Meet Mitt Romney, campaign finance reformer.
On Morning Joe this morning, Romney came out firmly against the Super PAC that’s currently spending more in Iowa on ads running on his behalf than the entire GOP field combined spent in 2008. Romney was responding to Newt Gingrich’s criticism of the Super PAC’s ads that are battering Gingrich in the Hawkeye State. Gingrich has promised to disavow negative campaigning and has called on his supporters to abandon any Super PAC that runs negative ads on his behalf.
Romney, on the other hand, has helped raise money for Restore Our Future, the Super PAC laying into Gingrich. Romney’s defended the right of a former colleague to dump $1 million into ROF.
But now he says the Super PAC — which is staffed by members of his 2008 campaign — is everything that’s wrong with politics today.
“Campaign finance law has made a mockery of our political campaign season,” Romney told the Morning Joe team. “We really ought to let campaigns raise the morney they need and just get rid of these super PACs.”
Romney said the creation of Super PACs — allowed by recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance — is “a disaster.” Obviously Romney’s not the first guy to say the system is broken while letting it work for his campaign. Democrats are strongly opposed to the modern campaign finance system, but they’ve said repeatedly they refuse to unilaterally disarm.
But Romney is using his newfound focus on campaign finance reform to dance around Gingrich’s criticism — he literally said on TV this morning that he can’t criticize ROF’s campaign or he could go to jail thanks to rules that prevent him from coordinating with the Super PAC. (Politico notes Stephen Colbert has proven this is not really true.)
The Gingrich campaign doesn’t seem to be buying it.
“He’s either a lying politician or a piece of sh-t,” Gingrich spokesperson RC Hammond told Jonathan Weisman (the tweet was later taken down.)
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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