Via Politico:
Ben Smith summarizes:
David Axelrod, still pushing back on a story which relied in part on his on-record quotes, said on "Morning Joe" that the idea of a personally negative campaign against Mitt Romney is "garbage" and "doesn't reflect our thinking."
He also said -- to the glee of at least one senior Republican this morning -- that he would fire any staffer who "used words like weird." That's a pretty low bar, and one they may come to regret.
If I thought the Obama campaign team were actually composed of knife-twisting Chicago-style pols (as Republicans feverishly like to imagine), I'd say Axelrod took sly advantage of the chance to once again reinforce the "Romney is weird" theme without actually having to say "Romney is weird." Hell, if I were Axe, I'd arrange to have an intern who was already getting ready to leave the campaign three or six months from now "freelance" and send an email out calling Romney "weird"—and then make a big show of "firing" his or her ass, just to inject the topic back into the media bloodstream.
As much as I'd like to believe any of this was in the offing, though, I'm much more inclined to think that the Obama team is just being cowed by the Beltway press and is afraid to—horror of horrors—brand Mitt Romney as the weirdo that he is. Hopefully I'm wrong, or at the very least, hopefully others won't hesitate to call a spade a spade. Or a weirdo a weirdo.
