Rick Perry goes there.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Perry used Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan to tie him to the White House. It’s a familiar attack on Romney, but Perry’s language was unusually tough. “We don’t need to nominate Obama-Lite,” he said. “We don’t need to nominate someone who is going to blur the lines between President Obama and our nominee.”
A Perry spokesman, Ray Sullivan, employed similar rhetoric on Wednesday in his response to a Romney press release on Perry’s past support for transferring Social Security to individual states.
“Now Mr. Romney is again sounding like a Democrat, distorting the truth and trying to scare senior citizens,” Sullivan said. “As he has so many times in the past, Mr. Romney seems to forget he’s a Republican.”
While Romney's and the president's policy on healthcare may be similar, their views on business and the economy couldn't be farther apart.
For the purposes of campaigning though, that doesn't matter. Now that Perry has levied this charge of being "Obama-Lite," Romney will have to jump through a series of hoops to prove that he is sufficiently crazy and he will probably look worse after doing so. And I have no doubt the serious media will latch onto Perry's remarks and studiously question Mitt Romney "Are you Obama-Lite?"
For what it's worth, I actually agree with Perry when he says "We don’t need to nominate someone who is going to blur the lines between President Obama and our nominee.” I think they should elect the most batshit candidate possible so that there is a very clear distinction between the two come election day. Fortunately, the Republicans appear to be on track to do just that.