Mitt-3-PO seems not to understand that when you fail to stand behind a member of your team, especially when that team member belongs to a class of people you know is derided by the side your team represents, that team member is going to be pissed.
Those of us who are not emotionally vacuous are not surprised that Richard Grenell, who recently resigned his post at the Romney campaign, is pissed.
From The New York Times:
But Richard Grenell, the political strategist who helped organize the call and was specifically hired to oversee such communications, was conspicuously absent, or so everyone thought.
It turned out he was at home in Los Angeles, listening in, but stone silent and seething. A few minutes earlier, a senior Romney aide had delivered an unexpected directive, according to several people involved in the call.
“Ric,” said Alex Wong, a policy aide, “the campaign has requested that you not speak on this call.” Mr. Wong added, “It’s best to lay low for now.”
For Mr. Grenell, the message was clear: he had become radioactive.
The Romney campaign doesn’t get it:
The day after Mr. Grenell was hired, Bryan Fischer, a Romney critic with the American Family Association, told nearly 1,400 followers on Twitter: “If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead.” The next day, the conservative Daily Caller published an online column that summed up the anger of the Christian right, linking Mr. Grenell’s hiring to the appointment of gay judges to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
As the critiques from conservatives intensified, Mr. Grenell pressed senior aides to allow him to speak about national security issues, arguing that the best way to soothe the ire over his appointment would be to let him do his job: defend his boss and take swipes at President Obama.
But Mr. Romney’s advisers balked at the idea of his taking a public role, saying that the best way to get beyond the controversy was for Mr. Grenell to lower his profile until it blew over. A big worry: that reporters would ask Mr. Grenell about his Twitter feed or sexuality, turning him rather than Mr. Romney’s foreign policy into the story.
~snip~
Romney advisers attribute at least some of Mr. Grenell’s frustration to the inevitable complications of starting a new job within a large, competitive and rigid organization filled with big egos.
But the final straw, for Mr. Grenell, was the conference call on April 26. After being told not to speak, he felt deeply undermined, worrying it would erode his credibility with journalists who had expected to hear from him, friends said.
~snip~
Several of them said they were baffled. They felt the storm had largely passed. “We were shocked,” one caller said. “We could not persuade him to stay.”
Several gay leaders said the campaign failed to grasp the message it had sent when it told him to lie low. “Clearly, the Romney campaign thought if they could put him in a box for a while it would go away,” said Christopher Barron, a founder of GOProud, a gay Republican group in Washington. “It is an unforced error on their part.”
Really? The Romney campaign was baffled as to why the man they hired as their foreign policy spokesperson was told not to speak during a major conference call about foreign policy out of fealty to religious nutbags like Bryan J. Fischer? Baffled?!
Look, as I’ve said previously, Grenell is a misogynist dick, and I don’t feel sorry for the guy. Grenell is gay and still chose to align himself with a party filled with people who hate him for who he is, and who kiss the ring of the most right-wing homophobic assholes.
Still, Romney hired him and Romney should have stuck by him. Romney should have let Grenell do his job and he should have told the likes of Bryan Fischer to eat his magic underpants. Also, Romney should have known that not letting Grenell do his job in the hopes that the controversy would blow over was never a tactic that was going to work. The right-wing haters don’t forget, and they would never have been cool with A Gay in their midst. The controversy never would have blown over.
Romney blew it.
[read the rest at TRS-ABLC]
Culture of Truth
I take back what I said in the previous thread. Romney is running a brilliant campaign.
MattF
Well, Mitt sold his soul to you-know-who to get where he is now. Admittedly, the soul in question was puny, if not vestigial, to begin with– but, now we see, there’s a difference between an itsy-bitsy soul and none at all.
beergoggles
@Culture of Truth:
For Obama.
Egypt Steve
I dunno. I also sort of wonder if Callista’s hair snaps on.
General Stuck
Yawn. A wingnut is a wingnut is a wingnut. I don’t care whether they are homosexual, bisexual or from planet Draco. Though I am always gratified dissident republicans pissing in their own tents, whatever the reason. Shines a bright light on the soft underbelly of the lizard party.
