We’ve all been pointing and laughing at the Romney campaign as they find it simply impossible to defend not releasing his tax returns. Between throwing up a shiny bit of news bait of Condi as VP, stupid allegations of cronyism (from a guy who won’t tell who funds him or who bundles contributions) and even the desperation of taking the President’s words out of context — they can’t find their footing. Jonathan Chait writes in NY Magazine that Mitt Romney Gets Angry. And in getting angry, they aren’t going to get smarter, they are going to morph into the comments section of (insert rightwing blog site here). So that John Sununu trying to tell people that President Obama is not American is not a mistake of the news day — it is the signal that more is coming.
Chait relies on reporting from Buzzfeed:
In speeches from Des Moines to Dallas, Romney has always been careful to hedge his tough digs at Obama with a civil nod toward the president’s moral character: “He’s a nice guy,” the Republican has often said. “He just has no idea how the private economy works.” But Tuesday’s speech included no such hedge — and one campaign adviser said there’s a reason for that.
“[Romney] has said Obama’s a nice fellow, he’s just in over his head,” the adviser said. “But I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he’s really disappointed. He believes it’s time to vet the president. He really hasn’t been vetted; McCain didn’t do it.”
Indeed, facing what the candidate and his aides believe to be a series of surprisingly ruthless, unfounded, and unfair attacks from the Obama campaign on Romney’s finances and business record, the Republican’s campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisal, said two Romney advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the next chapter of Boston’s pushback — which began last week when they began labeling Obama a “liar” — very little will be off-limits, from the president’s youthful drug habit, to his ties to disgraced Chicago politicians.
So instead of issues and vision, we are going to be treated to a tour of the fevered swamp wingnutland. Where President Obama isn’t one of us, where he has drug issues, active ties to disgraced politicians, Jeremiah Wright and whatever else they can gin up to remind people that it is Obama’s ontological blackness that is his disqualification for office. It is a stupid strategy — Palin and McCain (Palin mostly) worked this vein like nobody’s business and were eventually smacked back by even the media. But it is a strategy designed as a pitch to his pathetic ans racist base who won’t be happy until they get the notice of the tree they should all meet up at. Here’s Chait:
The point of disparaging Obama’s character is to paint him as a cultural alien unfit for the presidency. More of this theme may or may not have helped in 2008. But you can’t do that effectively against somebody who is already President of the United States. Obama has spent four years being photographed and filmed in the Rose Garden and saluting the troops and waving from Air Force One. Hard-core conservatives may still regard him as an alien figure, but this strategy stands zero chance of working with middle America. All it can do is chip away at Romney’s personal standing, which (in an electorate with settled views about the incumbent) is the one real variable at play here.
Apparently Rmoney is mad that Stephanie Cutter has the nerve to suggest that misstating the facts on an SEC filing may be a felony. But let’s remember that Romney took the President out of context not once, but twice in the fall and when this was pointed out to him, “he gleefully refused to apologize for dishonestly taking Obama out of context, thinking this makes him look like a player. Now Romney is pissed of because the Obama campaign has been successful in impugning Rmoney’s only claim for qualifications for the job. And Rmoney was supposed to be the adult in the room. Apparently even he doesn’t believe his own bullshit and what is left is only what his angry and delusional base tells him to say. Because really, all of this crap is based entirely in the wingnut delusion that Obama wasn’t properly “vetted”.
TPM is also reporting on this. (Why would a campaign tell reporters is it not only going negative, but that they are making stuff up while they are at it?) Telling the world that you are getting ready to succumb to wingnut fever dreams that most independents already find distasteful seems unhinged, thin-skinned and vindictive and not ready for prime time. Because when the 3AM call comes, you don’t get to rely on fever dreams to make the problem go away.