Romney Wagers $10,000 On Me (Sorta)

Well, lotsa stuff happened in tonight's GOP Presidential debate, but only one involved my reporting and a $10,000 wager, so obviously that's what I care about.

Many months ago, I reported that Mitt Romney had made some changes to his book No Apology when it came out in paperback -- and that the changes appeared to be politically motivated. See here and here.

When Rick Perry entered the race, he picked up on that and used it against Romney in early debates. He specifically accused Romney of removing a sentence which advocated using the Massachusetts health care plan as a model for a national, federally adopted plan.

In fact, the particular sentence in question could as easily be read as advocating that other states across the country use the Massachusetts plan as a model. So Perry is arguably wrong in his claim. But the claim is still a political win, because even in proving Perry wrong, Romney must draw attention to A) the fact that he implemented a health care system very similar to ObamaCare, and B) he made changes to his own book.

Perry went back to that ploy tonight, and Romney fired back that Perry was wrong, and Perry said he was right, and Romney said Wanna bet $10,000 on it, and stuck out his hand as though to shake on it, and said again about betting $10,000 on it.

So, yeah. As the hip kids say: So, that happened.

I'll have more to say about this at some point, but for now I'm just enjoying it.

BTW, according to my notes the intro piece that ABC ran at the start of the debate declared that "the stakes have never been higher." So true!!!