Mitt Romney continues to dazzle the American public with one of the most disorganized and self destructive presidential campaigns in recent memory.
On Monday, Politico revealed that the Romney campaign was in total disarray with infighting by advisers and aides after Romney’s disastrous and meandering convention speech. Stuart Stevens, the top strategist of the Romney campaign came in for savage criticism. A mere eight days before Romney’s prime time convention speech, Stevens junked the speech written by ace Republican speechwriter Peter Wehner and decided that he and Mitt Romney would throw one together.
“[E]ight days before the convention, at a time when a campaign usually would be done drafting and focused instead on practicing such a high-stakes speech, Stevens frantically contacted John McConnell and Matthew Scully, a speechwriting duo that had worked in George W. Bush’s campaign and White House. Stevens told them they would have to start from scratch on a new acceptance speech. Not only would they have only a few days to write it, but Romney would have little time to practice it. …
“The two finished Ryan’s text the next day and started crashing on Romney’s. That weekend, Stevens accompanied Romney as he went to a school auditorium in New Hampshire with his wife, Ann, to practice yet another version of the speech. Only one paragraph from the McConnell-Scully draft wound up being used, about a rose that Romney’s father had put on his mother’s bedside table each day. The speech that was actually delivered, it turned out, had been cobbled together by Stevens and Romney himself.”
The result was an uninspiring speech that made little positive impact on voters. In a later poll, respondents said that the highlight of the convention was the speech given by Clint Eastwood. Ouch!
Still Smirking
A few short days later, total disaster struck the Romney campaign when remarks at a fund raising event were revealed in which Romney ostensibly insulted half of the American public as free loading zombies demanding free everything from the government.
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”
Romney, after committing political suicide, probably feels like a victim himself after the savage reaction from both the right and left. What does Romney do for an encore – become a volunteer in the Obama campaign with the hopes of winning a cabinet appointment?
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