Good God, man. What are you doing? You are Romney’s communications director for Florida and you are telling the press, on the record, that your candidate is canceling a scheduled visit to Orlando because he’s exhausted?
Although Mitt Romney was supposed to visit Orlando on Monday, the campaign announced late Sunday that the presumed Republican presidential nominee was too exhausted to make the trip.
The news came after Romney spent what one campaign official said was an exhausting 48 hours of championing his new vice presidential pick.
“We’ve been planning this bus tour for awhile and had to adjust for stuff going on,” said Jeff Bechdel, Florida communications director for the campaign.
For some reason, ABC News reported this as an unnamed source, but it’s clear that it was Jeff Bechdel. You can get that from the part that reads “the campaign announced late Sunday that the…nominee was too exhausted to make the trip.” Anonymous sources don’t “announce” things.
In any case, it was left to Kevin Madden to try to walk the story back. How can Romney be exhausted, Madden asks, when he has a full schedule of events planned?
To which I reply, “It’s not a full schedule anymore, is it, Kevin?”
You know, we all know that candidates have to get their rest, but the optics of this are terrible. He couldn’t pick a worse location to diss, either. The I-4 corridor in Florida is ground zero for deciding the outcome in Florida. That’s why the GOP chose to have their convention on the western end of the corridor. And, let’s be frank, it is basically impossible for Romney to win the election if he loses Florida.
I know it’s tough to fly to Virginia and then to Wisconsin and then to Florida (on your “Bus” tour), but Romney should have sucked it up and cancelled something in a less critical area.
It makes him look like he doesn’t think Orlando is important. It also makes you wonder how he’d fare after a flight to Kabul or Beijing.
Also, too, did you see how badly Ryan got heckled at his first solo appearance today?
Optics indeed. The timing is remarkable as the perfect reminder that Romney’s continued good health is all that’s keeping Ryan out of the Oval Office anytime soon. So they choose now to make that health an open question. How much will this erode the comfy assumption that Ryan would be nothing but Romney’s gofer? Morbid, I know, but still, the timing is amazing.
Also comes off as him being scared to campaign in FL or st the least he running from seniors
I saw the heckling of Ryan, but on NPR, there was an interview with a Romney/Ryan supporter who believes Ryan/Romney would not let seniors down. A true believer, no matter what is reported! Depressing.
Was this like being sick when there’s a school test?
I read Obama’s schedule and need to have a lie down.
President Obama has a full time job and still manages a significant campaign schedule. When was the last time Romney actually had a job?
It’s a grueling job Mitt, but the campaigning is the easy part. Perhaps it is Obama’s fault because he has resolutely attacked and mostly delivered on the job we asked him to do; we are accustomed to a man seeking and holding the highest job in the land to have the grit of a miner, like Obama does.
Mitt’s weakness is now full circle, weak core, weak words, weak physically. Give the man a severence check.
Obama should send Biden down to Florida ASAP – can’t have the poor folk down there feeling neglected, can we?
There’s a reason presidents look like they age ten or more years for every four-year term.
The job is a brutal grind. Even when you spend a third of your time “clearing brush” or some sort, the combination of physical and mental stress is overwhelming even though the POTUS has, almost by definition, access to the best health care in the world.
So yeah, when Romney is wearing down in August – before his own convention – the optics are indeed terrible, not just in the context of Florida, his contrast with Obama, or Ryan’s inexperience, but on its own merits. This is a guy who’s been running for president for five years now and he either isn’t very fit or doesn’t know how to pace himself yet?
I think that there were a lot of dominoes that fell from the hasty rollout of the Ryan announcement. After all Rush and Ann Coulter (on Sean Hannity’s show no less) put Romney on notice.
And the staff scrambled to readjust and catch up. I see this as unforced errors on the part of the staff, not necessarily directly on Romney. (Could have been a fundraiser he had to fit in—or a secret tete-a-tete with Rush Limbaugh — or slipping unnoticed over to Tampa to see the coronation site).
Mitt has a breakdown. Ryan takes over. Fix un-fixed
I don’t really “believe” that. But then again…I don’t really unbelieve much either. In a country that can swallow the JFK murder, the RFK murder, the MLK murder, the Nixon coup, the whole Reagan so-called “presidency,” the Clinton honeytrap coup and subsequent Bush II vote fraud…anything and everything is possible.
Believe it.
AG
During the campaign or after Willard’s successful election?
During the campaign, the results would be as disastrous as the Eagleton affair in 1972. It would throw the campaign totally off rhythm.
After inauguration of the Mitt, it would cause Ryan to be a one-term President. Unless Ryan brought Dick Cheney and Karl Rove back into the White House to help him run things.