Redshift
I’m not taking anything for granted, but each instance of basic political malpractice from the Romney campaign makes me a little more relaxed. This one combines his extreme risk-avoidance with showing once again that he’s going to be battling the wingnut base any time he tries to “moderate” all the easy to November. Awesome
Schadenfreude
Good! Make the G.O.P. walk the walk.. and let the country see them goose-stepping through the public square…
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Yep. Just from a team perspective, good luck attracting loyal, good quality talent to your team after this little stunt, Mittens. Every non-wingnut on your campaign is now going to secretly wonder if or when s/he will be the next one to fail the GOP purity test and get tossed off the boat.
In business relationships, trust is everything. For an alleged Meister-Businessman, Romney doesn’t seem to understand this at all.
Calouste
@Redshift:
Let’s keep in mind that Romney won the primary against people who couldn’t even get on the ballot in all states, and/or couldn’t get enough delegates to fill their slates. And he still couldn’t break 50% nationally.
So Romney has won the 100 meters by a bodylength against a bunch of people who can’t tie their own shoes and one really old geezer, and now he thinks he can run in the Olympics.
Ash Can
This would require Romney having something in those magic underpants other than whatever gets scared out of him by the de facto leaders of his party.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This raises the question; is Romney an Obama plant in the Romney campaign? That would be the only reasonable explanation for Mitten’s behavior.
And lest it be forgotten Grenell was there to represent the Chicken Hawks as a disciple of Bolton. So that is a third group Mr Echo-Sketch managed to irritate in all this.
The Bearded Blogger
@Culture of Truth: On that topic…
1) Isn’t Romneys bumper sticker “We’re not stupid, it’s still about the economy” a very awkward yet transparent way of seeming to not plagiarize Clinton’s line against Bush?
2) Won’t all the citizens united cash poured into the campaign help boost the economy, and, therefore, Obama’s reelection?
MikeJ
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Republicans don’t believe in trust, they believe in power. Do what I say or I’ll destroy you. Which is why they go so far to avoid things like any admission that they were ever wrong about anything. Any weakness will be seen as a sign that the people on your side should start trying to destroy you.
RossinDetroit
Thanks for laying this out in plain terms, ABL. I agree that Mitt blew this one. But he can’t help himself. Before one can stand up for anything a spine is required.
Calouste
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
What Romney done during his “business” career pretty much relied on getting people to trust you and then stick the knife in. The trust is not the goal of the corporate vulture, sticking in the knife and making off with the loot is.
The Bearded Blogger
@Redshift:
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
I think Romney is not so much inept as fantastically entitled. He feels he’s already bought the presidency, and shouldn’t have to put up with the hassle of campaigning
Culture of Truth
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I wonder how many of those so-called wingut web sites are actually liberal spoofs
mdblanche
So are the Very Serious People who said that hiring a gay was evidence that Romney is really a moderate retracting what they said after this? Anyone? Anyone?
Seriously, I’ve never had much respect for Mitt’s fortitude but this is a new low, even for him. After this I just can’t envision him standing up to any hostile pressure period. His craven weakness really scares me.
Oh, and to any gay Republicans out there, when you say you got that black eye walking into a door nobody believes you anymore.
Chris
@The Bearded Blogger:
Exactly this.
Palin had the same lazy “I deserve this, why should I even pretend to go through the motions” attitude.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MikeJ:
His campaign staffers have been on record saying Romney doesn’t get angry or threaten people. I have detected a distinct lack of fear from the Right for him (from what I understand it was conservatives who first called him “Mittens”). For example consider how public Grenell is about him being upset with Romeny
The Bearded Blogger
@Culture of Truth: No way to tell… remember blogs4brownback?
Catsy
@Egypt Steve:
I always figured they scaled up a hairpiece from a Lego minifig.
Warren Terra
It is interesting that the misogynistic, abusive Grenell was fired not for that record but because he happened to be Gay, isn’t it?
But the scarier story is why he was hired in the first place: he had previously been John Bolton’s right hand man. Yes, that John Bolton, he of the walrus mustache and the insanely jingoistic, xenophobic, militaristic and colonialist views. The one who couldn’t get confirmed to the job of UN Ambassador by a frankly rather supine Senate because his views were so extraordinarily awful – wishing ten floors of the UN headquarters were blown up, for instance. A guy who seemingly learned everything he knows about diplomacy by playing the board game Risk … alone. Grenell was his chief aide, and reportedly his uncensored id. Those are the professional qualifications Willard sought out.
El Tiburon
I don’t know. Was Van Jones pissed when Obama threw him under the bus like a 3-day old sandwich for no fucking reason?
While not quiet the same, was Shirley Sherrod pissed when she was fired for no fucking reason?
