For the second day in a row, Bob Schieffer spotlighted Newsweek's "The
Wimp Factor" cover story on Mitt Romney, this time on Monday's CBS This Morning.
Schieffer played up the potential negative impact that the liberal
magazine's attack could have on the GOP presidential candidate, and
concluded that "this did not help Mitt Romney, and my feeling is it probably hurt him."
The Face the Nation host also claimed that "if you gave
Governor Romney some truth serum and people in his campaign...I think
they would probably say they are concerned about this. I mean, this article was savage. It was brutal. How could you not have some reaction to it?"
Before
turning to Schieffer, anchor Charlie Rose played a clip of
correspondent Jan Crawford getting Romney's dismissive reaction to the
Newsweek's "wimp" cover. He then asked, "Does a magazine cover make a difference here?"
The longtime CBS host touted results from his network's latest poll
with the New York Times as his main proof that the hit piece would have
an impact:
SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean -- I think, you know, if you gave Governor
Romney some truth serum and people in his campaign -- I mean, nobody has
told me this -- I think they would probably say they are concerned
about this. I mean, this article was savage. It was brutal. How could
you not have some reaction to it?
I think it could. I think it could hurt him, you know, and here's the
reason why, Charlie: in the latest CBS News poll, we had -- we found, I
think it was, what is it? Thirty-one percent of voters said they didn't
yet have a feeling about Mitt Romney. You know, in other words, they
don't know whether they like him or they don't like him. And more than
half the voters believe that he has -- that he sometimes says just what
he thinks people want to hear from him. So, when you have that kind of
opinion - when that many people, you know, don't really know the
candidate, when you put something like this article into the -- into the
narration of the campaign, it sort of gives people ideas. It plants
suggestions. So, for sure, this did not help Mitt Romney, and my feeling
is it probably hurt him.
Besides playing the soundbite of Romney's interview with Crawford, Schieffer asked [1] DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz about the "wimp" cover on Face the Nation:
SCHIEFFER I'm going to ask you about this new edition of Newsweek. They have on the cover Mitt Romney and it says "The Wimp Factor." Now this is reminiscent of a sort of an infamous Newsweek cover back when the first George Bush was running for, running and it said -- they put out a cover that said "Fighting the 'Wimp Factor.'" Is Mitt Romney a wimp?
One wonders why Schieffer and Crawford would devote so much attention to a publication whose circulation has dropped off precipitously [2] over the past several years.