Mitt Romney is Defeating Mitt Romney in the Republican Race for the Nomination

Is Mitt Romney on Mitt Romney’s Side or Newt Gingrich’s Side?

If the polls are correct, Republican primary voters have decided that they cannot get the perfect Conservative candidate, and that if they want someone other than Mitt Romney they will have to settle for New Gingrich (that is some settling).  Mr. Romney is fighting back, but it appears that he must first defeat Mitt Romney before he can take on Mr. Gingrich.

Case in point is Mr. Romney’s interview with the Washington Post in which he accuses Mr. Gingrich of not being a Conservative.

Defending himself against charges that his own conservative credentials are suspect, the former Massachusetts governor turned the question in Gingrich’s direction and said that it is the former speaker who has strayed repeatedly from embracing conservative doctrine in recent years.

“He has been an extraordinarily unreliable leader in the conservative world—not 16 or 17 years ago but in the last two to three years,” Romney said. “And even during the campaign, the number of times he has moved from one spot to another has been remarkable. I think he’s shown a level of unreliability as a conservative leader today.”

Now there is nothing wrong with this on the surface, although Mr. Romney did have to backtrack some in the interview.

But Romney also acknowledged that he hasn’t always been in step with conservatives and said that he was “wrong” not to sign Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America when he was running for a Senate seat in Massachusetts.

So there is that problem.  But the real problem is that at the exact same time Mr. Romney is attacking Mr. Gingrich on not being a reliable Conservative, a video surfaces that has Mr. Romney openly avowing that he is not even a partisan Republican.

Amateur opposition researcher Alex Kaczynski unearthed a 2002 video which shows Mitt Romney explaining that he's not a "partisan Republican" and that his "views are progressive."

See at that time in 2002 Mr. Romney was going after Democratic and Independent voters in his campaign to win the Governorship of Massachusetts, and he needed Democratic and Independent voters.  But now he needs Republican voters.  Unfortunately, Mr. Romney has never learned that history has a memory, particularly in the age of video recordings. 

It is now becoming more and more difficult to see how Mr. Romney can prevail, because he is having to run against both Newt Gingrich and Former Mitt Romney.  And while Mr. Romney, like everyone else, is more than capable of besting Mr. Gingrich, he may not be capable of besting Former Mitt Romney, his biggest opponent in his attempt to win the Republican nomination.