Of course a Romney win this year pretty much presupposes that the destruction of the Democratic Party has occurred.
I repeat:
Believe it.
AG
While I love a good rightwing conspiracy, fortunately, it appears that the ruling consigliere are controlled by the Koch brothers.
The only thing they are doing correctly, right now, is shoveling $$$ to their astro turf orgs.
Takes more than $$$ to be smart.
He could take a lesson from the semi-cyborg Darth Cheney, who manages to persist somehow.
tipped for “semi-cyborg”
Semi?
Maybe Mitt should ride on top of the campaign bus.
In an “air-tight container.”
Romney canceled an event in Morrisville (midway between Raleigh and Durham) on Sunday to go to Wisconsin. But Biden was in Durham today and apparently did good.
I saw something about Romney working out today, after he claimed ‘exhaustion’.
LOL. What a moron.
Could get better for them if team Obama doesn’t deal with Erskine Bowles lavish and unqualified praise for Paul Ryan. iirc Bowles was being touted for Treasury not too many days ago.
But Obama had to try to land Bowles in order to win over the moderates.
Just like he had to approve letting loaded guns into national parks, otherwise the NRA would be telling everyone that he’s going to confiscate all their guns in the second term and become a total dictator. Well, they are doing that anyway, but it was worth a try, right?
And he had to bring in Geithner and Summers in order to placate Wall Street. I mean, what would he do now if Wall Street weren’t firmly in his pocket now? Oh, wait ….
And he had to cave to the military industrial complex, otherwise they’d be fully behind Romney now. Oh, wait ….
And he had to cave to the Keystone Pipeline and the frackers, otherwise the Chamber of Commerce would be telling their people that he’s a communist. Oh, wait …
Oh, well, I’m sure this capitulation to the far right will win him some benefits some day … any day now ….
The “liberal” lion just as Clinton was the “liberal” top dog. The hoi polloi get a choice between the rhetoric/lip service of bigotry and sexism or not so much of that. Meanwhile, MIC, inc. and corporate theft from the have nots goes on and on.
The more I watch the pundit reaction today I’m struck by the silence of the top 3 or 4 contenders, no comments like oh darn it wasn’t me. I’m beginning to think Ryan was the only one who would say yes to Romney.
Ryan said yes because he thinks this puts him on the shortbus to ’16. Otherwise, as you said, the others don’t want the Willard taint.
This may be another bit of evidence that puts the lie to the notion that Ryan had already been picked weeks ago.
If, say, the right-wing freakout over Andrea Saul’s remarks last week prompted a panic selection of Ryan, or if you prefer, a panic-induced announcement prior to what was previously planned, then maybe they had originally anticipated Romney doing the Orlando appearance solo.
So whether they chose Ryan as a means of tamping down a PR disaster with their own base, or if they just upped the schedule on the announcement in order to change the subject, either way it would leave them facing a joint appearance with both candidates in FL that they weren’t ready to deal with yet: the addition of Ryan to the ticket means having to adjust the campaign message to downplay his record on SocSec and etc, come up with new soundbites to pitch those reforms–essentially to come up with a strategy to pitch Ryan to seniors.
Seems to me, if they really had made the selection a matter of weeks ago, they’d have been prepared already for a joint campaign stop in FL, or at least as ready as they’re ever gonna get. You wouldn’t have this last-minute cancellation.
As for exhaustion? McCain didn’t have any problems like this, except for his “emergency campaign suspension” to run to D.C. and try to look serious about the economy–and McCain had a job at the time.
Romney campaign cancels Monday visit to Orlando
Mike Maroone is well known as executive of AutoNation Inc. in Fort Lauderdale. Perhaps the Romney gang Googled his name in a late stage and found out he is also on the leadership board serving one of the best hospitals in the United States – a non-profit group the Cleveland Clinic. From an article…
Bringing physicians into the hospital fold from private practices has helped control costs, although the administration didn’t initiate the process that has integrated half of the 200 doctors with hospital privileges.
“They wanted to become part of the hospital. If you look at data, integrated health systems deliver lower cost, higher quality care.
You can look at the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, the Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle.”
Stevens called that a societal issue that must be decided family by family. She said the hospital is seeing more people with advance directives who have talked to their family about end-of-life care.
“They already know that they don’t want to be supported in the ICU on the ventilator when there’s no way to have a quality life again.
I do see a lot more families having that talk and that will lower the cost of that part.”
Comparing ObamaCare with RyanCare and Medicare costs
Cross-posted from diary – Paul Ryan’s Budget and Catholic Backlash