Why Romney's Panicked Campaign May Pander Even Harder to the Far Right

How far can right-wingers influence Romney on foreign policy, one of the campaign’s blank slates?

  August 14, 2012

Mitt Romney, a corporate takeover executive in the private sector, is now in full political makeover mode as he campaigns for president, starting with his attention-deflecting choice of radical U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Washington insiders recognize the symptoms of a panicked campaign and see that the attempted makeover is not complete—and won’t be until the Republican National Convention adjourns and the fall campaign begins. And so we are seeing seemingly bizarre musings from known GOP ideologues trying to fill in Romney’s blank pages.

The latest example from this not quite stage-managed spectacle is the emergence of Grover Norquist, the GOP’s longtime anti-tax crusader, now saying the Romney-Ryan pronouncement that the Pentagon budget must be protected from Democrats’ cuts is wrong, because, like anything big in government, there’s excessive spending, waste and fraud to be cut—even in the military.

Does this make Norquist a peacenik? No way.  READ MORE