call for change and said that Washington needs more than just "a gadfly or somebody fighting for this or fighting for that."

Romney has lumped himself in with Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama as outsiders who won in Iowa.

"There were two people running for office who had around in Washington a long, long time - Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain - and both of them were rejected pretty handily by the voters," Romney said Friday evening.

Asked about the new strategy, Romney press secretary Eric Fehrnstrom said "we are focusing like a laser" on the idea that change in Washington won't come from an insider like McCain.

so how's that going for him?

“There’s no way that Sen. McCain is going to be able to come to New Hampshire and say that he’s the candidate that represents change — that he’ll change Washington. He is Washington,” Romney said on the campaign trail Friday.

Shortly afterwards, the McCain camp circulated comments Romney made when he was running for governor of Massachusetts more than five years ago.

“One of the reasons the people of America honor Sen. McCain and why I'm so proud to have him standing with me today is that he has brought American values to the debate on the issues we care about,” Romney said at the time. “He has always stood for reform and change.”

UPDATE: Romney campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said Friday afternoon that "Washington has not changed in the right direction during Senator McCain’s long career there.

"The legislation that McCain most expressly advocated—campaign finance reform and immigration reform—were the wrong approaches on both issues. We need more meaningful change brought about by someone with a proven record of actually turning things around."

Campaign finance reform has been, of course, a signature issue of McCain's since long before 2002 (and, of course, long before 2002 was when most of McCain's 25 years in Washington took place). 2002 was just the year he got a bill pushed through congress and got the president to sign it. I guess Mr. Romney didn't notice - it didn't dominate the news for more than a few weeks, and he'd just announced his run for governor ten days earlier - or he surely would have turned down the endorsement of the popular 'maverick' Senator. It's not like a Republican governor needs independent support to run in MA.

Firing back, the Romney campaign released a quote from McCain calling Romney an honest man and endorsing him as the best candidate for Governor of a high-tax liberal blue state.

So, touché.