The Trib Goes With Mitt

I guess they've made their decision.  In two separate places on today's Op-Ed page, Scaife's braintrust supports Mitt Romney.

Romney gets the final word in the Thursday Wrap:

Or as Mitt Romney likes to put it: "Once we thought 'entitlement' meant that Americans were entitled to the privilege of trying to succeed in the greatest country in the world. But today the new entitlement battle is over the size of the check you get from Washington." Sigh.

And he gets his own Op-Ed:

Rick Santorum got all bristled-up that Newt Gingrich would even suggest that he drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Then came Tuesday's Florida primary and Messrs. Santorum and Gingrich were spanked -- sharply and thoroughly -- by Mitt Romney.

Turgid to form, Gingrich has vowed to carry the nomination fight to the GOP convention floor in Tampa this summer.

Oh, goody -- a vainglorious bowlful of jelly plans to tour the country in promotion of Suicide by Newt.

It's time for Newt to take his own advice and drag Little Ricky with him -- get out of the race.

Hey, they called him "Little Ricky"!  That's something I've been doing for years.  Good to know.  Anyway the op-ed ends unambiguously with this:

The time is now for the Republican Party to coalesce around Mitt Romney and get on with the business of exposing and defeating Barack Obama.

But what will they do with this from that other Scaife-owned conservative "news" source, Newsmax?

In a piece titled "Romney Record Is ‘Flexible’ on Global Warming" Deroy Murdock, Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution (another huge beneficiary of Scaife Foundation money, by the way) lays out some Romney climate flip-flops:

A recently exposed, online dossier believed by some to be from the 2008 John McCain campaign, offers 200 pages of Romney's self-contradictions, vacillations and head scratchers. His views on so-called global warming are just the tip of this nonmelting iceberg of confusion.

The dossier includes Ryan Sager's New York Sun story of April 20, 2007, in which Romney embraces a 1940s fuel source. "Liquefied coal, gosh," Romney said. "Hitler during the Second World War — I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil — liquefied coal. That technology is still there."

Less bizarre were Romney's 2003 comments to religious leaders. According to the Los Angeles Times on March 25, 2007, Romney said he was "terrified" about "warming" and found it "quite alarming."

In July 2003, Romney wrote then-Gov. George Elmer Pataki of New York, from one RINO (Republican in name only) to another. "Now is the time to take action toward climate protection," Romney declared. He advocated a "regional cap-and-trade system" for New York and Massachusetts.

In 2004, Romney launched the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, "a coordinated statewide response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate," as his office described it.

In a press release dated Dec. 7, 2005, Romney announced that "strict state limitations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants" would take effect Jan. 1, 2006.

Boggles the mind.