When campaigns are losing, they get desperate. And when they get desperate, they make riskier political decisions. And so, Tuesday night, the Romney campaign made a risky decision. They released this statement:<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It\u2019s disgraceful that the Obama Administration\u2019s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Wednesday morning, given a chance to walk it all back as the full details of the attack revealed themselves, the Romney campaign\u00a0doubled down<\/a>\u00a0on that statement, making clear that it was not a mistake.<\/p>\n
The Romney campaign isn\u2019t run by amateurs. They knew this statement was incendiary. And, presumably, they knew it was wrong. It conflates a statement from a staffer in the Egyptian Embassy, who was trying to calm a potential mob, with the Obama administration. It conflates unrest in Egypt with the murder of American diplomat, among others, in Libya. And it accuses the Obama administration of something that they not only didn\u2019t do, but that would have been horrific of them to do: To sympathize with terrorists who had just murdered one of their ambassadors.<\/p>\n
The backlash has been brutal.<\/p>\n