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one that's leaning decidedly right so far.
• Romney spoke out against China's "one-child policy" on Friday in an apparent nod to social conservatives on Fox News. But later in the same interview, he defended his decision to hire an openly gay staffer who ultimately quit under pressure from social conservatives.
• Romney said he hires people "not based upon their ethnicity, or their sexual preference or their gender but upon their capability." He called the staffer, Richard Grenell, who had yet to formally begin his role as a foreign policy spokesman, a "capable individual" and said many senior campaign aides had urged him not to leave. But Grenell's departure pleased some on the religious right who had been critical of his hiring.
• The incident offered a look inside a Romney campaign that would like to broaden his appeal to the political center, while harnessing the anti-Obama intensity from his party's right flank. It's a tricky move, with pitfalls lurking on both sides. But Romney so far is trying to prove he won't turn his back on his party's most passionate voters.
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• MADRID (AP) -- Attention Nicolas Sarkozy of France: Don't look over your shoulder on election day Sunday.
• The political cemetery behind you is crowded.
• Indeed, the feisty Frenchman is keenly aware of all the leaders who got the ax from voters fed up with Europe's economic crisis and the austerity remedies that have stung them so acutely since the sovereign debt crisis began in Greece in late 2009.
• It has spread far -- to Europe's western most extremity in Portugal and north to green Ireland -- claiming governments as people see cherished social welfare benefits wiped away, pensions slashed after a lifetime of work and savings evaporate.
• "We are seeing real punishment of those governments which were saddled with handling the economic and financial crisis. And France is no exception," said Jorge Crespo, a professor of political science and public administration at Complutense University in Madrid.
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