Aide insists Romney is just being civil
He defends joke in S.C. on war of `Northern aggression'
It used to be that when Governor Mitt Romney hit the road, he made jokes about his home state of Massachusetts and the out-of-touch views of residents here.
Now, in his continual courtship of the pivotal South Carolina Republican base, he seems to be going even further.
Hosting a cocktail reception in South Carolina for local Republicans over the weekend, Romney joked about the attitude of some in the South toward the Civil War, referring to the region's views that the conflict was one of ``Northern aggression" against the South.
Romney made the remarks Saturday night in a 20-minute talk he gave in Charleston that his political action committee, the Commonwealth PAC, threw during the National Governors Association summer meeting.
``It was something I took as a joke, and a couple of people laughed," said Will Folks, a South Carolina political consultant and former press secretary to Governor Mark Sanford.
Romney made the Civil War reference as he described how historian David McCullough, when asked recently what has been the most perilous time in American history, did not point to the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, but the current period. Romney, in a humorous aside when mentioning the Civil War, described how some Southerners refer to the conflict.
``Governor Romney was clearly joking when he referred to the Civil War as the `war of Northern aggression' to an audience in Charleston," said Eric Fehrnstrom, his spokesman, who was at the event. ``Everyone laughed, because they understood he was using it in a humorous context."
Fehrnstrom described a joke that Romney recently made when speaking at The Citadel, the military school in Charleston.
Romney talked of baseball player Johnny Damon's leaving the Red Sox to join the Yankees. Romney told them that he and the audience have common ground: They both hate Yankees.
``It was just a passing reference," Fehrnstrom said. ``Everywhere the governor speaks, he tells a joke."
Romney's remarks were made a week after he apologized for using the expression ``tar baby" when referring to the political risks involved in his taking charge of the Big Dig project.
The phrase is considered a racial epithet by some, although the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the expression as ``something from which it is nearly impossible to extricate oneself."
As he lays the groundwork for a potential presidential campaign, Romney has often used Massachusetts' political culture as a foil.
His stump speech among those conservative Republican crowds often make references, as Folks said he did on Saturday, to gay marriage, stem cell research, and abortion. 