I thought for sure that presidential candidate Mitt Romney would have gotten the message loud and clear after placing fourth in the South Carolina primary: real conservatives don’t buy his phony pandering. But Romney left here determined to win somewhere — anywhere that would have him — and he planned to do so by once again “transforming” his platform.

His spin machine worked around the clock to build a narrative that the conservative vote was split between Romney and Mike Huckabee; therefore creating a place for the now-likely GOP nominee John McCain. Of course, I’ve proven that to be completely false.

To feed that paradigm, Romney is now trying to position himself as the “Reagan Republican” in the race. Except, during his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign (video above), he said, “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush, I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” Interesting.

Romney is also trying to beef up his conservative credentials by touting an endorsement from the National Rifle Association that he never received… AGAIN.

Sometimes a candidate gets a little too much grief for misspeaking. The first time Mitt Romney said he was endorsed by the NRA in his gubernatorial run, he was wrong; the NRA rated him a “B,” which is not bad. (His Democratic opponent was an “A,” surprisingly. The NRA did not endorse in that race.) Apparently some NRA folk did some phone-banking for him, and Romney mistook that for an endorsement, and I guess I can see how that mistake could be made. The key is to note that he was told of his mistake back in December.

And then, in an interview a few days ago with Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, Romney claimed to be endorsed by the NRA again.

When it happens multiple times, one begins to wonder if Romney just wants to assert the endorsement and hopes that the person he’s speaking to doesn’t hear the correction.

Glenn comes across to me as a particularly fair-minded interviewer, but after Race42008 demonstrates a couple of different positions in a short span of time — telling Tim Russert he would sign the Assault Weapons Ban, telling Glenn and Helen that he would oppose it — Glenn concludes, “I’m beginning to question his sincerity.”

That expression of doubt is all the more stinging because Glenn isn’t a shout-and-pound-the-table kind of guy. [National Review Online]

But, almost to a man, the far-right wing talk show hosts are lining up to push the Romney’s deceitful propaganda. Only, that type of indignant rhetoric isn’t sitting well with many Republicans. Former presidential candidate Bob Dole, who is neutral in the presidential race, even sent a letter to Rush Limbaugh defending McCain’s “mainstream conservative” record and discrediting the dirty spin.

I was the Republican Leader from January 1985 until I left the Senate voluntarily in June 1996. I worked closely with Senator McCain when he came to the Senate in 1987 until I departed. I cannot recall a single instance when he did not support the Party on critical votes. (At my age, I cannot be entirely certain but here are a few key conservative examples:)

1) Consistent pro-life record
2) Strong advocate for strict constructionist judges (We were misled on the Souter nomination)
3) Supported voluntary school prayer
4) Supported Constitutional Amendment for a Balanced Budget (needed two-thirds and lost by one vote — 66-34)
5) Strong advocate for reducing spending and opposing pork barrel “ear marks” which has, I might add, angered some of his colleagues
6) Consistent on defending Second Amendment rights
7) Opposed “Hillary Care” which would have been devastating
8.) Probably the Senate’s strongest advocate for strong national defense
9) Of course he has cast many votes since I left. I totally disagreed with the McCain-Feingold legislation. On immigration, Senator McCain was not in the Senate when Congress passed President Reagan’s immigration legislation which passed overwhelmingly. It granted amnesty to 2.7 million illegals. It was not much different than the 2007 McCain, Kennedy, Bush effort. [Bob Dole]

Inevitably, I hope that when the rest of the country votes in tomorrow’s 20-plus-state “Super Tuesday,” they will be able to drown out the last-ditch efforts of radio’s bitter reactionaries and Romney’s dying campaign and choose to overwhelmingly do what we South Carolinians did and boot Romney’s bogus “conservatism” once and for all. It’s a lie, it’s a joke and it’s insulting to real conservatives.