The Romney campaign has had a rough overseas trip. In a matter of a few days, the Republican nominee hopeful has managed to alienate the
British, anger the Palestinians and now just annoy the traveling press corps in Poland. To Romney’s defense, he didn’t do the last thing himself, that was the handiwork of his press guy, Rick Gorka.
As the story goes, Romney was at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw paying his respects. As he was leaving, reporters were shouting to get his attention. Gorka, who apparently doesn’t have
much patience with the press corps, got pretty annoyed and shouted things back like ‘kiss my ass’ and ‘get bent’ back to reporters, after scolding them that they were at what was considered a holy site for the Polish people. Gorka later called to apologize to the reporters
he dressed down but sadly for this campaign, the trip ended up being a
disaster, it’s just that they don’t seem to think so.
Stewart Stevens, Romney’s senior political advisor and someone I think has the same level of gumption as a Karl Rove (in most cases) feels that the trip was a great success for Mitt. According to CNN, Stevens felt like this trip allowed the world to see the real Romney and see where he stands on foreign policy and governance. Yeah. The British seemed to be happy to see him go and the Palestinians are now calling Romney a racist for his remarks that they are poor because of their culture. If, as Stevens puts it, this is the real Romney, that’s not going to bode well for his campaign.
The Obama campaign, of course, has jumped all over this, calling the trip a public relations and campaign disaster for the Romney camp. While they are sort of correct, this is not the death knell. It’s still early enough for this to be turned around. The Republican machine is picking up speed and the Democrats know it. James Carville said in an email “Mitt and the Republicans are out-raising us, attacking us and voila - they’ve almost got this thing tied up.” The Obama camp is concerned and I feel rightfully so.
How much this has hurt the Romney campaign will be shown when the next round of polls come out. Election day is still a long way away and a lot can happen. I think the best thing Stevens can do for Romney is to keep him under wraps for a bit. Unleashing him again too soon will do nothing to help their cause.
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