I guess Mitt and Obama are controlled by the same puppet masters: the right wing.
Warren Terra
@Catsy:
I understand it was a custom job by Tiffany’s. Real Platinum Blonde.
beltane
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Mitt Romney walks softly and carries a limp stick.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Bearded Blogger: Getting a parody of a conservative nominated by the Republican party would be the Ultimate Snark. Has someone just done that with Mittens?
General Stuck
Romney, among other things un nice, is a technocrats technocrat. The pure grade free market kind – as in claw your way over glass and fire to pry one more dollar out of clutches of your dying mother.
Most politicians have a sober view of these traits and how to control them with a measure of thoughtfulness, at least feigned, with a projection of some loyalty and compassion toward other human beings.
Romney is a raider, scorched earth plunderer, for the raw advantage from the predatory Wall Street mentality he comes from. He has no sense of, at a minimum, the rituals of defining his own character for voters, as having boundaries with other human beings.
He is in part, auditioning for comforter and boy scout in chief. Along with the go getter, resolute CiC, via an aura of silent strength to get done what needs doing, when it is time for that.
Not as a singular defining characteristic. Always calculating for the edge to win at any given moment in time.
There won’t be much left of this man, when Obama’s pol kapos get through with him. The sad irony is, that in spite of it all, he may still win.
Culture of Truth
@Chris: I was just talking to someone about George H.W. Bush, specifically his debate with Ferraro. Same thing.
MattF
@Warren Terra: I agree that this is the real scandal. Mitt gave in completely, head to toe, bones and scales, to the wingers on foreign policy, and it wasn’t enough. They still don’t trust him.
Napoleon
@Warren Terra:
I read in the last day that some reporters felt Grenell was the least trustworthy spokesperson they had ever dealt with.
mdblanche
@Warren Terra: There isn’t a single aspect of Grenell’s short employment with the Romney team that reflects well on them, is there?
The Bearded Blogger
@Catsy: I just pictured a bald Callista Gingrich with a round and flat protuberance on the top of her head… thank you…
lamh35
I posted this in an earlier thread, but it needs to be seen to believed, the LCR guy goes out of his way to make sure not to hurt the sensibilities of the R-Money campaign. Gay or not they still love them some GOP so they gotta not burn their bridges.
Tweety had a segment on this with a guy from the HRC and from LCR. The guy from LCR seemed to try to go out of his way NOT to call the R-Money campaign the cowards they were. He seemed more keen to try not to burn his bridges with the campaign than he was to defend his “friend” (kept saying Ric was his friend) honor. Tweety was in rare form yesterday though, so he didn’t let the dude cop-out. Same guys who voted GOP before still gonna support GOP again.
Here’s the clip: Romney aide quits after pressure from anti-gay conservatives
cmorenc
SERENDIPITOUS IRONY: Guess how many comments had been posted at the moment I tuned in to this thread about yet another piece of GOP spite-filled insanity?
YOU GUESSED IT:
27!
I tell ya, there’s something as magical in the political world as e, pi, and the golden ratio are in the mathematical and physical world…
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon: Now that you mention it, I actually _don’t_ remember Van Jones popping off to the press about how he’d been done wrong. My sense was that Sherrod was pissed, but kept quiet, but I never got the sense that Jones was pissed, just that he was shaking his head about the stupidity of the circumstances. If Jones was aggrieved, AFAIK I don’t remember any hints that he expressed it to anyone. Which is not how Grenell has reacted.
Catsy
@The Bearded Blogger: It’s even funnier when you know that the official term for the raised connecting pips in the Lego system is “studs”. And that the one on the top of a minifig’s head is hollow.
Insert innuendo here.
Ash Can
I object to all this talk about Callista Gingrich having Lego hair. Lego minifigures are way cuter than she is.
And in other, not-entirely-unrelated news, it seems that Jodie Brunstetter’s candid remarks about the true intended purpose of North Carolina’s anti-gay-marriage bill have, amazingly enough, lost it some conservative African-American support. But hey, you can’t blame Jodie:
No, I am not making this up.
