P.S. 9/17/12, 5:45 a.m.: Note, too, that the Daily News refused to permit readers to comment. Lupica can dish it out, but he can't take it.
Mitt Romney and his band of
clowns continue to run one of
the worst campaigns of recent
memory
GOP candidate has taken a presidential election that should have been his to win and made it something for Barack Obama to lose.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Sunday, September 16, 2012, 11:50 PM
Updated: Monday, September 17, 2012, 4:00 AM
Mitt Romney's clown act turned winnable election into a circus sideshow.
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There was a lot of talk about Libya last week, because Mitt Romney didn't know when to shut up about dead Americans, including Chris Stevens, a good man who was our ambassador there.
Somehow, in a terrible moment like that, Romney was boneheaded enough to hand political advantage over to the other side, despite the fact that the President went ahead with a scheduled campaign stop in Las Vegas the next day, as if delaying his appearance by an hour was a suitable mourning period.
But it is not just Libya. It is everything that has happened lately as Romney and the amateurs around him continue to run one of the worst campaigns of recent memory, even against one of the worst economies any sitting President has ever tried to defend.
The people around Romney don't just look like amateurs, they look like clowns sometimes. Romney was never going to be a great candidate; he doesn't have it in him, he too often comes across like some stiff poster boy for all the one-percenters who want him elected. But you thought he would do better than this, with the whole thing sitting right there for him, because of this President's record on the economy and on jobs. Only Mitt Romney has taken an election that should have been his to win and made it something for Barack Obama to lose.
There is a wonderful line out of baseball that covers this, from Orioles manager Buck Showalter, one about "how not everybody knows how to play a winning hand."
Romney isn't as bad a candidate as John McCain was four years ago, and not just because McCain thought Sarah Palin was some kind of inspired choice as a running mate. John McCain had the economy crash on him and then let Obama take the fight right to him at that moment and get enough of the country to believe it was McCain who had been running the country for eight years, and not George W. Bush.
On top of that, McCain started to run out of money, going against an Obama campaign that spent like the Yankees to the end.
Money was never going to be an issue for Romney, who eventually out-slugged all comers during the primary campaign, one front-runner after another, with his wallet. No, the issue for Romney IS his campaign, the way he's making such a mess of what could have been, and maybe should have been, his own winning hand.
You see that an old pro like Ed Gillespie is a "senior adviser" to the Romney campaign. Only, the way things are going, Gillespie should be the only top adviser, the only voice in the room that should matter. If Romney continues to listen to some of these lightweights from Massachusetts he has brought with him to this moment and this stage, ones who seem completely out of their league going up against the Obama machine, a President with 23 million unemployed is going to end up running away with this.
There is a reason why Barack Obama tries to run on Bill Clinton's record, especially with the economy: Because he can't run on his own. Romney got this nomination because he was always the best the Republicans had, because the others in the primary process — Rick Perry and Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and the rest — looked like they were piling out of a clown car. But now he is in there against Obama's guys, who somehow managed to run against Bush and not McCain in 2008, and, in 2012, try to act as if the last four years never happened.
Craig Warga/New York Daily News
Paul Ryan speaks at the Republican National Convention.
Romney has stumbled around the ring all summer, from the time he decided not to release his tax returns. Then he stood back and let shameless self-promoters like Chris Christie and Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio act as if he was almost as much of a prop at the Republican convention as Clint Eastwood's chair. "Beating an incumbent is never easy," Romney told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday.
AP Photo
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
But Romney is making it too easy. The first thing he needs to do is make an important foreign policy speech, somehow articulate a plan for the Middle East a lot better than he's explained his plan to create jobs, at least so far.
Tyson Trish
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
What is a nightmare economy for too many Americans, ought to be a dream economy for a candidate trying to beat an incumbent. Only Romney, when he's not shooting off his mouth, keeps shooting himself in the foot. He keeps telling the country what a crackerjack businessman he is, but how does anybody believe him when he can't manage the business of running for President?
There are still 50 days to go. But as another manager, the great Yogi Berra, always said: It sure gets late early around here. Even the guys running Romney's campaign ought to be able to understand a concept like that.
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