"This guy really needs a new research team."

[babylonsister]

Posted with permission.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/18/11757706-undermining-the-competence-theme

Undermining the 'competence' theme
By Steve Benen
-
Fri May 18, 2012 2:02 PM EDT


Mitt Romney's campaign, eager to attack the Recovery Act that pulled the economy bank from the brink of collapse, thought it had come up with a brilliant idea. The former governor would go to New Hampshire and mock the 19th century Sawyer Bridge, which was restored with public funds, but which is closed to traffic.

It'd be a new "bridge to nowhere" that proves the stimulus was wasteful. Obama spent a quarter of a million dollars on a bridge no one can drive on? Outrageous, right? Wrong.

Romney's attack on the $288,000 bridge restoration will run into several immediate challenges: Funding for the project was overwhelmingly supported by state Republicans, including a significant number who have now endorsed Romney for president. The infrastructure project created much-needed jobs during tough economic times. And it left behind a public park enjoyed by Granite State residents who take great pride in their early-American and colonial history -- and who will be casting critical, swing-state votes in November.

It's a curious breed of conservatism that would find offense in the job-creating conservation of a stone arch bridge that is one of the earliest examples of dry-laid masonry vaults in New England.

The project was championed by 28 New Hampshire Republicans who now support Romney's presidential campaign.

This guy really needs a new research team.

Last month, Romney blamed President Obama for a closed drywall plant in Ohio, but the facility was shut down during the Bush era. This week, the Romney campaign released a video showing a closed Electrolux plant in Iowa, but the company has added more American jobs than it had lost.

Then it released a video of a steel plant that benefited in part from an investment by Bain Capital, but which thrived thanks to government assistance Romney opposes. Now it's new evidence of wasteful spending isn't an example of wasteful spending.

These are amateurish unforced errors that undermine the "competence" theme the campaign is so fond of.

[pinto]

1. Kick

[grantcart]

2. Obama needs to get up there and have a photo op with the Republicans and democrats that supported it

[progressoid]

3. I think this is appropriate...

[JNelson6563]

4. Rec

[Wait Wut]

5. LOL!

I sure wish that pic was clearer, because I swear that's a cartoon on that page.

[AtomicKitten]

6. I honestly don't think the GOP cares if their accusations are factual.

It's typical GOP Wrecking Machine behavior. They make outrageous, factually inaccurate claims and by the time those are debunked, they have moved on to their next bullshit accusation. Rinse and repeat.

[bayareaboy]

13. eggs-zactly! ...

I hate to bring up past propagandists especially Nazi ones but do you think that Mr. Goebbels cared what people thought when they came out with one lie after another. They just came up with more. It worked pretty good for tail-gunner Joe and his friend Richard Madhouse Nixon telling us about the commies in the forties and fifties.

[grantcart]

7. He doesn't need a new research team he needs a new brain.

It took me a while to really grasp the stupidity of this.

New Hampshire is his home state.

I talked to somebody who was from Minnesota and was in the WhiteHouse going over ad buying strategies with Gore. In attendance was two or three campaign people and the top people from Minnesota. They were all in agreement on leaving the rural areas alone and put all of their money into the cities.

Clinton walks in and they tell him their findings and then he tells them that he would put the money in the rural areas and leave the cities alone. The people in the cities have already decided. He then went on to give what amounted to a Ph'd dissertation on recent Minnesota elections where voters in various rural areas had voted for increases in bond. So many had voted for schools, so many had voted for libraries, and so many had voted for fire stations, all going against the national trend.

It wasn't that he knew more than Gore or the other national people he knew more than the state guys.

Romney isn't even aware of the landmark a few miles from where his home is.

Putz, putz, putz.

[patrice]

19. "needs new brain" may be literally true. There ARE critical development periods. We should

try to ascertain the probability of whether he is even capable of certain kinds of cognitive skills.

[Pirate Smile]

8. Kick & rec

[Voice for Peace]

9. kick

[tanyev]

10. Nope, this team is doing a bang-up job.

For us. Keep up the good work!

[Cosmocat]

11. Here is what is disturbing about this

The media at large has adopted this frame of this clown where this endless string of gaffes are all just laughed off, literally.

"gee, that Romney, another screw up, ha, ha, ha ..."

BUT, still legitimizing him as a candidate and keeping it as as horse race.

Romney figured this out a long time ago and is not even trying now. He and his camp will just keep throwing crape until something actually sticks. And, in the next 6 months, there IS likely to be something that sticks.

What is sad, is that when Obama was at this point in his campaign, he spent over a fricken month having to explain why he did not wear an American flag lapel pin.

THAT was how good he was, and how much of a small margin for error a democrat has.

Romney goes off half cocked and wrong about stuff like the chinese disident, but that just gets laughed off.

Yeah, the "liberal press."

We just have to spend the next 6 months holding our breath that somehow Romney does not luck into the game changer.

[TrogL]

12. The American public does not fact check

They vote for the best socializer

[jmowreader]

23. In which case, Obama will win 47 states

If Romney even drank beer, which we know he does not, he is the last man on the planet you would ever want to have one with.

[NoMittens]

14. mittens is totally incompetent

mittens milquetoast needs to give it up and go home to utah, michigan, new hampshire, vermont, california or the cayman islands wherever home is!

[aquart]

15. I like that. Welcome to DU.

[patrice]

20. Hello! Welcome!!

[MrScorpio]

22. No, let him stay away from Michigan

We have enough problems with our current crop of Republicans.

Welcome to DU!

[Tarheel_Dem]

16. Steve is always so precise.

[emulatorloo]

17. Romney doesn't care whether it is true or not. Strategy is to LIE, LIE, LIE for the low-info voters

He knows they won't check.

And he knows the media will not check - they are too busy covering for him, promoting his lies.

That being said, DAMN I love reading Steve Benen. This guy can get to the heart of things and cut through bullshit so quickly.

[patrice]

18. When you have never experienced the necessity of perceiving the qualitative differences in life,

nothing is about anything except the number-machine. Like a cancer, nothing but quantity.

[jimlup]

21. What troubles me is that despite the ineptitude of the Romney campaign

Obama trails in some polls. WTF? I guess the American people really aren't paying attention. It will all hinge on the economy in Nov.