Like many people, I've basically been sitting back and enjoying the increasingly nasty back-and-forth between Romney and Giuliani. But I want to take a brief timeout to delve into one particular facet of it: Former Massachusetts GOP chairman Jim Rappaport's recent endorsement of Giuliani (and savaging of Romney). As Byron York reports:
Rappaport praised Giuliani's record in New York and said Romney "has a strong record of showmanship as opposed to actual performance." Discussing Romney's relationship with the Massachusetts state legislature, Rappaport said of the former governor, "His word is no good…Mitt Romney would say one thing in a meeting and literally go out of the meeting to the press and tell the opposite story. There was no desire in the legislature to be accommodating to him because they couldn't trust him." Romney, Rappaport continued, "will be clear today on what he believes today, and he'll be clear tomorrow on what he believes tomorrow, but they may be different things."
All of which may be true. But Rappaport has a particularly personal reason to be down on Romney: In 2002, when Romney was running for governor, Rappaport was running for Lieutenant Governor, and Romney sank Rappaport's campaign by making it known that he preferred Kerry Healey for the LG job. Now maybe Rappaport really does like Rudy for Rudy. But something tells me that this is also a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
--Jason Zengerle