A Mood of Gloom Afflicts the Romney Campaign [View all]

Source: New York Times

September 18, 2012, 7:34 PM1 Comment

A Mood of Gloom Afflicts the Romney Campaign

By MICHAEL BARBARO

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A palpably gloomy and openly frustrated mood has begun to envelop Mr. Romney’s campaign for president. Well practiced in the art of lurching from public relations crisis to public relations crisis, his team seemed to reach its limit as it digested a ubiquitous set of video clips that showed their boss candidly describing nearly half of the country’s population as government-dependent “victims,” and saying that he would “kick the ball down the road” on the biggest foreign policy challenge of the past few decades, the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

Grim-faced aides acknowledged that it was an unusually dark moment, made worse by the self-inflicted, seemingly avoidable nature of the wound. In low-volume, out-of-the-way conversations, they are now wondering whether victory is still possible and whether they are entering McCain-Palin ticket territory.

A flustered adviser, describing the mood, said that the campaign was turning into a vulgar, unprintable phrase.

Aides did little to hide their annoyance: on Tuesday night, a Romney aide cursed loudly as he tried to corral reporters into an impromptu news conference in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Read more: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/a-mood-of-gloom-afflicts-the-romney-campaign/?smid=tw-thecaucus&seid=auto