N2K Presidential: The Way to Whine

A victorious campaign in the now-crucial Wolverine State seems unlikely to include a projection of weakness. But there were Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, dueling on Wednesday in Michigan about who’s been more victimized.

Santorum’s new ad, “Rombo,” features an ersatz Romney bursting into an empty warehouse and firing mud through a machine gun at a smiling, nearly cherubic cardboard Santorum cutout. “Romney’s negative attack machine is back, at full-throttle,” intones the narrator.

In interviews, Romney has in turn made the case that Santorum went negative first, in South Carolina, a way of claiming justifiable provocation. Senior Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom tweeted, “Hypocrisy alert! Despite Santorum's whining, he's run negative ads against Romney. Romney hasn't run any negative on Santorum.”

Maybe not, but Romney and the super PAC supporting him are throwing down with at least an aggregate $5 million in TV ads over the next two weeks, including, between the two entities, more than $1.8 million in Michigan alone, Hotline’s Reid Wilson reports.

It’s unlikely those spots will extol the virtues of the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

—Jim O’Sullivan

Source: National Journal