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.
That comment was political gobbedly gook....a straight up yes or no would suffice.
I understand that . . . I just get frustrated when I see conservatives played for suckers by the media.
Romney would have won if you and your kind hadn’t cleared the way for McCain.
Reagan won 49 states in 1984. It can be done.
I discount debates entirely where he is concerned. I watched him breathlessly and shamelessly lie to crowds about his positions (and this was as long ago as 1994). No, indeed, words are cheap. You pay attention to what they do. This guy was a menace to Republicans and Conservatives alike, he’d pay off people to support him to give him “credibility.” He literally believes the Presidency IS his God-given right. That was the only reason why he entered politics in the first place. He ran against Kennedy in 1994 because he absolutely believed that the party would fall all over themselves to hand him the nomination for President in 1996. He tried to buy the nomination this time and got exposed as a total fraud and liar. When he couldn’t bribe his way onto McCain’s ticket, he made sure that the ticket would go down by having his same paid agents that swarm these boards like a plague of locusts badmouth Gov. Palin, who unlike him, actually has accomplished something in office.
Make no mistake, he has no use for us people beyond getting him the Presidency. He’d throw you and your family under a bus to get what he wants. He has no use for a Republican majority or ANY other Republican winning office except ones that would swear absolute allegiance to advancing HIM. The only difference between him and the new dictator-select is the color of their skin. He and other RINOs of his ilk that have laid to waste our strengths over the past 15 years ARE the biggest enemy to the Conservative movement and the Republican party, and they must be completely and thoroughly exposed for what they are...
You mean who his 'husband' is?
Delusional to the last drop. You need some psychiatric help.
Holy...I won’t say it.
He isn’t. He never was, never will and never can be.
Time to drive a stake through his cold, dead Socialist heart. He’s a Democrat agent, that’s all he ever was. Killing the GOP is his hobby.
You are just to dumb to understand ‘nuance’.
Or you are a hater.
Or both.
/sarcasm
Romney RINOs can mouth the words, but he they 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.
Duncan L Hunter 2012
One of the most astute comments ever written on this forum.
I agree.
Kudos...great comments.
“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.”
Bingo
GO Duncan L Hunter 2012
Ps Romney for RNC chair!
That’s why RINO’s can’t speak. If it isn’t on a 3x5 card, they don’t know what to say.
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