The Republican contest between liberals

AP/NY Times:

Mitt Romney and John McCain accused each other Monday of harboring liberal tendencies, a charge bordering on blasphemy in the increasingly caustic campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

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''If you ask people, 'Look at the three things Senator McCain has done as a senator,' if you want that kind of a liberal Democrat course as president, then you can vote for him,'' Romney told campaign workers. ''But those three pieces of legislation, those aren't conservative, those aren't Republican, those are not the kind of leadership that we need as we go forward.''

McCain answered swiftly in a statement to The Associated Press. He accused the former Massachusetts senator of ''wholesale deception of voters. On every one of the issues he has attacked us on, Mitt Romney was for it before he was against it.''

He added, ''The truth is, Mitt Romney was a liberal governor of Massachusetts who raised taxes, imposed with Ted Kennedy a big government mandate health care plan that is now a quarter of a billion dollars in the red, and managed his state's economy incompetently, leaving Massachusetts with less job growth than 46 other states.''

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Romney said the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law ''hit the First Amendment'' with its controls over advertising spending.

He labeled last year's failed McCain-Kennedy immigration bill ''the amnesty bill'' because it would have allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the country indefinitely. Romney also said a 2003 McCain-Lieberman energy cap-and-trade bill would have increased energy costs for the average Florida family of four by $1,000.

He also drew chuckles from his audience when he recalled there was talk during the 2004 campaign of McCain teaming up with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, on the opposing party's ticket.

''Had someone asked me that question, there would not have been a nanosecond of thought about it; it would have been an immediate laugh,'' Romney said. ''And, of course, if someone asked him if he would consider me as a running mate, he would have also laughed immediately.''

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Well, if nothing else Florida has shown that these guys know how ti insult each other. I left out the AP paragraph that described McCain Feingold as taking the money out of politics, because it is so laughable that it is surprising that it is used anymore. What the legislation has done is put creative use of George Soros's money in politics where there is less control over what is said. It is a failure at its intended purpose and has given advantages to rich liberals.