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An about-face on Mitt Romney

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Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Moral Majority, made a splash last November when he endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Now he’s part of an organized campaign urging the man who bested Romney in the Republican primaries and caucuses, John McCain, to not make the former Massachusetts governor his running mate.

There was no love lost -- at all -- between the McCain and Romney forces in the final stages of the GOP contest. But Romney earned some goodwill from his rival when he quickly folded up his campaign after getting waxed in Feb. 5’s Super Tuesday round of votes. And warm words the two have exchanged -- as well as a joint appearance last month -- sparked speculation that they could end up as this election season’s Republican tag team.

McCain was campaigning in Prescott, Ariz., on Saturday, where a full-page ad planned in the local newspaper declared Romney “utterly unacceptable” as a vice presidential pick to those who signed the open letter -- social conservatives all, including Weyrich.

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The ad, which those paying for it say will shadow McCain in papers in various towns in visits to come, expresses skepticism about candidate Romney’s sincerity in embracing a host of conservative positions on social issues that previously he had rejected.

Says the ad:

“To be clear, we all welcome anyone who has come around to the cause of life and family. However, Romney’s actions as governor flatly contradict both the values widely associated with his faith as well as his pro-life and pro-traditional marriage campaign rhetoric.”

Roundball goes political

Two of the remaining three candidates in the presidential race gained a fair amount of press two weeks ago when they made a point of disclosing their picks in the NCAA college basketball tournament.

(Hillary Rodham Clinton did not fill out a bracket sheet -- at least not for public consumption.)

So, now that the Final Four weekend is upon us, how did Barack Obama and McCain fare? Neither foresaw that each of the No. 1 seeds would advance -- and neither picked the teams that will square off in the championship game Monday -- but both picked three of the top dogs to survive. And that includes their mutual selection to win it all: the University of North Carolina, which lost Saturday night to Kansas.

Along with UNC, Obama tabbed UCLA to square off in the championship game. But the Bruins lost Saturday, and it is Memphis who will advance to the final.

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McCain chose UNC to play the ultimate game against a No. 4 seed that failed to make it to the final round, the University of Connecticut. (Perhaps his thinking was influenced by Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who has broken with his Democratic roots to actively promote the presumed Republican presidential nominee.)

The one pick by Obama that got left in the dust also was a No. 4 seed, the University of Pittsburgh. (Perhaps, in this case, he had an eye on how his choices would play in Pennsylvania as its April 22 primary approaches.)

A big Pig Book

The nonpartisan taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste is out with its newest Pig Book, an overwhelming detailing of all 11,610 pork barrel projects inserted in the current fiscal year’s appropriations bills by individual members of Congress.

These semi-secret spending measures cost taxpayers an extra $17.2 billion this fiscal year alone.

This is the first year legislators have had to attach their names to these measures.

That’s B for billion dollar$. In extra spending. That typically didn’t go through the usual legislative committee screening. A huge increase over the previous year.

And guess which one of the surviving presidential candidates likes pork the most? And the least?

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According to the Pig Book (“The Book Washington Does Not Want You to Read”), New York’s Clinton is our new grand national oinker among presidential contenders for most pork barrel spending. She inserted a whopping 281 individual spending projects into bills for the benefit of New York interests at the cost of taxpayers everywhere.

That totals $296.2 million.

The new national hero, on the other hand, for not inserting one penny of pork barrel spending is Arizona’s McCain.

As a longtime staunch opponent of such earmarks, McCain may be expected to raise the subject of such special spending if Clinton becomes his Democratic opponent in the fall.

He may also bring it up if his opponent is Obama, who may be a freshman Illinois senator but still isn’t shy about inserting special earmarks into legislation cataloged by the taxpayer group’s annual report.

He accounted for 53 special earmarks, totaling almost $97.4 million.

Natural-born presidents

The U.S. Constitution stipulates that “No person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of president.”

So, is McCain eligible?

The question arises because McCain was born into a U.S. Navy family on duty in the Panama Canal Zone, which seems kinda foreign to some folks, although it was under American control in 1936, when McCain emerged.

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Well, this just in from Washington and the mouth of the Cabinet secretary charged with enforcing federal immigration laws.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was responding to a question from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) about McCain’s citizenship status.

“We’ve had some question on this committee to have a special law passed,” said Leahy, who actually supports Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), “declaring that Sen. McCain was born in the Panama Canal, that he meets the constitutional requirement to be president.

“I fully believe he does,” Leahy continued.

“I’ve never had any question in my mind that he meets our constitutional requirement.

“You’re a former federal judge,” he said to Chertoff. “You’re the head of the agency that executes federal immigration law. Do you have any doubt in your mind? I have none in mine.

“Do you have any doubt in your mind that he’s constitutionally eligible to become president?”

Chertoff kept his answer brief.

“My assumption and my understanding,” he said, “is that if you were born of American parents, you are a natural-born American citizen.”

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Case closed, it seems.

Clinton the fighter

In Philadelphia last week, Clinton offered herself as a political version of Rocky Balboa -- a beleaguered underdog fighting to hold her own against the advantages enjoyed by Obama (an analogy that overlooked Clinton’s consistent, though shrinking, lead in Pennsylvania polls).

Then she flew west for a fundraiser in Beverly Hills and compared herself to a different hero -- this one a real-life figure of Revolutionary War vintage.

Asked during a brief Burbank tarmac news conference about more bad news concerning the U.S. economy, Clinton asserted that she, much more than any other presidential contender, has been sounding the clarion call for aggressive action on this front.

She has felt, she said, at times like “Paulette Revere,” warning, “The recession is coming, the recession is coming.”

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Excerpted from The Times’ political blog, Top of the Ticket, at www.latimes.com/

topoftheticket.

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