After CNN pounded away at the latest media-manufactured Mitt Romney
gaffe, CNN's Brooke Baldwin remarked on Tuesday that the campaign faces a
"tsunami" of "myriad issues."
"Can they right this?" she questioned the Romney campaign's ability to
weather the media storm, adding that they face "a tsunami, if you add up
the myriad issues within the campaign."
Baldwin
was interviewing GOP strategist Chip Saltsman, who interestingly enough
implicated the liberal media in his words without actually calling out
the media for their bias.
"[S]ince the convention, it's been one after the other after the other.
And obviously this is a video from several months ago, but still it's
just they dropped it, whoever dropped it knew exactly what they were
doing," he said. Liberal magazine Mother Jones leaked the video in an obvious play to gin up negative headlines for Romney.
"They were trying to kind of see the Romney campaign get back on their
feet, so they sent them another jab. And again, they're off message yet
another day," Saltsman added.
[Video below. Audio here [1].]
A transcript of the segment, which aired on September 18 on CNN Newsroom at 3:06 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
BROOKE BALDWIN: Because joining me is Republican strategist Chip
Saltsman. He formerly managed the Mike Huckabee presidential campaign.
So Chip, nice to see you.
CHIP SALTSMAN, Republican strategist: Good to be with you.
BALDWIN: How big a problem is this for Mitt Romney? You laugh.
SALTSMAN: Well, it's not – you know, well, because it is a problem in
itself, but then you tack it on to the last week, and then he's had not
only a bad couple of days, he's had a bad couple of weeks and the
campaign's really not only just kind of stopped, everybody is now
instead of talking about a very close presidential election which we're
at, they're talking about how Mitt Romney has messed up the campaign and
all this kind of stuff. And the really – this campaign is completely
off message. They haven't been on message in a couple of weeks. They're
responding, they're defensive. And we need a little bit of a game
changer here to kind of get us right back on message.
BALDWIN: If you were running the Romney campaign, what do you do? And I
hear you laughing, and I know Mitt Romney is not laughing about this.
But what would you do to make this go away?
SALTSMAN: You know, I might say, hey, let's everybody let's not talk
for 24 hours. It seems like they're just kind of talking themselves into
problems. Look, this is a real challenge because you're talking about
earlier about how just a few conservatives at the Washington level and a
couple of candidates have kind of criticized and kind of moving past
this. Well, these kind of things happen in tidal waves. And first of
all, it's a couple of – it's one or two people and then all of a sudden
it's 10 or 12 and then all of a sudden it's the whole caucus is jumping.
And so they've got a real challenge here to kind of right this ship.
They've got time to do it. That's a good news, is they've got 49 days to
do it. But they've got to –
BALDWIN: Can they right this? I mean, this is, you know –
SALTSMAN: -- stop the bleeding.
BALDWIN: – a tsunami, if you add up the myriad issues within the campaign, can they stop this within the next 49 days?
SALTSMAN: Yeah, I mean I think they can. But at some point you got to
say today it stops. And they haven't been able to do it. It's been since
the convention, it's been one after the other after the other. And
obviously this is a video from several months ago, but still it's just
they dropped it, whoever dropped it knew exactly what they were doing.
They were trying to kind of see the Romney campaign get back on their
feet, so they sent them another jab. And again, they're off message yet
another day.
-- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center