Romney, McCain sling ‘liberal’ barbs

MITT ROMNEY and John McCain accused each other yesterday of harbouring liberal tendencies, a charge bordering on blasphemy in the increasingly caustic campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mr Romney struck first ahead of the winner-takes-all Florida primary, criticising the Arizona senator for his legislation reducing the role of money in politics, for his position on immigration and for his support of an energy bill that he said would have driven up consumer costs.

“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,” Mr 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.”

Mr McCain answered swiftly. He accused the former Massachusetts governor 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 healthcare 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.”

The exchange reflected the stakes in today’s contest, a prelude to a virtual nationwide primary on February 5.