Yes, it’s true. Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 opposition research file on former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney has now been posted online. Every page of it HERE.
The immediate reaction is to suggest this is bad news for Romney. Actually it’s good news for Romney: if his advisers are smart (and the jury is still out on that) they will go through every line and sentence of it and prepare counter arguments and even overprepare. I’m sure there is some overlap with this and Obama & Co’s file on Romney.
But this file will not make conservatives feel much better about their party’s now-all-but-certain nominee. Indeed, the file confirms much of the case Gingrich is making about Romney being either a moderate now or an unconvincingly converted moderate. There are those of us who liked the older Republican moderate version of Romney who is so vilified by conservatives and, in effect, by Romney 3.0 himself.
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.