×
FLIP ROMNEY. Michael Scherer at Salon takes a look at the down-and-dirty campaigning already going on in the G.O.P. field:
The anonymous attacks peaked at last week's Spartanburg County Republican straw poll, an entirely unscientific sampling of party activists from South Carolina's textile country. The poll itself was little more than a gimmick to recruit precinct workers. But the proceedings became so chaotic and confrontational that Rick Beltram, the county's GOP chair, is still fuming with frustration. "I actually told three campaigns that I have lost your name on my Rolodex," Beltram said in a phone interview Tuesday. "Some of the national campaigns took this whole straw poll operation way too seriously."At one point on Thursday night, Beltram said, a staffer for Arizona Sen. John McCain reduced Beltram's 19-year-old daughter to tears when he confronted her as she tried to deliver ballots to another precinct....the results mattered less to Beltram than the vicious tactics of the participants, and what they portend for the party of Reagan. One e-mail, sent to party activists under the name "Martin W.," told voters to "trust your instincts" about the Mormon faith because "Mitt Romney has a family secret he doesn't want you to know." The secret, it turned out, was an Associated Press story that described the polygamous relationships of Romney's great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather."Unless the Republican Party candidates tighten up their field operations to not beat up on each other, we are going to have a fractured party when the nominating process is over," Beltram said on Tuesday. "I am hoping that by having this conversation and putting these campaigns on notice, we can stop this stuff."For their part, the presidential campaigns have distanced themselves in public from the anonymous attacks. To date no campaign, individual or group has taken credit for the man in the dolphin costume mocking Romney at a recent conservative conference in Washington, or for the foam "flip-flop" sandals with Romney's picture that were distributed to activists. Both the McCain and the Brownback campaigns denied having anything to do with the anonymous mailers or e-mail that targeted Spartanburg County Republicans.Sounds like the G.O.P. side is going to get even nastier than the Democratic one. Also, re: the dolphin guy. He told me his name was Josh O'Brien, and that he is a 22-year-old from Longmeadow, Mass., who is a student at U. Mass. Amherst, where he's with Massachusetts Students United Against Mitt Romney (a group that I can find no record of online). He said his parents helped fund him to come to Washington to pester Romney because, "He destroyed the Republican Party -- he's hated in Massachusetts."
--Garance Franke-Ruta
