MITT SPEAKS. OH NO!BY GAIL COLLINSNEW YORK TIMES
Romney seems obsessed with the idea that his enemies are spreading rumors that he’s going to be devoting his presidential campaign to proposing new programs to help the poor. Really, I do not think this is going to be a problem. … Rest assured that Mitt Romney is not going to be spending a single second fretting about the problems of really, really poor people. His supporters can breathe a sigh of relief. Now all they’re going to have to worry about is the fact that he’s going to keep talking like this for the next nine months.
WHERE ARE THE ROMNEY REPUBLICANS?BY NICHOLAS KRISTOFNEW YORK TIMES
The British Labor Party was marginalized when I lived in Britain in the early 1980s, but Tony Blair transformed it and revived it about 15 years later. And in Oregon over the last decade, Bladine notes, social wedge issues have lost their force, and moderate Republicans have re-emerged. Could the same happen nationally? Sure, it seems impossible at the moment. But if Romney somehow manages to make the Republican Party safe for moderates again, that’ll be a triumph for his party — and for the country.
THE DARKENING TONE OF THE PRIMARIESEDITORIALNEW YORK TIMES
Among the middle Americans that Mr. Romney says he is focused on are 51 million people just above the poverty line, according to the Census Bureau. Many of them fear slipping beneath it, and now they know that will mean disappearing from the concerns of the Republican presidential front-runner. After winning on Tuesday, Mr. Romney said his campaign was “about saving the soul of America.” If this is the direction he plans to take in the coming months, he will first need to save the soul of his campaign.
ROMNEY WON IN FLORIDA BUT LOST OVERALLBY E.J. DIONNEWASHINGTON POST
Exit polls in Florida showed that very conservative Republicans continue to resist the former Massachusetts governor. This will provide a base for an ongoing opposition that can harass Romney, even if it can’t stop him. Gingrich will take joy in being the lead harasser. That Romney is still standing is something of an achievement. Judged by the standards of a political consulting textbook, his campaign executed a strategy in Florida that it had no choice but to pursue. Yet Romney won votes, not affection, a nod rather than an embrace. His is a competent campaign with the soul of a smoothly operating machine. That’s why so many Republicans continue to ask: Is this all there is?
HOW STATES ARE RESTRICTING POLITICAL SPEECHBY GEORGE WILLWASHINGTON POST
Nationally, political hygienists are regretting their inadvertent creations, this year’s super PACs, entities run by supporters of presidential candidates but forbidden to “coordinate” with the candidates. Super PACs are spending money that the reformers, by imposing low limits on contributions to candidates and parties, have diverted away from campaigns that otherwise could be held directly accountable for, and judged in terms of, the speech they finance. We hear, yet again, the reformers’ cry: “There is too much money in politics.” This year, the presidential campaigns combined may spend almost $2 billion, which is almost as much as Americans will, in a few weeks, spend on Easter candy.









