Monday, September 24, 2012

The Lack Of Campaign Discipline

I'm a bit baffled by the proliferation of these news stories about conservatives dumping all over Mitt Romney's campaign:
But Republicans remain nervous about the Romney campaign’s strategy, and are urging him to change course instead of being defensive about his approach.

“Again, the biggest concern is the attitude in Mitt Romney’s head right now,” former Republican congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on “Meet the Press.” “When he says that they don’t need to turn the campaign around, when you have Stuart Stevens and others basically saying, “Full steam ahead,” that’s a serious problem.”
Just about any campaign is a pretty sorry beast, and you can criticize the beast all day long. One thing I admired about Ronald Reagan's campaigns was the way the senior staff went to extraordinary lengths to stop the carping and the sniping. The role of the party and the partisans is to unite behind the candidate, and, basically, shut up and do the candidate's bidding. Reagan and his staff understood the importance of remaining disciplined. You can open up and talk about the problems at the victory party afterwards!

The fact that the modern GOP is having so much trouble doing this one, should-be-easy-to-do, utterly-essential thing shows a lack of discipline. I can't blame Ann Romney for saying "Stop it. This is hard!"

The Romneys have done their part. It's now time for the GOP to do its part. And they can start by shutting up.

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