MITT ROMNEY: HE'S NOT A RIGHT-WING LOONEY, BUT HE IS LUNACY-CURIOUS

This is a bizarre Mitt Romney moment from the campaign trail:

Speaking at a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday, ... Romney ... took a swipe at Obama for rejecting President Bill Clinton’s "doctrine" of balancing budgets to meet spending proposals. He suggested that this was the result of a personal animus between Barack Obama and the Clintons.

"Almost a generation ago, Bill Clinton announced that the 'era of big government was over,'" said Romney. "President Obama tucked away the Clinton Doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas along with transparency and bipartisanship. It's enough to make you wonder if maybe it was a personal beef with the Clintons, but probably that -- it runs much deeper than that."

Hunh? "A personal beef"? This was the best response to that on Twitter:

Romney says Obama "has a personal beef with the Clintons" - like when he ripped Hillary a new one by making her Secretary of State

Romney seems to be getting his ideas from the new book by congenital liar Edward Klein, which claims there's a Clinton-Obama feud (portrayed in embarrassingly wooden dialogue). Does Romney believe this stuff? Maybe it's just his speechwriters and other advisers who do; if you're looking to staff a Republican campaign at this moment in history, can you possibly find people who don't believe the conspiratorial nonsense peddled by the Murdoch media?

This isn't the first time Romney has hinted at a belief in conspiracy theories. In one speech he gave last March, he alluded to the right-wing lie that the Obama administration wants to ban farm dust (it's not true) and the lie that incandescent lightbulbs are being banned by Obama zealots (they're not being banned, and the law that Romney's grumbling about was signed by Bush). In his NRA speech, Romney hinted that Obama will take away everyone's guns if he's reelected:

"In his second term, [Obama] would be unrestrained by the terms of re-election," Romney said. "Who will stand up for the rights of hunters and sportsmen, and those who act to protect their families? President Obama has not. I will."

Oh, and Romney has suggested that Obama actually wants gas prices to rise.

Granted, this is winger lunacy lite. But it's still winger lunacy.