Mitt Romney's (not so) big comeback

So the Mitt Romney campaign started the day by deciding that they would move out from under the Bain/tax secrecy shadow by attacking President Obama as a "crony capitalist" and accusing his administration of massive ethical shortcomings. But when TPM's Benjy Sarlin asked the Romney campaign's lead surrogate what if any policies Romney would change ... the surrogate couldn't name a single one.

'I don't think you can do this with one overarching rule,' Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) told TPM on a conference call organized by the Romney campaign. 'It hasn't worked with prior administrations. You really need to elect someone who is committed to weeding it out and not making political bundling the top requirement for a job application.'

And just to be sure, Sarlin gave the Romney campaign a shot at coming up with an answer other than "Mitt Romney will be ethical through sheer force of will":

A spokeswoman for the Romney campaign did not immediately respond to requests for further details on ethics reforms the Republican nominee would implement to keep donors from affecting policy. Romney has not pledged to maintain new standards instituted by Obama, including a restriction on appointing lobbyists to Cabinet positions.

Romneyland's entire line of attack on Obama depends on the notion that Solyndra was a boondoggle for campaign donors, but the big donor they always reference actually wasn't personally invested in Solyndra. His family foundation, from which he did not personally profit, was invested in it, but the process for securing Solyndra's loans began during the Bush administration, which recommended the guarantees in the first place.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has the exact same sort of problem that he accuses President Obama of having:

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has hammered President Obama for his administration's tax-funded investment blunders ' but when Romney was governor, the state handed out $4.5 million in loans to two firms run by his campaign donors that have since defaulted, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.

The two companies ' Acusphere and Spherics Inc. ' stiffed the state on nearly $2.1 million in loans provided through the state's Emerging Technology Fund, a $25 million investment program created while Romney was governor in 2003 that benefitted 13 local firms.

If you asked Romney to defend his own brand of "crony capitalism" I suppose he'd mutter something about the Tenth Amendment and state's rights. But if Mitt Romney is really so jazzed about state's rights, what on earth possessed him to forego his reelection bid and instead seek the presidency? Or is the answer to that question so obvious it didn't really need to be asked?