Romney's Downward Spiral Continues

NBC ~ The Office
Hell Week for Romney




You're the kind of person
You meet at certain dismal dull affairs.
Center of a crowd, talking much too loud
Running up and down the stairs.
Well, it seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years.
And though you've tried you just can't hide
Your eyes are edged with tears.

You better stop
Look around
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown.
~ The Rolling Stones




Preview of Romney's 60 Minutes Interview, via Politico

Scott Pelley:
Governor, I appreciate your message very much. But that wasn't precisely the question. You're the CEO of this campaign. A lot of Republicans would like to know, a lot of your donors would like to know, how do you turn this thing around? You've got a little more than six weeks. What do you do?

Mitt Romney: Well, it doesn't need a turnaround. We've got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent president to the United States...
... I've got a very effective campaign. It's doing a very good job. But not everything I say is elegant. And I want to make it very clear, I want to help 100 percent of the American people.

In rare show of unity, Obama and Romney agree Romney's campaign doesn't need a turnaround livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/mitt-rom… via @evanmc_s
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 22, 2012

As Romney walked back to the plane to shake hands with the five individuals who drove vans in the motorcade, your pooler asked Romney if he was going to be campaigning a little harder from here on out.
”Ha ha. We’re in the stretch aren’t we? Look at those clouds. It’s beautiful,” he said, pointing to the sky. “Look at those things.”
~ Romney quoted by Pool Reporter Jon Ward, via Washington Post

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Mitt Romney Says, “I Am The Confidence Fairy!”
~ Paul Krugman on New York Times

Can Romney Dig Himself Out of This Hole?
It may be impossible now for Mr. Romney to unite his party behind him. Right-wingers and Tea Partiers never liked him to begin with. Now, he looks like a loser, to boot.
~ The Globe and Mail

Buzzfeed: Romney's Tantrum at Univision

. . . according to Maria Elena Salinas, one of the Univision anchors who moderated the forums....
. . . Romney's team was allowed to bus in rowdy activists from around southern Florida in order to fill the extra seats at their town hall.
Obama's campaign, meanwhile, stuck to the original parameters and allowed a large chunk of the tickets to be distributed to interested students on campus. The result was a quiet, well-behaved crowd — and a lot of no-shows. Minutes before Obama's forum was to begin, producers began frantically directing university staff and volunteers to sit in the empty seats.
. . . Romney's non-student activists ignored instructions to hold their applause.
. . . Salinas's co-anchor, Jorge Ramos, noted that the Republican candidate had agreed to give the network 35 minutes, and that Obama had agreed to a full hour the next night. Ramos then invited the audience to welcome Romney to the stage — but the candidate didn't materialize.
"It was a very awkward moment, believe me," Salinas said.
Apparently, Romney took issue with the anchors beginning the broadcast that way, said Salinas, and he refused to go on stage until they re-taped the introduction. (One Republican present at the taping said Romney "threw a tantrum.")

The only thing anyone will remember from the Univision forum, of course, is Miffed’s disastrous brownface. According to Salinas, the makeup lady swore it was just Miffed being sunburned. We’d imagine it’s more along the lines of The Help sh***ing in the chocolate pie. But we’re sure that Great American Hero makeup lady is right, because that way she gets to keep her job.
~ Wonkette

. . . there are other perfectly reasonable explanations as to why Romney would have sashayed onto the Miami Univision set oranger than John Boehner with jaudice. He could actually have jaundice, in which case this is no laughing matter. He could have been having a very sensitive skin day. Maybe his makeup artist went blind and Romney didn't have the heart to fire him. Maybe he was sending a subliminal message to Snooki. And, of course, the possibility exists that this is Mitt Romney running out of f***s to give and choosing to run the most entertaining screw-up of a campaign the US has ever seen from this point onward.
~ Jezebel

