Romneyland thinks Rick Santorum is a secret ally of President Obama (Jim Young/Reuters)
Via Mike Allen,
the latest in Republiclownery:
DRIVING THE CONVERSATION -- Wayne Berman, a Romney campaign national finance co-chair, emails from his iPad: "There is a keen awareness in the party, particularly among fund raisers and elected officials, that Santorum is playing to hurt Romney so that Romney loses. Santorum sees himself as the nominee in 2016, and he's playing a 2016 game. You wouldn't continue to rip at Romney and tear at Romney and try to damage Romney if you were playing the normal, second-place game. The normal second-place approach is to rally around the nominee and become part of the leadership of the party.
"If Republicans lose, just by nature of the party, you are the leading contender the next time. But for whatever reason, Senator Santorum made a different decision, and you can see it in how his attacks remain extraordinarily personal and not illuminating policy differences. They are ... about Mitt's character. You have a legitimate contender who lost and who is staying in to try to engineer a general election loss for the nominee for their own personal agenda. And that narrative is being broadly discussed in the party. It's helping Governor Romney with electeds, with party people, with donors and with voters."
Gosh, who knew Mitt Romney and his campaign were such a delicate flowers? He spends more than $100 million trying to destroy Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and then when he gets the
tiniest little taste of his own medicine in return, he
freaks out about it?
Not only that, it's the Romney campaign's own fault that Santorum's attacks are getting any oxygen. If Santorum's communications team had said Romney plans to erase his positions like an Etch-A-Sketch, nobody would have paid any attention. But it was Romney's own campaign that made the comparison ... it was an entirely self-inflicted wound. Did they seriously expect Santorum (or Gingrich, for that matter) to turn the other cheek after what Romney has done to them?
Finally, Romneyland's entire complaint is predicated on the notion that Rick Santorum has "lost" the nomination. Sure, Santorum might be the longest of long shots, but if Romneyland thinks Santorum has already "lost" ... then why hasn't Romney yet won? To paraphrase Aaron Sorkin's line from The Social Network ... if Mitt Romney were already the nominee, wouldn't he already be the nominee? And if he's not already the nominee, doesn't it make him look like a fool to tell his opponents that they should stop trying to beat him?