Posted on 11/09/2008 3:27:03 PM PST by GVnana
Aides blast accusations, not from Mitt camp
By Dave Wedge
Saturday, November 8, 2008 -
Mitt Romney’s camp is firing back at reports his foot soldiers are behind a brutal smear campaign against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a backdoor strategy to position the former Bay State governor for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
“It’s a completely absurd allegation that is totally divorced from the truth,” Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said.
Fox News, the New York Times [NYT] and Newsweek have reported on a host of criticisms of Palin, including that she threw tantrums that made staffers cry and didn’t know Africa was a continent. Several media outlets reported some of the leaks came from within the McCain campaign. But the political blog, The Palmetto Scoop, citing “very good sources,” said it was Romney loyalists working for McCain who were behind the “premeditated last minute sabotage” of Palin.
Fehrnstrom took issue with the Scoop’s claim that as much as 80 percent of Romney’s campaign staff went to work for Sen. John McCain’s team after the GOP primary. Only “a handful” of Romney operatives joined the Arizona senator’s campaign, he said.
“The truth is, there are no former Romney staffers in senior roles at the McCain campaign,” Fehrnstrom said. “I can think of a handful of people, maybe three or four, who went over, all in junior positions.”
However, Romney’s former campaign spokesman Kevin Madden was among the ex-Romney staffers to bash Palin. In an interview on CNN just a week before the election, Madden called Palin “unseasoned” and questioned whether she should have been McCain’s pick.
“When you put out an unknown and you give them 70 days with which to go through a vetting process, both by voters and the national press corps, ugly things can tend to happen,” Madden said.
Since McCain’s loss, Palin has been accused of dragging down the ticket in what her spokeswoman Meg Stapleton reportedly called “a circling firing squad.”
GOP strategist Holly Robichaud, who writes the “Lone Republican” blog for the Herald, said: “It’s definitely Romney’s people. They’ve been doing it for a while. Romney is thinking about running again in 2012 and he needs to kill off Sarah Palin in order to get there.”
Romney himself has defended Palin, calling her a “positive addition to the ticket” in an appearance on CBS’ “Early Show” a week before the election.
“For a first-time candidate on the national stage . . . you’re subject to the national spotlight. It’s more like a national torch,” Romney said. “She has been able to keep cool under the pressure.”
Meanwhile, a new Rasmussen poll shows that 64 percent of Republicans want Palin to be the GOP presidential candidate in 2012 while 11 percent prefer Romney.
because huckabee supporters loved Palin. The romney supporters (especially Kathleen Parker) were RINO elitists and could never accept her.
Also I think in time his very vocal and ardent few remaining supporters here will wise up, except for the totally star struck. Before the economy went fubar vanity candidates, of which Mitt was the textbook example were an affordable luxury. With B Hussein's hand on the tiller were are going to tank and a real conservative will be the only draw in 2012, and that leaves out Mitt for sure...
I would love for someone to find out who Carl Cameron buddies up with, where he went to school, who he answers to, because the guy has an agenda to destroy Palin and I doubt the robot is motivated by the interest of the nation, he looks too "drugged" and goofy to have a clear thought of his own.
Dunno about that. Obama made inroads precisely into the crowd that Huckabee represented (the evangelicals), and the rest of Huckabee’s supporters, oh, just forget it . . . .
except for the totally star struck.
that’s the problem. he had an obama effect on some people.
Those people were trying to steal my knife by embedding it into their back!
Hard to look in the mirror is it?
I hope you’re enjoying your new totalitarian dictator. You sycophant piglets worked so hard to make it happen.
So the response is not to run Republicans in blue states ?
Here’s an example:
Rush Limbaugh is in a conversation with a caller, who is a veteran. They end up talking about Jessie Macbeth, the phony soldier that was the left’s poster boy for about 10 minutes.
The media takes this and twists it, claiming that Limbaugh said that any of our troops who come home and criticize the war are phony soldiers.
Anyone who is worth their salt knows that Rush Limbaugh wouldn’t say such a thing or even think such a thing for a second.
This was the official response from the Romney campaign:
“Governor Romney would disagree with the negative characterization of those men and women who serve with honor and distinction in the United States Military. There may be disagreements with individual opinions, but no one would ever dispute the fact that those members of the military who disagree with the war have earned the right to express that opinion.”
They assumed it was true from the moment they heard it.
If you’ve ever learned a foreign language, there’s a point that you get to where you can not only speak and understand the language, but you can think in it too.
Romney can mouth the words, but he can’t think in conservatism. Same as John McCain. They don’t have the ideological conservative grounding to make it work.
It’s one thing to draw up a bunch of position papers that are conservative. It’s another thing to have instant reaction to things without having to be told what the ‘conservative’ position is. If you’ve got the ideological grounding, you know it instinctively.
He’s a fake and a phony and he’s the only one of the people that ran in 2008 that would have caused me to sit out the general. I will NEVER vote for Mitt Romney for President under any circumstances.
McCain is behind all of this. Think about it, How would Romney’s people know the intimate details of preparing for the debate or the amount spent on clothes.
McCain carries a grudge. He needed Romney so he made peace but he still didn’t like the aggressive campaign that Romney waged against him.
Put the word out that it was Romney’s people and there you go. Romney had even said after her debate that he would like run with her.
This is all McCain, he is trying to get the Romney people fighting with the anti-Romney people and he can just step back and look like he didn’t have anything to do with it.
He and his daughter and his wife would be high level McCain staff. The fact that McCain has been silent, is all the proof I need.
I have some worries amongst FReepers supporting Gov. Jindal of LA. He’s not a bad Governor, but he’s made some needless mistakes and some are supporting him simply because he’s of non-European ancestry and think that’s what is needed to battle a dictator. Folks need to step back and look at their candidates actual records. Even Sen. Coburn jumped the shark on the bailout and let a lot of us down.
Roger that. (although most here disagree with you
because Romney was a problem, is a problem,
and has made himself the enemy of Conservatives).
...Thanks for the warning shot, Cheers and tallyho...
Nope. Romney did this to Thompson.
And to Huckabee.
And to McCain.
Romney is scurrilous.
I don't like the media sticking their oar in it like they're doing. They keep the bloodbath from getting interesting...
That’s ridiculous...what would motivate McCain’s people to go after Palin now? He is never going to run for anything outside of Arizona again. Romney’s people just need to get over themselves and embrace Palin so their boy can walk along side her. Her light is not going to be extinguished. The attacks are counterproductive.
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