Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused rival John McCain of adopting underhanded tactics from Richard Nixon.

Nixon, of course, resigned in disgrace in 1974.

With the Ronald Reagan love-fest that goes on each and every time these guys get together, is Mitt trying to employ the negative version of the same strategy by linking McCain and Nixon?

“I don’t think I want to go back to that kind of campaigning,” Romney said in response to McCain’s recent remark that Mitt favors a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Mitt Romney dropped the N-bomb (Nixon) on John McCain.

Mitt Romney denies this and most media analyses have concluded that Romney wasn’t using “timetable” in the same way Democrats have.

McCain’s decision to level the timetable charge this week without leaving Romney time to rebut it before Florida Republicans voted in their primary “was reminiscent of the Nixon era,” Romney said.

McCain ended up winning Florida Tuesday.

“I think he’s a man of character,” Romney said of John McCain, but added: “I think he took a sharp detour off the Straight Talk Express,” referring to the Arizona senator’s campaign bus.