Via Jim Geraghty. “He came through human-like,” said a woman who attended one of his events yesterday. He’s human-like here too, visibly irritated at a question about what a budget-balanced amendment would mean for the lunatic level of government spending that’s currently rocketing the country towards intractable insolvency. Her point, from what I can tell, is that you don’t want Congress’s options limited by a BBA in an emergency (like, say, a giant hurricane!) when new federal spending is needed. Which is great, except (a) any final draft of a BBA would likely include a provision for emergency expenditures pursuant to a two-thirds vote, etc, and (b) clearly she’s not thinking only of emergency/discretionary spending here. She mentions Social Security and Medicare explicitly, which makes me suspect she’s less concerned with the procedural obstacles posed by a BBA than with simply keeping the sweet, sweet entitlement money flowing until those programs go poof. If I were Romney, I would have told her fine, let’s do it her way. See how much she likes Medicare 15 years from now.

Anyway. What do we think of the new, angrier, alpha Mitt? Everyone’s waiting for Perry to attack at the next debate, but after watching this, I wonder if Romney might not play the Han to Perry’s Greedo. (Han in the original edit of “Star Wars,” of course, not the unspeakable re-edit.)

Update: Christian Heinze of GOP12 urges Romney to stick to his unflappable business guru persona and avoid the irascible Chris Christie imitations.