Mitt Romney, who is the GOP insiders' favorite to win the GOP nomination in 2012, went on Greta Van Susteren's show the other night to talk about how much better a job he would be doing than President Obama. But Greta also brought up the, um, *delicate* subject of the Tea Parties.

Of course, we're now becoming accustomed to the Romney flip and flop maneuver. He had it on display here.

First, he was for the Tea Parties ...

Romney: I think it shows a great deal of energy and passion on the part of the American people to say stop, we're going the wrong way, enough already, let's get things right in America. And America is headed in the wrong direction -- this growing government, the increase in taxes, the more intrusivesness of government has made a lot of people very angry, and they want to see change in Washington. They want to see the Washington politicians that have been voting for this kind of intrusive government thrown out of office. And I think it's a good thing. I think Washington politicians need to understand, there's a lot of focus and energy around what's happening, and people aren't going to take it a lot longer.

Afore he was agin' 'em ...

Romney: Well, if there were a third party, and a real intent to create a strong third party, that would obviously be very damaging to the party it drew the most votes from, and if it were a Tea Party party, why, that would certainly be from conservative Republicans. I don't think that's going to happen. I think people recognize right now we're not talking about politics, we're talking about the country.

This is a really critical time for the country, both globally and in terms of our safety and security, but also economically. And if we divide the conservative vote, and therefore hand over to the Democrats more years of single-party rule and Barack Obama another four years, we would have a very different country at the end of eight years of Obama rule.

And I don't think in the final analysis that anyone is going to put their personal political aspirations above the needs of the country.

Maybe I need to clean out my ears or something, but it sure sounded to me like he was saying that voting out Obama transcends politics -- it's a national-security issue. If that's what he said, well, wow.