Romney offers Democrats McCain playbook

AP - It always sounded innocuous enough, tucked into the adjectives Mitt Romney would rattle off when he described the qualities for the next president.

Wisdom, optimism and the right temperament, said the former Republican presidential candidate.

There was no doubt whom Romney was referring to — rival and likely GOP nominee John McCain, whose short-fuse temper is widely known, especially among his Senate colleagues.

The dig that McCain lacks the comportment to be commander in chief was part of the playbook that Romney used in his unsuccessful bid to secure the Republican nomination. Now it provides a piece of the playbook for either Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama in a general election campaign against the four-term Arizona senator.

Among the weaknesses that Romney criticized:

_McCain's admission that he was better versed in foreign affairs and military matters than economic issues.

_McCain's flip-flops both philosophically and on specific issues.

_McCain's alignment with Democrats on taxes, illegal immigration, campaign finance and environmental issues.

Romney stopped short of labeling McCain a liberal, but he said McCain's history of agreements with Democrats would leave voters little more than intangibles with which to distinguish between the Democratic and Republican nominees.

While he never defined those intangibles, Romney suggested McCain would be a liability in a race in which the 71-year-old would be trying to become the oldest person ever elected president, while Clinton was trying to become the first female president and Obama, the first black...........