Following Mitt Romney's comment that Bob Dole is "probably the last person I would have wanted to have write a letter for me," John McCain released the following statement:

"Governor Romney's attack on Bob Dole is disgraceful, and Governor Romney should apologize. Bob Dole is a war hero who has spent his life in service to this nation and nobody has worked harder to build the Republican Party. Bob Dole deserves the respect of every American and certainly every Republican.

"Governor Romney denounced Ronald Reagan in the mid '90s while Bob Dole was working tirelessly to elect Republicans across the country. Governor Romney was missing from those fights when I was standing with President Reagan and Senator Dole to build the Republican Party.

"Governor Romney is trying to divide the Republican Party and his disparagement of one of our Party's greatest leaders is a sad commentary on Governor Romney's increasingly bitter campaign."

Now Romney has released a clarifying statement of his own, using comments Romney made on Laura Ingraham's radio show from today:

LAURA INGRAHAM: "Are you upset that you lost that Dole endorsement?"

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: "You know you like every endorsement and Bob Dole is an American hero, another terrific guy. ...But you know, I don't think if I were the McCain campaign that's the parallel I would have wanted to draw. Just because you know he was selected as somebody who had been a long term Senator and was seen as the anointed choice. You know the inevitable choice, the one who is next in line. I think we're best as a party, at least in my own view, when we bring somebody in from the outside. If we want to change Washington, I think it's going to have to have an outsider to do it and it's going to take somebody who may not be the inevitable choice, but instead somebody who represents new passion, new vision, new energy, that I think we need to see in Washington."

Interestingly, on his radio show right now the recipient of the Dole letter, Rush Limbaugh, isn't upset at Dole so much as he is at the McCain campaign and the media for manipulating the letter as an endorsement of McCain.