How To Lose Friends And Influence People to Despise YouMitt Romney and his people are just not ready for primetime, and they continue to prove it on a daily basis. Yesterday, Bob Dole released a letter to Rush Limbaugh saying that McCain was a true conservative and a fine man. Now I'll admit that I winced a bit at the letter, because it just reinforces one of the dumber memes out there, that McCain is Bob Dole II. I talked about this last night.
But the letter has paid unexpected dividends. Asked about the Dole letter this morning on TV, Mitt Romney committed an
unpardonable and foolish blunder:
Mitt Romney had this to say about Dole:
He is "the last person I would want to write a letter for me. ... McCain's (campaign) is a lot like Bob's campaign (was)."
Where's the outrage? Well, the McCain camp
didn't take long:
"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."
Exactly. How politically tonedeaf is Mitt Romney that he doesn't realize that while it's fine for bloggers and other idiots to make that comparison, he has to rise above the fray? The proper response was a simple, "Bob Dole is a fine man, but I respectfully disagree with him, because of X, Y and Z." And he's onto his talking points about how liberal John McCain is in his opinion. Instead he insults a fine man who had ZERO chance of beating Bill Clinton in 1996. It's absolutely moronic, and symptomatic of a campaign on life support.
For another example, consider this
comment from a Romney fan in Georgia:
[R]eports from my friends at Team Romney indicate a tough fight in a competitive three-way race for 72 delegates in Georgia — the third-largest Super Tuesday state and the largest of the states with a proportional distribution of delegates.
The problem for Romney in Georgia is simple: Some voters are too stupid to understand that, at this point, a vote for Huckabee is effectively a vote for John McCain.
“They don’t get it,” a very tired Romney volunteer told me of her encounters with Huckabee voters. “They hate McCain, but they’re voting for Huckabee, and it’s the same thing.”
LOL! Is that amazing or what? Let me point to
the latest polls from Georgia, where Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are locked in a tight race for second. In fact, in the latest poll Huckabee is tied with McCain for first. Can you imagine the gall of the Romney campaign to think that the Huckabee supporters should give up because it helps Mitt Romney?
Romney supporter: I'd like to try to convince you to change your vote from Huckabee to Romney.
Huckabee supporter: Why don't you change your vote from Romney to Huckabee?
Romney supporter: That fundie nut! He's a liberal!
Huckabee supporter: Click
Romney supporter: These people are such morons!
Labels: Mitt Romney
