Spokesman finds 22 different ways to dodge saying what Mitt Romney believes about court ruling

As MSNBC's Martin Bashir put it, instead of refusing to answer questions himself, Romney sent flack Rick Gorka to the back of his plane to refuse to answer questions for him. If you play dodgeball all
the time, eventually you get hit. This is hilarious: the transcript of Mitt Romney spokesman Rick Gorka refusing'22 separate times during the span of seven full minutes'to directly answer questions from reporters about whether or not Romney supports today's Supreme Court ruling on Arizona's immigration law.

There isn't any single line from the transcript that stands out in particular'each answer from Gorka is a rephrased assertion that states have the right to come up with their own immigration policy without saying whether Romney thinks the court ruling is compatible with that right or whether he supports Arizona's approach'but taken on the whole, it's a perfect reflection of Mitt Romney's attitude toward this campaign: He's not running to be elected president; he's running to be the guy who gets to collect if and when President Obama loses. He doesn't want this election to be a choice, and he doesn't want it to be about the direction of the country. He doesn't want it to be about the past nor does he want it to be about the future. He wants it to be an up-or-down vote on the current state of the country.

In theory, it's not a bad strategy, but by being so obnoxiously blunt about pursuing it, Romney is probably undercutting whatever effectiveness it might have. You have to at least pretend to stand for something, and Romney isn't even doing that.