Romney's Bargaining Bungle
Mitt Romney has put a lot of work into reversing the perception, prevalent during his 2008 campaign, that his ideological compass only follows the magnetic field of whichever electorate he happens to be trying to win over. But while touring a phonebank on October 25 in Ohio, where Republican volunteers were trying to build support for a ballot initiative that would prevent Governor John Kasich's collective bargaining restrictions from being repealed, the intricate wiring of Romney 2.0's motherboard short-circuited. "I am not speaking about the particular ballot issues," he said, seemingly caught unawares when asked about the cause. "Those are up to the people of Ohio." Conservatives were apoplectic and Romney was forced to make a quick course correction at a campaign appearance in Virginia the next day — "I fully support Gov. Kasich's Question 2 in Ohio," he said of the measure that ultimately failed in November, adding a nonsensical superlative to restate his updated software's immutable convictions: "110 percent."