The Inside Track On Obama's Victory And Romney's Defeat [Why Romney's Silence on Benghazi]

Guardian (UK) ^ | November 11, 2012

[Steelfish]

The Inside Track On Obama's Victory And Romney's Defeat

As some of the campaign's richer inside scenes and better kept secrets, here are some of the highlights...

The Obama quants

Basically, the Obama campaign had a roomful of Nate Silvers, physically separated from the rest of its campaign operation and the precise nature of their work a closely held secret.

From the beginning, campaign manager Jim Messina had promised a totally different, metric-driven kind of campaign in which politics was the goal but political instincts might not be the means. Romney on Benghazi: "We screwed up"

(snip) Mitt Romney felt sharp regret for what he came to see as his camp's botched response to the attack in Libya on the anniversary of 9/11.

"I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi," Romney said in a statement at the time. "It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."

After the statement was released, it emerged that US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans had been killed. President Obama reproached Romney for prematurely airing his criticism. It turns out Romney agreed.

"We screwed up, guys," Romney told aides on a conference call the next morning, according to "multiple people on the call" interviewed by the Washington Post. "This is not good."

The Post quotes a senior adviser describing Romney as "snake bit" by the incident, meaning the candidate was unwilling to criticize the president on Benghazi late in the campaign despite a full-court-press on the part of Fox News and the conservative grassroots to make it an issue.

[itsahoot]

OK you convinced me we should declare open borders citizens of the world can uite and mail in votes from any where. We must support every perversion that comes from the gay lobby, we must give free everything, and tax the rich into oblivion.

Welcome to hell.

I very likely will not survive this term so color me as not giving a CR@P anymore.

If this forum had any effect at all on voters, Bill Clinton and his lesbo wife would be in jail.

[af_vet_1981]

The GOP has given us moderate liberal candidates for quite some time.

Almost every single conservative in Congress is a Republican. The problem is with the Democrat party; it has sold out the republic in a racist, feminist, homosexual, union, liberal alliance that is now a majority during presidential elections. Women outvote men and trend for Democrats; they destroyed the nation, and for what ?