Romney didn't approve anti-Thompson site

Yahoo! News ^ | September 11, 2007 | Glen Johnson

[2ndDivisionVet]

Oh! Well, nevermind!

[stm]

Of course he’s going to distance himself from it, it blew up in his face. I don’t know how much he approved of it but I have a hard time thinking he didn’t know about it.

[MeanWestTexan]

No apology, just “not our fault.”

Huh.

[sitetest]

Plausible deniability.

[kevkrom]

This would be far more believable if Romney-affiliated groups haven't been attempting to smear Thompson for over five months now.

Of course the campaign is going to deny it, it was set up with "plausible deniability" from the get-go.

But let's assume Romney's telling the truth here, for the sake of argument. He has a remarkable tendency to choose losers for his top state operatives: Larry Craig of Idaho (state chair) gets busted for soliciting gay sex in a public men's room, and now Wesley Donehue of South Carolina (top state advisor) gets caught smearing Thompson with juvenile tactics. Some "CEO" there.

[Greg F]

Yah, sure, Romney didn't get even a chuckle out of the "shhhhh, remember, you never have seen this" review of the dirty tricks of his campaign. Candidates NEVER see this stuff.

I'm shocked . . .

[bcsco]

The Web site, PhoneyFred.org, was created by Wesley Donehue, a business partner of Warren Tompkins, a South Carolina political operative on the Romney payroll and Romney's top adviser in the early voting state.

The site was created without the knowledge of Tompkins or Romney, said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden.

Uh, OK. So, this guy is a business partner of Tompkins, but neither Tompkins nor Romney knew of this. Either Tompkins/Romney are very inept businessmen, or very disingenuous at spin.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I bet this one won’t get posted 5 times by Fredheads.

[Ancesthntr]

Plausible deniability.

Exactly.

The Web site, PhoneyFred.org, was created by Wesley Donehue, a business partner of Warren Tompkins, a South Carolina political operative on the Romney payroll and Romney's top adviser in the early voting state.

Still, if Mitt doesn't fire Tompkins, he has tacitly endorsed the website and it message. Plausible deniability has its limits.

[DBrow]

If Romney does it correctly, millions more will view the page than if he had not publicized it.

Then they can take it down and move on to another publicity campaign.

“Hey everybody, look at this site I don’t approve of!”

[George W. Bush]

Romney needs to disavow this site and its creator. I expect that will be said pretty prominently to the press.

Romney likes to make his own attacks personally, I've noticed. It's part of how he hopes to demonstrate that he's willing to take the fight to the Dims as our nominee. So this undermines that theme of his campaign as well as his image as a "clean" candidate who doesn't go for dirty-tricks campaigns.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Would you apologize if a person you hired worked for a company and someone else in that company did something bad?

[mewzilla]

Oh, criminy. He's trotting out the "meddlesome priest" defense.

Way to go, Mitt!

[CharlesWayneCT]

Wesley Donahue is NOT an advisor of any kind to the campaign. According to the article, he works for the same company as Thompson, who is an advisor.

[kevkrom]

I bet this one won’t get posted 5 times by Fredheads.

Why not? It's fun to watch Mitt squirm and deny... but never condemn. All Romney's spokesman says is that it was "not affiliated with the campaign".

[upchuck]

Romney didn’t approve the creation of the web site?

You’ve got to be kidding.

[Ancesthntr]

I bet this one won’t get posted 5 times by Fredheads.

No, it'll get posted MORE than 5 times, because even if true, Romney needs to do some cleaning up at his campaign. Personally, I have trouble believing it 100% - and even if I did, I'd wonder how Romney would be as a C-in-C, not knowing and not taking responsibility for what his staffers did.

[ElectricStrawberry]

Correction for ya: Warren Tompkins is the “top advisor” in SC. Wesley Donehue is a “business partner” of Warren Tompkins.

This non-story will go away tomorrow, replaced by the next non-story.

[DBrow]

“Larry Craig of Idaho (state chair) gets busted for soliciting gay sex in a public men’s room, “

And tried to pass legislation banning certain types of ammo, too.

[trisham]

we discovered it was created by an individual who works at an Internet firm who parked the site temporarily on the company server space of a firm whose financial partner is a consultant to the campaign — Mr. Tompkins," said Madden, who later identified the individual as Donehue. "Mr. Tompkins did not know about the development of the site."

************

Dirty politics, and Romney's guy is involved, regardless of how they spin it.