Rudy Giuliani's campaign is seizing on Mitt Romney's answer to a question during yesterday's debate about whether he would seek Congress' approval to attack Iran, in which the former Massachusetts governor said, "You sit down with your attorneys."
Romney added yesterday that the president ultimately needs to do what is in the best interest of the country, but the Giuliani campaign is making hay out of the remarks about lawyers, including Romney's response to a follow up about whether Bush needed Congressional approval for invading Iraq, when he said. "You know, we're going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn't need to do," Romney said.
Here's the statement that the Giuliani communications director, Kate Levinson, just sent out.
"Hopefully, Mitt Romney isn't going to check with the same group of lawyers who told him the Bill Clinton line item veto was constitutional."
Levinson is of course trying to kill two birds with one stone here by poking fun at Romney for his legalistic answer and responding to Romney's attacks on Giuliani over the former mayor's suit against the line-item veto, which he won in the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: Romney's spokesman, Kevin Madden, writes in with this response.
"Mayor Giuliani offered the most troubling and muddled response on taking action against Iran. He had no answer. He resorted to a vague response that just repeated the word ‘exigent' over and over. If you need a leader on action against Iran, you turn to Governor Romney. If you need a thesaurus, check with Mayor Giuliani."
