Romney camp united about whether to viciously attack Sen. McCain on personal grounds, divided about how to do it—also: more Romney dirty tricks

January 6, 2008 in 2008, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, media, mitt romney, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: dirty tricks, negative advertising, negative attacks, negative campaigning, negativity, New Hampshire, nh, rumors, Sen. John McCain, whisper campaigns

“MANCHESTER, N.H. — Desperate to save Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential campaign in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, his advisers all wanted to attack Sen. John McCain but were divided about how to do it,” writes Robert D. Novak in a column entry titled Mitt’s Divided Strategy

Coming out of his disappointing performance in the Iowa Caucuses, the Romney camp was united in the need to hit McCain hard for voting against President Bush’s tax cuts. But the decision also to attack McCain’s support for the liberal Bush immigration reform was opposed by a minority of Romney’s advisers. These dissenters argued that Romney’s hard line on immigration taken in Iowa did him no good there […]

Dear Team Romney: these are not the dissenters you need to listen to. The dissenters you need to listen to you fired.

Here is where we quoted an online.wsj article that told the story of earlier dissension in Romney’s ranks about the question of whether to go negative or remain committed to larger themes. Two good speech writers—the last two professional communicators of integrity at Team Romney—got cashiered in the imbroglio. (The paranoiacs at Team Romney experience dissent as disloyalty.)

Luntz: “Romney made a ‘big mistake’ by going negative against Huckabee”—how a Faustian Romney rages against the laws of physics

From the same column:

[…] Published reports that Fred Thompson soon will withdraw from the Republican presidential contest and endorse Sen. John McCain have been traced in part to Mitt Romney’s campaign, trying to stir up strife between McCain and Thompson […]

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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