Wonkbook: Romney campaign in disarray
Ezra Klein ?@ezraklein
Lead story in today's Wonkbook: Romney campaign in disarray.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/wonkbook-romney-campaign-in-disarray/
____ Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei reveal the disarray within the struggling Romney campaign: ”Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s top strategist, knew his candidate’s convention speech needed a memorable mix of loft and grace if he was going to bound out of Tampa with an authentic chance to win the presidency. So Stevens, bypassing the speechwriting staff at the campaign’s Boston headquarters, assigned the sensitive task of drafting it to Peter Wehner, a veteran of the last three Republican White Houses and one of the party’s smarter wordsmiths. Not a word Wehner wrote was ever spoken. Stevens junked the entire thing, setting off a chaotic, eight-day scramble that would produce an hour of prime-time problems for Romney.”
@DouthatNYT: Most damning part of Politico piece: After 6 yrs running for WH, Romney didn’t have anyone in-house he trusted w/biggest speech of his life.
@jimtankersley: This is what being thrown under the bus looks like
The bottom line of the Politico story: “Romney associates are baffled that such a successful corporate leader has created a team with so few lines of authority or accountability.” Romney’s mishandling of the Middle East crisis was driven by desperation. ”Suddenly, the president was facing just the kind of externality that his team had been bracing for: a full-blown foreign-policy crisis less than eight weeks out from Election Day. And a campaign marked by stasis and even torpor was jolted to life as if by a pair of defibrillator paddles applied squarely to its solar plexus. Moments like this are not uncommon in presidential elections, and when they come, they tend to matter. For unlike the posturing and platitudes that constitute the bulk of what occurs on the campaign trail, big external events provide voters with something authentic and valuable: a real-time test of the temperament, character, and instincts of the men who would be commander-in-chief. And when it comes to the past week, the divergence between the resulting report cards could hardly be more stark…Here was America under attack, with four dead on foreign soil. And here was Romney, defiantly refusing to adopt a tone of sobriety, solemnity, or seriousness, instead attempting to score cheap political points, doubling down on his criticism.” John Heilemann in New York Magazine.
@sahilkapur: That said, once the “Romney in disarray” narrative gets stale, it’ll probably shift to “Romney’s comeback.”
read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/wonkbook-romney-campaign-in-disarray/