Jay C
Kinda/sorta disagree here, ABL: I think the Romney campaign knows exactly what they’re doing: it’s wrongheaded, stupid and most-likely counterproductive, but I think their strategy is quite deliberate. Romney and his team have got to know that they they can’t afford to tick off TOO much of their potential base. It’s not that homophobic wingnuts like the AFA are going to be voting for anyone BUT the GOP nominee in any case, but he needs them a shit-ton more than they need him – the “enthusiasm gap” is, I think, going to a significant factor, this year – and Team Mitt is going to need ewvery last vote they can scare up – literally, given that name-calling and fearmongering is really all they have…
beltane
@Ash Can: Of course not. She was just expressing her concern for the people of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia whose existence would be threatened by gay people in North Carolina getting married.
Culture of Truth
Here’s how Romney should have played it: gotten all huffy over Grenell’s misogynist tweets, and announced that given how much Mittens respects womenfolk, Grenell sadly, had to resign.
Behind closed doors, assure the base that they got rid of the gay guy like they wanted. Two-fer.
Ben Cisco
The ironic part of all this is that the 27 percenters are going to get their way throughout this campaign, they’re going to lose, BADLY, and when they try to get their little reptile brains wrapped around WHY they lost…
They’re going to believe it was because they weren’t wingnutty ENOUGH.
Fascinating.
catclub
@RossinDetroit: “Before one can stand up for anything a spine is required.”
Actually, not true. A Praying Mantis has no spine. But it does have an exoskeleton.
Catsy
@Ash Can:
Okay, I gotta give that one to you.
eric
I disagree. He was fired for the misogyny, but they could not say that because that would be an admission that the non-existent war on women actually existed. They were not prepared for the anti-women blowback they were getting. So, they used the “gay” objections as pretext for the termination to make the most of bad situation by making the mouth breathers happy. Everyone knows who this guy is and that he is gay and that it is a neo-con of the highest order.
kay
@The Bearded Blogger:
I just think it’s insidery and makes too many assumptions to be a slogan.
What does “we’re not stupid, it’s still about the economy” mean?
That someone said it wasn’t? Who?
I just think it assumes some casual observer has been paying daily attention and they know that Mitt Romney’s campaign is saying Obama is trying to distract from the economy, and they’re completely persuaded of that.
Looking at it, it could just as easily be an Obama attack on Romney.
The Bearded Blogger
@Ben Cisco: If Romney loses this election, the GOP ticket for 2016 will be something like Nugent/Norris
The Bearded Blogger
@kay: You are right… it does reflect bubble thinking…
Culture of Truth
“We’re not stupid, it’s still about the economy”
Wait, that’s a real thing??
I retract my retraction.
beltane
@kay: It does look like an attack on Romney. Low-information people won’t get it at all while everyone else will think “Bill Clinton, Democrat”.
El Tiburon
@FlipYrWhig:
My comment, per usual, was very actually a dig at ABL and Obama. I find it amusing that ABL seems to be chiding Romney for pretty much the same actions Obama has taken time and time again: bowing to right-wing pressure.
Phil Perspective
@beergoggles: I think that was his/her point!!
kay
@The Bearded Blogger:
I’m a little confused by it, and I read this crap every day.
What’s the Obama “trick”?
OBL, war on women, student loans, all of it?
Everything he says is a clever distraction from what Mitt Romney says?
I’m not seeing the massive flim-flam Obama is running. He’s just campaigning, doing an issue a week in an orderly manner, which is what he always does, and Romney is responding like a trained seal, one week behind.
West of the Cascades
I have a funny (hopeful) feeling we’ll be hearing that a lot over the next six months.
Catsy
@El Tiburon: As per usual, you’re not really paying attention to the whole context or what anyone else here has written about it.
The problem isn’t that Romney has bowed to right-wing pressure, per se. Reduce it to that simplistic formulation and of course you can find a parallel with the Obama administration.
The problem is that Romney has done so in a ham-fisted way that pisses off everyone and–more importantly–reinforces both his weaknesses and the negative traits people already associate with him. Specifically:
1. That he has no principles and doesn’t stand for anything
2. That, from the perspective of bigots, he’s not a real conservative (by hiring an openly gay staffer in the first place)
3. That, from the perspective of moderates, he’s willing to throw gay people under the bus in order to appease the bigots
Context matters.
The Bearded Blogger
@kay: You see, what you have to keep in mind is that Obama is black.
yeah, the Romney campaign is weird, I think they assume everyone is on the same bubble. Every War on Women question they deflect to the economy, as if those questions were illegitimate, mere distractions… it’s condescending.
jim filyaw
“Romney blew it.”
bad choice of words here.
