Romney pollster: Don't panic!!!!!!!!!!!!

By Richard K. Barry

So, tell me again what happens if we lose Ohio and Florida.

As I wrote earlier, this has not been a good week for Team Romney. If you don't believe me, perhaps you will believe the memo sent out by the Romney campaign to "Interested Parties," claiming that everything is fine. No, everything is more than fine. It's fantastic.

TPM had this to say about the memo, which was authored by Romney pollster Neil Newhouse:

"Don't get too worked up about the latest polling," Newhouse wrote. "While some voters will feel a bit of a sugar-high from the conventions, the basic structure of the race has not changed significantly."

The memo was partially a response to polls released this weekend showing a yawning lead for President Obama in the wake of the convention — Gallup shows a 5-point Obama advantage in their 7-day rolling average, and Republican-leaning Rasmussen found a 5-point edge in its three-day tracker.

Newhouse dismisses those numbers as noise. He offered a point-by-point refutation of what seemed to be a sizable Obama bounce — especially for a race that has barely changed in months. While the memo did not cite many specific post-convention polls to justify its claims, Newhouse argued that Romney’s original strategy of highlighting the rough economy would turn things around.

I don't know. Maybe Mr. Newhouse is right. Maybe things will work our for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. But when you caution the world not to get too worked up about something, chances are very good that you yourself are seriously worked up about that very thing.

I just want Mr. Newhouse to know that, if he is wondering, I am very calm. My fear is that he may not be.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)