The Romney campaign goes nuclear

By Richard K. Barry

Yes, I am really this obnoxious.

In an obvious attempt to change the channel on Obama's highly successful attacks on Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital, Romney campaign surrogate former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu has rolled up every attack theme the GOP has ever directed at President Obama into one concise, vile diatribe. Sununu had this to say about Obama in an interview with Fox:

He has no idea how the American system functions. And we shouldn't be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S., he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.

Well, it's finally happened. The Romney campaign has gone "all-in" Tea Party crazy. This should make us wonder about those tax returns. Are they so bad that Romney will direct his campaign to go super-size stupid to draw people's attention away from interest in his personal finances? It's interesting to note that Rush Limbaugh gave a speech yesterday in which he said Obama "hated America" and that his philosophy appeals to people with "miserable, meaningless lives." Initially I thought Romney might have to find a way to distance himself from such comments. Now I see a coordinated strategy coming into focus.

Conventional wisdom was always that Romney would have to cleave to the centre to appeal to independents once he secured the nomination. Looks like he's made the decision to take the first bus to Crazy-Town instead.

In response, Obama's team said the Romney campaign has officially gone off the deep end. I'd say.

(Update: Well, it looks like the Romney campaign got nervous about the response to Sununu's comments, because they made him apologize. At the same time, Limbaugh took credit for the substance of Sununu's remarks on his radio program. I just don't know what to believe.)

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)