Wall Street Journal describes Mitt Romney as 'politically dumb'

Mitt Romney Is Shellacked by Conservatives

Jul 5, 2012

Mitt Romney is facing the backlash from conservatives that his opponents predicted in the primary, and it isn’t pretty.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, a standard-bearer of conservative thought and talking points, broke with the script this morning and published a critique of the Romney campaign’s waffling on whether to call the health care mandate a tax after the Supreme Court ruled it so.

By calling the mandate a penalty and not a tax, the paper said, the Romney campaign “contradicted Republicans throughout the country.” And even though Romney later said in an interview that the penalty is a “tax,” the Journal wrote, “he offered no elaboration, and so the campaign looks confused in addition to being politically dumb.”

It doesn’t end there. William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine who has long been skeptical of Romney, wrote this morning that harping on the economy won’t guarantee Romney victory, especially if he won’t take specific stances on issues.

“Adopting a prevent defense when it’s only the second quarter and you’re not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy,” Kristol wrote. “But his campaign’s monomaniacal belief that it’s about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it’s only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.”



http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/mitt-romney-clumsy-on-health-care-falls-into-predicted-trap/