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I'm sure that the Newsbusters group will be quick to note the hackery that is the right wing hack job provided by the Washington Post to the Romney campaign, right? Right?

The evening will put a spotlight on Romney’s relationship with the previous Republican administration, which has been complicated and not always comfortable. Romney advisers characterized his relationship with Cheney as cordial, but no deeper than one that any elder statesman would be expected to have with his party’s presumed presidential nominee. They speak infrequently, and advisers said there is little evidence of Cheney’s influence, or that of Cheney’s close associates, on Romney’s policies or politics. Romney also has a distant relationship with former president George W. Bush. The two speak by phone occasionally, but some advisers who bridge the Romney and Bush-Cheney campaigns said Bush does not want to intrude on Romney. “This does not look to me like Bush-Cheney redux,” said former congressman Vin Weber (Minn.), a veteran of the Bush-Cheney campaigns and a senior policy adviser to Romney. “At the broader advisory level, everybody who was around Cheney and Bush are around Romney,” he added. “They want him to win. And it’s inevitable that they’d have some influence, because they have the most recent Republican expertise in running the government. But I don’t see a lot of overlap there.”

Well, of course there isn't. Just because everyone who was around Cheney and Bush is now around Romney, why would the WaPo stenographer ...er, oops, I meant journalist Phillip Rucker question such a ridiculously contradictory statement as there being no overlap?

I assume that Rucker is a very busy man with important deadlines. It's so much easier to take a press release from the Romney campaign and turn it in than to actually provide any independent reporting. That's why he can offer such breathless commentary like this:

People who know both Romney and Cheney said they have contrasting leadership styles. Where Cheney comes off at times as sharp-tongued, Romney often projects a sunny optimism and sometimes seems uncomfortable on the attack. Where Cheney’s beliefs and policies are rooted in conservative ideology, Romney’s tend to be driven by analytical problem-solving.

I've heard friends offer more tempered descriptions trying to set up blind dates.

Do you suppose WaPo Ombudsman Patrick B Pexton has any response to how far the paper has fallen from its Watergate glory days to this?