Mitt and Ann Romney recently gave an interview on Fox News which drew mixed reactions, especially from the right.
Here’s what Romney said:
The idea that somehow . . . the primary made me become more conservative than I was just isn’t accurate,” Romney said on Fox News Sunday. Instead, the “long and blistering primary” led to a series of attacks that he believed created an “unfavorable impression” of him.
Romney also criticized the debates, saying that sometimes there were “questions that are kind of silly, that end up hurting you in the general” election. He specifically highlighted the instance when GOP candidates were asked if they would accept a deal that had a 10:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases.
Ed Morrissey of Hot Air says:
First, many supporters of other candidates in the primary will argue that the “blistering” aspect of the primary had its source in Team Romney, which laid on the negative campaigning rather thickly in the months leading up to the actual primaries and caucus events. No one will forget the heavy-handed attacks on Newt Gingrich, at least, as soon as his star began to rise after a debate in North Carolina. That doesn’t mean that Romney’s wrong about the problem, but just seems to suggest that he didn’t contribute to it.
What examples were there of negative campaigning done by Team Romney? Gingrich’s inability to stop shooting himself in the foot doesn’t mean Romney was the gunman.
Romney’s right about the debates, too, but only to a certain point. The questions in the debates were intended to tear down the candidates, but Republicans will have to expect that as long as they continue to insist on pairing with media outlets for the debates. They can stage these debates themselves and narrowcast them on the Internet and invite C-SPAN to televise them, and then choose moderators that will focus on real issues rather than contraception and the latest TV ads. Until the GOP makes up its mind to do that, Republican candidates will have to endure the freak-show moderation and game-show formats imposed on them by the mainstream media.
The chance that people are going to watch a Republican debate on C-SPAN is slim to none. A network debate will get more viewers, plain and simple. The Republicans don’t insist on pairing with media outlets for the debates, they’ve made a logical choice based on viewers. If other candidates can’t hang, they can’t hang, and can’t expect to go up against Putin or Medvedev or Stalin or whomever the hell they’ve got in there if they can’t go up against an American newscaster and other presidential candidates.