God preserve you if you have any idea what's happening inside Mitt Romney's brain. After a week that was already the worst of his campaign, it's as if the man said, "Oh, yeah? Watch this," and pulled back the hyperdumb levers of his magical farting machine, the Mittlennium F***up.
The Romney campaign not only appears determined to go nowhere but to do it as quickly as possible. It is the fastest hunk of junk in the political galaxy. All Romney had to do was withhold information, as was his wont for almost everything else during the campaign, and he'd have been fine....
...But his tax returns—the things most non-wonks had forgotten about—well, we needed a steaming heap of those to change the narrative of his steaming heap of a week. On Friday, we got them.
. . . The amazing thing is, he can top this. If Mitt Romney's proved nothing else, it's that he can snatch another wholly unimaginable blunder from the jaws of the unnecessary. Just you wait.
~ Gawker: Romney's Orgy of Creative Self-Destruction

On the Romney "Reboot"
Oh, oh - you always reintroduce the candidate three weeks after the Convention. Sorta like saying to a girl, "Come on . . . just go on a seventh date with me. I'll grow on you."
~ Jon Stewart on the Daily Show

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Mitt Hammered by Critics from Both Sides

When you express an attitude that half the country considers itself victims, that somehow they want to be dependent on government, my thinking is maybe you haven't gotten around a lot.
~ Barack Obama on Univision

It’s very upsetting to hear a presidential candidate be so easily dismissive of such a ginormous amount of the population. [If Romney wins the White House] none of those 47 percent of people would have a voice.
~ Rocker Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam

It's Fall. Unless you're Mitt Romney, and then it's freefall.
. . . I like Mitt. Listen to this. He has alienated the young people, alienated the old people, alienated women, alienated minorities, alienated gays. I'm telling you, this takes talent.
~ David Letterman

Romney has lived the past six years in his party's overheated shark tank, spending more time pestering plutocrats for cash than meeting with and listening to the general public. I suspect Romney doesn't really believe that 47% of the electorate are moochers; he was just dialing for dollars. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how the man who mouthed those words, whether he believes them or not, can be elected President.
~ Joe Klein on Time Magazine Politics

Willard of Oz
Let Me Start with this rare moment when you get to look behind the curtain. Remember in "The Wizard of Oz," when we saw the man actually doing the talking? Well, this is the week when we heard from the real Willard of Oz, Mitt Romney. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, we`re told, but how can we ignore the real Willard who says half the country, the country he wants to run, is filled with beggars -- beggars, moochers, loafers, looters, people who don`t work, don`t want to work, want the better-off half to give them breakfast in bed.
That Willard of Oz is the man we want to talk about tonight because he`s one, the real Willard, who wants the people to give him control of the country. And that`s our topic tonight, the man behind the curtain who thinks "compassionate conservativism" is yesterday`s magic act and wants to crack down on the little people big-time -- or at least that`s the way he talks when he`s fobbing for money down in tony Boca Raton.
~ Chris Matthews on Hardball

I honestly don’t know what Romney can do to win support from the voters he needs to gain a majority. I thought the debates would be an opportunity, but he has dug his hole so deeply now, I don’t know if he can pull himself out. Does he get up and say, “I was just kidding. I don’t see half of America as victims. I just needed to raise some money, and I got a little carried away talking to the 1 percent.”
I loved Michelle Obama’s line in her speech: “A presidency reveals who you are.”
So do campaigns.
. . . And mark me down as one Republican not happy with what is being revealed about Mitt Romney.
~ Mark McKinnon on Daily Beast

. . . 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.
~ Peggy Noonan on Wall Street Journal

Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring. This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.
. . . It’s nonsense and the chattering class . . . you hear it and then you just let it go right by. Honestly, at this point, I’m not surprised by anything.
~ Ann Romney on Radio Iowa

What Ann Romney doesn’t seem to get is the Republicans that she derisively labeled as the “chattering class” are Republicans who have participated in winning presidential campaigns. People like Peggy Noonan and Mark McKinnon know what they are talking about, so when they tell Mitt and Ann Romney they are blowing it, it would be wise to listen up.
That’s the thing that this campaign has revealed about the Romneys. They aren’t wise. They are ambitious, reckless, narrow minded, out of touch, selfish, entitled, arrogant, uncaring, and a million other adjectives, but their biggest problem is that they aren’t smart.
~ Jason Easley and Sarah Jones on Politicus USA