One of the shiny, mylar smiley faces on Mitt Romney's resume is slapped atop his bullet point for "saving" the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002. But over at Deadspin, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele (Barlett and Steele are writing for Deadspin?) explain exactly how Romney did it:

Many records were set at the 2002 Winter Games, but chances are that one will never be broken. That's the amount of federal dollars that Romney and his crew siphoned out of the federal treasury to help pay for the Olympic games: $1.5 billion. That was more than the federal government had spent on all seven Olympic Games held in the U.S. since 1904—combined. In inflation-adjusted dollars.

[...] No matter how you look at it, the strategy that Romney and the Olympic committee employed so effectively in Salt Lake City to underwrite the games is completely at odds with the image that he and his running mate Paul Ryan are now trying to project as stalwarts of a frugal government that disavows subsidies and expects people to stand on their own.

Their philosophy appears to depend upon where you happen to be standing.

Mitt Romney is perhaps the most hypocritical presidential nominee I've ever seen, but the funny thing is, I don't think that's what's hurting him in the polls. Romney is losing this race on the issues (you know, like denying "entitlements" to the 47 percent), however inconsistent his stated position on these issues has been.