Mitt "Most Unpopular Candidate in History" but Priebus Denies It

Chuck Todd's Swing State Statistics for September 23, 2012     Wow, back during the spring primaries who would have thought that here in September, the day after the Fall Equinox, there would be such a mutiny within the Republican Party. Back then, we might have expected trouble from Santorum or Newt and their followers, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, or the fervid Ron Paulites. But none of that is the problem right now. Now the Republicans have turned on Mitt Romney - the "good" candidate, the easy candidate, the one everybody thought was a shoe-in - because he turned out to be the "Dud" Candidate.


Huffington Post

After a rocky week that saw plenty of conservatives break away from Mitt Romney, New York Times columnist David Brooks summed up the state of affairs on Sunday.

Brooks was one of several panelists on NBC's "Meet The Press" roundtable, which dove into some data surrounding Romney's popularity.

"Look at his high unfavorable ratings," host David Gregory said. "At 50%. The highest of any candidate running in recent memory. This is an image problem that his philosophical statements in this speech in May to fundraisers only exacerbates."

Brooks did not mince words, calling Romney "the least popular candidate in history."

That quote isn't even the worst from this week! Peggy Noonan wrote on Wall Street Journal said:

. . . The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant "rolling calamity."
A lot of people weighed in, in I suppose expected ways: "Glad you said this," "Mad you said this." But, some surprises. No one that I know of defended the campaign or argued "you're missing some of its quiet excellence." ...
. . . A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn't about individual entrepreneurs. It's people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.
Mitt Romney needs to get his head screwed on right in this area.

Ouch!


Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Reince Priebus, the indomitable RNC chairman, is in a world of denial, vowing that Romney had a good week after all and is just bursting with all kinds of specific plans that he might tell us someday if the campaign goes on long enough. Something like that, LOL.

From ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

I think that we had a good week last week, I think in retrospect, in that we were able to frame up the debate last week in the sense of, what future do we want,” Priebus said this morning on “This Week.”
“I think we can look back at last week as a campaign in a couple months and say, this was the defining week in both campaigns,” Priebus said earlier, “where I think both campaigns are crystallizing around a central theme, which is going to be, what kind of future do we want for our kids and grandkids? What type of America do we want for this country?”
. . . he conceded that last week was not the “best” of the campaign for Romney.
“I think Governor Romney’s been pretty clear, it probably wasn’t the best-said moment in the campaign and probably not the best week in the campaign,” Priebus said.

I'll tell you about specifics. First of all, Mitt Romney talks about, all the time, about reducing the GDP spending from 25 cents on the dollar down to 20, reducing small business taxes from 35 to 25, reducing income taxes across the board by 20 percent.

I mean, for crying out loud, we’ve got Paul Ryan on the ticketAs far as specifics go, we're the only ones talking about how to save Medicare. The president's the one that raided Medicare by $700 billion.

I mean, we've got specifics coming out of our eyeballs.

I'm sorry, maybe its just me, but a man who looks so much like Peter Lorre shouldn't really draw attention to his eyeballs. It forced me to make this with Photobucket's edit tool (hint: Liquify) Heh . . .

Bain is Plain and Mitt Needs to Explain

If you can't get enough of the Romneylicious Bain Denials, here are some links to peruse this Saturday:

Full Text of Mitt Romney's CBS Interview

Huffington Post: Romney's Five Network Blitz

Here's a Daily Kos Diary explaining that Romney can dismiss and deny his interactions with Bain after 1999, but the proof is in the rather old-fashioned but searchable database.
Mitt meet EDGAR Hammer meet Nail by 8ackgr0und N015eFollow

Rachel Maddow's Interview with the Boston Globe Reporter who wrote the original viral article that started all this:

Wonderfully effective new ad, found Via Political Carnival
 

The Right's Circular Firing Squad over Romney Campaign

I read news all day and half the night, and I can't keep up with all the negative comments directed at Mitt Romney from his own party. It's like when they aren't praising him and saying he can beat Obama, they are taking pot shots at him. Of course they hardly need to, since Romney's campaign shoots itself in the collective foot almost daily with the accuracy of Barney Fife.

But the loathing for their own candidate is incredible. Just the past few days we've had:

Rush Limbaugh calling Romney a "Placeholder"

A wealthy Republican donor calling Mitt a "Plastic Ken Doll"

Speaker John Boehner Saying People Can't Fall in Love with Romney

And let's not forget:

Rupert Murdoch of Fox Criticizing Mitt on Twitter

Today Media Matters for American published their own list of Romney criticisms coming from the Right:

What Romney's Right-Wing Revolt Tells Us About the GOP

This time it's the right-wing media that's taken upon itself to launch a running critique of Romney's campaign:
*Fox's Eric Bolling says Romney should fire his whole staff
*Fox's Brian Kilmeade suggests Romney has to "toughen up"
*Fox's Bill Kristol compares Rommey to Michael Dukakis and John Kerry and says he needs to "get off autopilot."
*Fox owner Rupert Murdoch tweets that Romney needs to shake up his staff
*Murdoch's Wall Street Journal editorial page eviscerates Romney's campaign team as being incompetent
*Fox's Laura Ingraham mocks Romney's jet-skiing ways
Did you spot the trend?
It's amazing how the conservative press feels completely empowered at this point to brazenly dictate how the Republican Party candidate ought to run for the White House. (No matter how kooky the suggestions.)

Media Matters points out that things have changed in a short amount of time, since the Party has yet to recover from the one-two punch of the Immigration and Health Care rulings of the Supreme Court.

. . . What must be so upsetting for conservatives is that up until recently Romney was basking in their praise and the right-wing media was crushing on the candidate. Last month, partisan players cheered when the Romney campaign sent staffers to yell and boo Obama strategist David Axelrod at a press conference, and when a Romney campaign bus drove round and round honking at Obama supporters. For far-right fans, those juvenile antics signaled determination and willingness by the Romney campaign to do away with etiquette and the type of simple decorum that conservatives were so angry McCain abided by in 2008.

"I'm telling you," Limbaugh announced on the day after the heckling spectacle,  "This is not the McCain campaign." The talker meant it as a compliment, as BuzzFeed noted how Romney was "uniting the right by playing the role of the bomb-thrower."

The admiration was flowing just a few weeks ago when Breitbart editor Larry O'Connor typed up quotes from Romney strategists about how wonderful and influential the right-wing media has become (especially Breitbart.com!) and how it was working seamlessly with the Republican candidate on messaging to defeat Obama.
But that has since changed. The Obama haters feel betrayed on key policy issues and by Romney's tepid response to the recent immigration and health care rulings by the Supreme Court.
The right-wing media complained loudly.  Message: They want their campaign back.