Mitt Romney Suddenly Hearts Bill Clinton

Posted on May 17, 2012

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Mitt Romney, campaigning in Arizona last month, has taken to speaking favorably about former President Bill Clinton on the campaign trail.

When did Mitt Romney start loving Bill Clinton? Since the presumed Republican presidential nominee evidently realized that praising the former Democratic president could earn him the votes of political moderates.

Romney has recently taken to showering Clinton and his “boom-era ’90s policies” with compliments while out on the campaign trail. That’s a far cry from the “any chance I got to vote against Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy, I took” line Romney said during one of the Republican presidential debates. —TEB

Politico:

The tactic is designed to drive a wedge between the group of Democrats who supported Obama during the epic 2008 primary battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton: the white, working-class voters who hold the key to many swing states, like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

It’s also a simple way for Romneyland to poke a stick in the eye of Team Obama, using one of its most prominent surrogates but a man who has had a complicated personal history with Obama.

According to 2008 exit polls, Obama won self-described moderates by 21 points but lost white voters who made less than $50,000 by 4 percentage points. The same group of Bill Clinton Democrats could be Obama’s Achilles’ heel in 2012 as he fights to win them back. Romney is leading among white, working-class men in polls — though the president is leading among women — while POLITICO’s latest battleground poll showed Romney leading by 10 points among independents.

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