Well, no one can accuse Mitt Romney of not being transparent.
Romney has apparently stuck his finger up in the wind to see which way vital Tea Party sentiments were going on the debt ceiling limit issue.
For weeks he has had his finger stuck in a much shadier area on this issue.
But now the big battle is over and he needs Tea Party votes so suddenly he is speaking out:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) broke his silence on the congressional debt-ceiling fight on Monday, emerging to say he couldn’t back the final deal announced Sunday.
Romney, who had refused to weigh in during recent weeks on the specifics of various proposals to raise the debt ceiling, said he couldn’t personally back the deal brokered over the weekend between congressional GOP leaders and President Obama.
“While I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican Members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal,” he said in a statement.
Romney joins Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) as another member of the Republican presidential field to oppose the deal, which has been sold by GOP leaders to rank-and-file members as the best achievable plan.
I need to add that I have long been an admirer of Romney. I’m one of those who LIKED his incarnation as a moderate Republican governor. And when I’ve done some of those CNN spots, several techs and drivers have told me that they met Romney and he is a great guy. Plus, I admire his business experience.
But this statement confirms what his critics on the right say about him and his former supporters on the left will say: he goes where the wind blows.
The most consistent thing about Mitt Romney is his hair.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.