Romney y Perry no son precisamente amigos

Según el Austin American-Statesman:

(...) A heated 2006 conversation in Austin is often recounted in Perry circles. Romney was the chairman of the Republican Governors Association and had hired TV adman Alex Castellanos to help Republican candidates across the country.

Perry didn't like that because Castellanos was also a key player in Carole Keeton Strayhorn's inner circle. Strayhorn, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent, was running against Perry that year. Perry and his camp wondered why the Republican Governors Association would hire someone who was trying to beat a Republican governor. But Romney kept Castellanos on board and hired him again to work on his 2008 presidential campaign.

The next year, Perry snubbed Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential field by endorsing former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. And then he singled out Romney for criticism in his 2008 book about the Boy Scouts, "On My Honor."

Perry wrote that Scouts were rebuffed when they offered to work as volunteers at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, repeating complaints from some Scout officials that Romney, the president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, would not return their calls.

"Several years have gone by," Perry wrote, "and neither Mitt Romney nor anyone else who served as an official of the 2002 Winter Olympics has given a clear and logical explanation of why the door to volunteerism was shut."

He then speculated that Romney was trying to avoid offending gay activists who were unhappy with a 2000 Supreme Court decision saying the Scouts could bar a gay Scoutmaster.

"We know that Romney, as a political candidate in the politically liberal state of Massachusetts, has parted ways with the Scouts on its policies over the involvement of gay individuals in Scout activities."

According to a December 2000 story in Utah's Deseret News, however, Romney said many Scouts were ineligible for some volunteer roles because they were younger than 18. The story said Romney had given Scouts a list of other volunteer opportunities, and an executive with the Scouts' Great Salt Lake Council told the newspaper that the Scouts had not been excluded.

Things seemed to be getting better in May 2010, when Romney came to Texas to help Perry raise money for his gubernatorial campaign.

But in November, Fox's Greta Van Susteren asked Perry, who at the time was not in the presidential-campaign picture, whether he could support Romney for president "in light of the fact that the Massachusetts health care program is so similar to the national health care plan?"

Perry didn't exactly say yes.

"If he were to stand up and say, ‘You know what, this was a program that didn't work, and I wish I hadn't tried it,' I think that would help him substantially," Perry said. "But the fact is, they are so similar that it is going to be a major anchor unless he stands up and repudiates that approach." (...)