In politics, quotes are often taken out of context and put into a light that highlights a minor point within a larger commentary. It can be damaging to the candidate when they say something inappropriate and the context of the statement is hidden.
This is common.
What's not common is to attack a portion of a statement that was made to mean something completely different from the truth. That's exactly what Mitt Romney's campaign is doing in a desperate effort to halt Rick Santorum's momentum.
Voters at both extremes of the political spectrum are looking to Santorum to be the GOP nominee. True conservatives want him because he is a stark contrast to Obama in ways that Romney is not. True liberals want him for nearly the same reason; they feel Obama's path is strong and would rather go up against someone so completely opposite to avoid the risk of losing the moderate voters to Romney.
Here's the quote in question by Santorum that is being circulated by the Romney team:
“There’s not a management problem in Washington, D.C., all right?”
Out of context, this appears to be a potentially-damaging statement that goes against what the American people believe. According to Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul, the statement demonstrates that “Rick Santorum says that there is not a problem with the way the federal government is being led. That is ridiculous and again proves why conservatives can’t trust a Washington insider to fix the problems that Washington insiders created.”
Now, here's the complete statement by Santorum:
"There’s not a management problem in Washington, all right. There’s a more foundational problem there that goes to the basic concepts of who we are as a people. And those are deeply moral questions."
Santorum wasn't being a "Washington Insider" as the Romney team claims by saying this. He was pointing to the root cause of the problems with Washington, that it's the moral and humanistic qualities of the people in Washington currently that are causing the real problems with the country.
Romney's team would have us believe that Rick Santorum was defending his DC cronies, when in reality he was indicting them for having ineffective moral compasses. The fact that Romney's team would attempt to manipulate a statement like this to earn votes is appalling. To what lengths would he go as President to change perception through spin doctoring?
The real question this brings up is this: How stupid does Mitt Romney think the American people are?