Romney and the "R" word

The Massachusetts Democratic Party has had some fun reminding Republican voters how Romney sought to distance himself from the GOP during his 2002 race for governor of Massachusetts.

The video from the state Democratic committee -- being circulated widely by the Democratic National Committee -- shows Romney explaining that the R word for him suggests reform, not Republican.

In other segments of the montage he disses Utah, where he lived while running the 2002 Winter Olympics, because it was a virtual one-party state, like Massachusetts, though in Utah's case a GOP bastion.

The Associated Press quotes Romney's campaign as shrugging off the video, which is also posted on YouTube.

"You know you're making great progress and you're doing things right as a good Republican when the wrong-way crowd in the Democratic Party starts attacking you," the AP quotes press secretary Kevin Madden as saying.

Romney won the 2002 gubernatorial race in heavily Democratic Massachusetts and stepped down in January after one term to seek the GOP presidential nomination. His Republican rivals for the nomination have chided him repeatedly for changing his positions to align better with the conservative base of the Grand Old Party.