[Vision2020] Romney's Week from Hell

[Nicholas Gier]

WASHINGTON  (Huff Post, 9/19)– Republicans could use a bit of advice from
an unlikely source right now: Obama adviser David Plouffe, who in 2010 told
Democrats<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204216.html>
worried
about the mid-term elections, "No bed-wetting."

Now it's Republicans who are frightened. Mitt Romney's recent troubles have
created a sense of gloom, and a good dose of doom, in the Grand Old Party.

"I think there is a broad and growing feeling now, among Republicans, that
this thing is slipping out of Romney’s hands," wrote *the Wall Street
Journal's* Peggy Noonan, in a "come to Jesus," in-your-facecolumn posted on
Tuesday night<http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2012/09/18/time-for-an-intervention/?mod=e2tw>
.

Noonan is correct.

After going from a Democratic convention that gave President Barack Obama a
bump, to Romney's bumbling handling of Middle East unrest, to a story about
campaign infighting, and now with the release of a secretly taped video of
Romney, numerous Republicans said there is now a sense of siege.

"There's a feeling of almost that this thing's in free fall," said a
Republican consultant with deep experience on Capitol Hill and extensive
contacts in the Romney campaign. "When campaigns spend an enormous amount
of time trying to figure out why they're broken, I don't know if they ever
come back," said this Republican, who like others who spoke about their
frustration, did not want to be identified.

Another operative who has worked for the Republican Party on many national
congressional campaigns was blunt about his feelings.

"I'm pretty discouraged. The thing is, [Democrats] ran Jimmy Carter, and we
answered with Thomas Dewey," he said, referring to the Republican
politician who lost presidential elections in 1944 and 1948. "And it didn't
have to be that way."

Another operative working on congressional races warned that in key swing
states, Romney's support in internal polling is well below that of GOP
candidates in districts where the presidential nominee has to get big
support to have a chance at winning. "He's just well under all our other
guys," this Republican said. "I'm very concerned."

A fourth operative with experience in Republican presidential campaigns,
who talks to those on the Romney campaign but is not working for them,
said, "There is a lot of unease within the campaign itself and within the
Republican Party and the conservative movement about the state of the
campaign.

"I think they feel like they can't really catch a break, that this whole
thing's been a much steeper hill than it should have been," he said.

Matt Lewis, a conservative blogger for the Daily Caller,
said<https://twitter.com/mattklewis/status/248232799050530816> of
the sentiments in Noonan's column, in which she pleaded with Republican
bosses to intervene in Romney's campaign: "This isn't bed-wetting."

"Mitt Romney should take some of Peggy Noonan's sincere advice," Lewis
wrote on Twitter.

Partly out of necessity, there is a determination among those at Romney
headquarters in Boston, as well as among those in the party invested in
their cause, that they are going to forge ahead and that there is still a
lot of time until Nov. 6.

Furthermore, there is a tendency in campaigns that face the scrutiny that
only exists in a presidential race to develop a bunker mentality that makes
it hard to receive legitimate critiques. Presidential campaigns get so much
criticism that a certain amount of immunity is necessary.

But if Romney's situation is as dire as some Republicans say, his
campaign's resistance to scoldings from the cheap seats could be a
self-inflicted wound.
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