In this column for Thursday's Washington Post, begins like this:
NBC News reported on Tuesday morning that Mitt Romney’s campaign was “throwing the kitchen sink” at President Obama: With prospects fading, the Republican challenger was trying any and all lines of attack to see what might stick.
But the problem with throwing the kitchen sink is you might break a pipe — and then you’ve got a real mess.
Please keep reading.
Earlier today, while on Martin Bashir, Milbank had said words to the effect that he had not thought that the campaign could sink any lower, but that he had been wrong.
The column is powerful and pointed and should be widely distributed. Here is another snip:
“I’m not going to take hypotheticals about what would have been known and so forth,” Romney answered to that last question. “We responded last night to the events that happened in Egypt.”
That he did — recklessly.
The number of major media figures who are willing to be on record criticizing what Romney did is expanding - Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd are among them.
Romney has now created a mess for himself with the media, who question whether he is a credible candidate for President of the United States.
To compound the problem, there is this New York Times story which makes clear that there was a group effort in drafting Romney's Tuesday night statement that started this controversy. Let me quote one graf from that article:
The resulting statement took shape while Mr. Romney and a reduced staff contingent flew from Reno, Nev., to Jacksonville, Fla., from about 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, and the statement went out about an hour after he landed and signed off on it. Aides said it was drafted by committee — a team effort by one group of advisers specializing in policy, the communications team and the strategy shop.
This reaises a further question - the quality of the people upon whom Romney is choosing to rely in this campaign.
Returning to Milbank, after he quotes some of the offensive language from Romney, he concludes his column like this:
But other top Republicans, including House and Senate leaders, declined to join his criticism of Obama, and the campaign issued talking points to campaign surrogates to try to manage the furor. By Wednesday afternoon, Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, was called upon for clean-up duty.
“This is a time for healing,” Ryan said, without repeating Romney’s broadside.
That sounded presidential. Romney might wish to follow his understudy’s lead — and grab a mop.
I do not know how one runs a Presidential campaign when much of the press, many of the talking heads, and many of your own party, have lost confidence in your ability to fill the responsibilities of the high office.
Read the Milbank.
Read the Times article.
Pass both on.