Waa waa waa
So, Huckabee grabbed a win in West Virginia with the help of McCain and Paul supporters whose guys came in light at the electoral convention.
Mitt Romney’s guys have responded:
Today, Romney for President Campaign Manager Beth Myers issued the following statement regarding the outcome of West Virginia’s Republican Party convention:
“Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain’s inside Washington ways look like: he cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney’s campaign of conservative change.
“Governor Romney had enough respect for the Republican voters of West Virginia to make an appeal to them about the future of the party based on issues. This is why he led on today’s first ballot. Sadly, Senator McCain cut a Washington backroom deal in a way that once again underscores his legacy of working against Republicans who are interested in championing conservative policies and rebuilding the party.”
But wait, how did he think that a state convention with multiple rounds until one candidate gets a majority was actually going to work? After waging war on McCain and trying to make it a two-man battle (including asking Huckabee to leave the race) what on earth did they expect to happen? McCain voters were obviously going to try to deny Romney a win once it became obvious that their guy wasn’t going to win. Indeed, the Convention is almost designed to guarantee it. If they want to bitch about anything, they might as well bitch about Paul supporters, who had 10% or so of the vote in the first round.
Romney, of course, can still do well elsewhere, but he should stop whining about the structure of the West Virginia process, when he knew damn well what it was going to be, long before today. He can’t ignore two candidates as irrelevant and attack one candidate as his mortal enemy and expect the other guys’ supporters to come home to him just because he had a plurality.
Sure seems to me that “rebuilding the party” would imply, oh, I dunno, working together with supporters of other campaigns. Which, as Adam points out, Romney has long since decided not to do. Which, in turn, explains how he managed to lose in West Virginia today.
One would expect a self-declared superexecutive to have a better understanding of organizational dynamics than this. If he can’t see this sort of thing coming, I am loath to place him in the snake pit of global politics.
All that aside, it must be said: even given the necessities of spin, that is an astonishingly ungracious (and, yes, pathetic) statement by the Romney campaign.
Romney was young enough in this election cycle that he could conceivably have contended in future ones. But he’s getting to the point now where’s he’s burned a lot of bridges and has created some very long memories.
Comment by Rojas — 2/5/2008 @ 4:36 pm
Unbelievably, CNN is reporting that this is a controversy. A McCain guy is being interviewed saying that Romney’s statement ‘just makes no sense’.
Comment by Adam — 2/5/2008 @ 4:53 pm
CNN’s behavior, first in the debate and now on this story, has been bizarrely and obsequiously sympathetic to Romney’s interests. Which is utterly inexplicable to me, as there is reason why CNN would have any institutional bias in Romney’s direction.
Comment by Rojas — 2/5/2008 @ 5:51 pm
Again, I don’t think media in general are particularly biased so much as they’re invested in creating meaningless conflict and narratives, most of which they don’t recognize unless they come from a pre-vetted list of them. “Comeback Kid!” “Candidate Spat!” “Dirty Tricks!” etc.
Though watching that sausage get made in this case is pretty disgusting.
Comment by Brad — 2/5/2008 @ 6:51 pm
Stirring up news is almost inevitably going to work against the person out in front, I think. It’s nt such interesting ‘news’ if the guy lagging behind is being attacked.
Comment by Adam — 2/5/2008 @ 7:14 pm