PDF Questionable statements:
Mitt Romney's negative attack machine is back on full throttle. This time Romney's firing his mud at Rick Santorum.
The Republican presidential primary is one wild and crazy ride, thanks to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that allows corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to funnel unlimited amounts to so-called super PACs. They are only nominally separated from campaigns they back.
Unable to match Mitt Romney with money, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum fires back with humor and satire in a TV spot called "Rombo." It features a Romney look-alike charging around a warehouse with an assault rifle, firing splotches of mud at a cardboard cutout of Santorum. The final visual shows the gun backfiring and covering 'Romney' with mud.
The Romney super PAC Restore Our Future had raised $30 million by the end of January, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan political research group. It has left big footprints, helping to bury Newt Gingrich in a barrage of negative ads in Florida. It may now seek to do the same to Santorum in Michigan.
Restore Our Future has received at least 10 separate $1 million donations, including one from Edward Conard, former top investor at Bain Capital, the financial firm Romney founded. Its donor list is laden with givers from investment banking, hedge funds and private equity.
Santorum has a super PAC-funding sugar daddy of his own, billionaire Foster Freiss, primary bankroller of the Red White and Blue Fund. Freiss stood on stage just behind Santorum as he made his victory speech after the Missouri primary.
Romney and his super PAC have spent a staggering $20 million brutally attacking fellow Republicans.
Indeed, the Citizens United decision has sanctioned what looks to be an unparalleled mud bath for the 2012 election. The Campaign Media Analysis Group, a New York-based research firm, found that 92 percent of TV ads in the Florida primary were negative. A report by the Washington Post said that Romney and his affiliated super PAC spent more than $15 million in Florida alone, dwarfing $3.3 million spent for Gingrich.
Romney's trying to hide from his big government Romneycare
Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts has been one of his biggest drawbacks for conservative Republicans, particularly his key role in the 2006 enactment of a health insurance plan that mandates nearly every resident of the state obtain health insurance. It was in many ways a blueprint for the health care reform act signed into law by Obama in 2010.
Romney defends the Massachusetts plan as that of one state and vows to repeal "Obamacare." As fast as he runs from health-care reform, it has raised coverage among non-elderly adults in Massachusetts from 87 percent to 95 percent. An analysis by the Harvard School of Public Health found that 63 percent of state residents support the reform.
... and his support for job killing cap-and-trade.
Romney has stood on different sides of cap-and-trade, a strategy to combat global warming by allowing government to set limits on carbon dioxide and other emissions. Corporations are then free to buy or sell permits to emit these gases. As governor, Romney explored formation of a compact among northeastern states to cut carbon emissions from power plants. He then walked away from the compact, citing a lack of economic safeguards.
Romney now says he opposes unilateral cap-and-trade and that he is uncertain about global warming. "I do not support radical feel-good politics like a unilateral U.S. cap-and-trade mandate," he wrote in his 2011 autobiography, "No Apologies."
A 2011 study by the Analysis Group, a Boston-based consulting firm, concluded that a 10-state northeastern emissions compact created 16,000 jobs and led to economic growth.
Conservative groups and think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation maintain that national cap-and-trade legislation will stunt economic growth and kill jobs.
Overall impression
Santorum scores by spoofing what has become a Romney trademark: The negative ad. If nothing else, the spot is a change-of-pace from the dreary attack fare that is saturating the airways.
Foul or no foul:
Technical foul. Ad misstates Romney's position on cap-and-trade and asserts, without evidence, that the strategy is "job killing."
