Facing off in last night's debate just days before Florida's make-or-break primary, the assembled Republican White House hopefuls were, so to speak, untrue to form. While Mitt Romney performed new backflips to extricate himself from the flip-flops that define so him, John McCain tried to evade his past confessions of his ignorance of economics. And once again, Mike Huckabee pretended to disavow the theocratic agenda obviously central to his campaign.
Mitt Romney's latest rhetorical contortion came in response to a devastating New York Times story about the GOP field's shared disdain for him. Asked by NBC co-moderator Brian Williams if his opponents' disregard was fueled by his money, his attacks ads and his tendency to "changes positions with the wind" on social issues like abortion, Romney was more than a little disingenuous in response:

"And when people come after me and say, where do you stand on this or where do you stand on that, I can point to a very simple way to find out exactly where I stand, and that is look at my record as governor.
Every issue that we're talking about in this race that's of a domestic nature, I dealt with as the governor of Massachusetts. And so on the issue of abortion, for instance, I came down on the side of life consistently as governor in every way I knew how I could do that."

As it turns out, not so much. Romney's abortion flip-flop, of course, is the stuff of legend. But one statement he made during his 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign is particularly telling:

"I promised that if elected, I'd call a truce - a moratorium, if you will...I vowed to veto any legislation that sought to change the existing rules...I fully respect and will fully protect a woman's right to choose."

When his close adviser Michael Murphy in 2005 famously said of Romney, "he's been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly," the Massachusetts Governor again took a position at odds with anti-abortion forces:

''While I've said time and again that I oppose abortion, I've also indicated that I would not change in any way the abortion laws of Massachusetts, and I've honored my promises."

Meanwhile, John McCain struggled last night with statements of much more recent vintage. Given the dark economic storm clouds on the horizon, co-moderator Tim Russert asked Mr. Straight Talk about his 2005 quote, " I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated." In addition to citing a litany of supply-side charlatans including Phil Gramm and Jack Kemp purportedly advising him, McCain replied:

"Actually, I don't know where you got that quote from. I'm very well versed in economics."

Sadly, Russert got that quote from the bible of conservative economics, the Wall Street Journal. Worse still, McCain tooks pain to restate his glaring weakness on economics to the Wall Street Journal editorial board just last week. As the Huffington Post recounted:

At a recent meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Republican presidential candidate John McCain admitted he "doesn't really understand economics" and then pointed to his adviser and former Senate colleague, Phil Gramm - whom he had brought with him to the meeting - as the expert he turns to on the subject.

Not to be outdone by the dissembling of the two leaders in Sunshine State polls, Mike Huckabee once again provided false assurances that as President he would have no desire to impose his religious views upon Americans. Told by Brian Williams that a Bush White House official confided that Huckabee's faith-based campaign gave him a "queasy feeling," Huckabee denied any theocratic intentions:

"My faith grounds me, it gives me a sense of direction and purpose. I don't try to impose it on other people. And I certainly would never use the auspices of government to try to push my faith."

But as I detailed just 10 days ago, that is exactly what Mike Huckabee has in mind. In the run-up to the Michigan primary, Huckabee declared his personal crusade to amend the Constitution by copying and pasting from the Bible:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And thats what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."

And so it goes. The Republicans fibbed in Florida on exactly the issues where you'd expect them to prevaricate. Mitt Romney lied gymnastically to avoid his obvious reversal on abortion. John McCain played dumb about being dumb when it came to the economy. And the extremist Mike Huckabee tried to portray himself as something other than the religious zealot he is. As for the other candidates, Rudy Giuliani was true to form as well, seemingly on a glide path to join Ron Paul in lonely irrelevance.