Villago Delenda Est
@MikeJ:
This helps explain why George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Mitt Romney couldn’t go to Vietnam.
They’d have been killed by the rest of their platoons.
burnspbesq
It is somewhat ironic that the only person who comes out of this mess looking at all good is John Bolton, who apparently cared more about whether the guy could do the job Bolton needed him to do than any other consideration.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon: Yes, I know that was your intent, but it would be a better parallel if Van Jones had been widely quoted seething about his mistreatment, and AFAIK he wasn’t. Grenell, OTOH, is. Which alters the parallelism in a significant way.
burnspbesq
@Catsy:
El Tiburon is wack, but his message discipline is impressive. It’s ALWAYS about how Obama has fucked up. If David DeCastro tears his ACL on the first day of training camp, he will be here complaining about how Obama failed Steelers fans.
El Cid
A Republican who wouldn’t take it any more stands up and says ‘Enough’.
Okay, there’s still a bit of “both sides” stuff, but in context, not much.
David Koch
Romney deserves credit for standing up to the radical homosexual agenda.
Among Christians who believe in traditional values, Romney has proved himself to be a worthy successor to Rick Santorum.
cmorenc
@The Bearded Blogger:
A really extreme fire-breathing GOP ticket such as this would be wondrously entertaining with the constant flow of over-the top stupidity and unintentional performance-art self parody IF ONLY they didn’t actually have a small but realistically possible chance of actually winning. I would like to think the Dems would have their act together well enough in 2016 to nominate a strong enough candidate to make it an uphill challenge for the GOP even with their nominally more sane-seeming candidates like Huntsman. Nevertheless, you never know…we could either end up nominating a candidate with limited appeal outside certain factions ourselves, or else nominate an otherwise strongly, broadly appealing candidate whom certain factions will be intent on pouting and sitting on their hands about supporting because their fe-fes are hurt about not getting their way, thus making it a more nervously close contest than it should be running against a certified crazy GOP ticket.
David Koch
Allan West/Scott Walker 2016!
MaryRC
The call was last Thursday, April 26. So when Eric Ferhrnstrom told CNN “First let me correct you. He wasn’t two weeks on the job. He was scheduled to start on May 1.”, he was lying. And now Grenell has made sure we know he was lying. Nice work.
mclaren
The only time Mitt Romney ever stood behind anyone was to push him off a ledge. This guy is a job cremator. He’s made his career out of pushing people off ledges, destroying their lives, shutting down companies and firing everyone.
Why on earth would anyone expect any sort of loyalty from this sociopath now?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@jim filyaw:
Worse word choice would be “Unzipped on Grenell, Romney is found to be lacking in stiffness”
mclaren
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Or perhaps “Romney gags on Grennell, unable to swallow gay staffer”?
RedKitten
Can I just add how much it annoys me that anti-gay bigots have co-opted the term “pro-family”? I’m all for family. I have family, and think they’re the bee’s knees. I’m also fully supportive of equal rights for the LGBT community.
So fuck you, Bryan Fischer. I’m ALL for family — my family just happens to not be comprised of a bunch of tight-ass bigots, that’s all.
Ken
@David Koch:
Nah, to them Romney’s still a filthy heretic who thinks he’s going to become a god after he dies. But at least they know they can jerk his chain and make him behave.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@MikeJ:
Which probably explains why, out here in the real world, hard-core Republicans make such shitty businessmen.
Mitt Romney is no “Businessman”. He never had to make a payroll. He never had to chase down invoices. He never had to worry about health insurance for his employees. He never had to manage a small business credit line in the lean times to get to the next season. He never had to deal with competition from overseas, or with the big-box trans-national chain that opened up shop up the street from him.
Mitt Romney is a capital investor. Not a businessman.
MSM, of course, will never mention this.
tdmcmains
There is something I don’t really get about the right wing “love the sinner, not the sin” thing. The problem I am having with it is… that is it bullsh*t. OK, so gays can’t marry, sure, undermining marriage, yup. Check. But they also can’t talk about foreign policy??? They can’t be judges? Can we get a list of professions that would be acceptable for gays to engage in? Can they bag our groceries or will they get all the gay on my food? I’m pretty sure they shouldn’t be doctors — too much naked!! So… what exactly should they be doing?
It reminds me of what we do to ex-cons — we’re supposed to rehabilitate people but instead we just make sure that nobody can get honest work after serving time. But in this case, I guess, the crime was being gay.
sigh…