“Governor Romney would disagree with the negative characterization of those men and women who serve with honor and distinction in the United States Military. There may be disagreements with individual opinions, but no one would ever dispute the fact that those members of the military who disagree with the war have earned the right to express that opinion.”
Your quotes are imprecise in that you are not quoting Romney, you are quoting a spokesman for him, Kevin Madden. For comments by Romney himself on this issue, in context, check out
this transcript. Any non-troll here would agree with what Romney personally said there. The "quote," as a general answer to a general purpose hypothetical question, is actually reasonable. The question doesn't fit what Rush said and so thus the answer doesn't fit it either. The left wants to twist the question to fit so they try to twist the quote to fit as well. Which is the more likely? That a lib site like
Huffpo would take things out of context (they offered no transcript) and twist their meaning? That those here with an agenda to support a different candidate would leap at a seemingly juicy opportunity another candidate without checking out the details as carefully as they would if they were defending their own candidate against a misguided story? Or that any of the mainstream GOP candidates are dumb enough to make ANY anti-Limbaugh comment on an "off the cuff" basis?
Rush's position on the right is well established, well enough that any non-imbecilic politician trying to position themselves on the right will hem and haw and stall and thoroughly check things out before criticizing Rush. None of Romney's detractors accuse him of being a dumb politician; their critique usually is that he's too slick a politician. This round of criticism is as believable as would be a story claiming Couric casually called Bill Clinton a serial rapist. Regardless of the truth she's never going to say that.