He loves him. He loves him not.

A couple of weeks ago, in a transparent effort to shore up his position with the GOP base against the Huckabee threat, Mitt Romney embraced George W. Bush in a way that the Republican presidential candidates had been unwilling to do previously.

Speaking to an audience in Iowa, Romney defended Bush against some mild criticism that Huckabee had leveled against the president's conduct of foreign policy.

Despite attempts to distance himself from the President in the past, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has now become one of Bush’s biggest defenders:

I support our troops, and I support what our troops are doing. I also support our president. I believe that the president has acted in good faith and out of a desire to protect this country to do everything in his power to keep America safe. […]

The president is a person who is deeply devoted to this country and doing what’s right for this country, and protecting American lives.

Of course, that was then. And we are talking about Mitt Romney, remember.

Alas, the love has gone cold.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said on Tuesday the Bush administration mismanaged the Iraq war, distancing himself from his party's unpopular president two days before Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential contest.

"I think we did a less than effective job in managing the conflict following the collapse of Saddam Hussein," the former Massachusetts governor said at a news conference. "I think we were under prepared for what occurred, understaffed, under planned, and, in some respects, under managed."

Yeah, I can see why establishment Republicans are so smitten with this guy.


I can't think of anybody better to lead our country than a man with no core convictions about anything at all.