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?
