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BY ZACH TOOMBS
Republican unrest with presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s message strategy in the last
week began on Twitter and blew up into a harsh full-page editorial in the nation’s biggest
conservative newspaper.
A flurry of Tweets like this one from conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch set the tone Sunday.
“Met Romney last week. Tough O[bama] Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops
old friends from team and hires some real pros. Doubtful.”
One of those old Romney friends is senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom. He went on MSNBC
with Chuck Todd Monday to respond to Murdoch’s criticism. But instead the adviser put his
boss even further into hot water by agreeing with the president that the health care mandate
should be called a penalty, not a “tax.”
FEHRNSTROM: “He disagrees with the court’s ruling that the mandate was a tax. But again,
TODD: “So, he agrees with the president?”
FEHRNSTROM: But the president also needs to be held accountable for his hypocritical statements,
because he's decribed it variously as a penalty ...
Many Republicans saw the Supreme Court’s ruling on the individual mandate — that
it was indeed a tax — as the only silver lining in the court’s decision. GOP lawmakers
in Congress, such as John Boehner, have hit the president on what they call a middle-class
tax raise at every turn in the last few days.
BOEHNER: “It’s now a tax, since the court said it was a tax.”
NORAH O'DONNELL: “Chief Justice John Roberts said it was a tax.”
BOEHNER: “Even though the president tried to admit for over a year that it wasn’t
a tax. But nobody believed it, and now we know.”
But Thursday, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal said Romney and his team are undermining
that message.
“In a stroke, the Romney campaign contradicted Republicans throughout the country who had
used the Chief Justice's opinion to declare accurately that Mr. Obama had raised taxes
on the middle class ... it has made it that much harder for Republicans to again turn
ObamaCare into the winning issue it was in 2010.”
But how much influence can Murdoch and his conservative media empire hold? The Journal’s
crosstown rivals at The New York Times say plenty.
“Though political strategists debate the ultimate impact of any single media outlet,
what is written in the pages of The Journal and The New York Post and talked about on
Fox News — all Murdoch properties — could have the collective power to shape the thinking
of millions of voters.”
Murdoch closed his Tweeted criticism of Romney by saying of course he wants the candidate
to win but also suggesting he should “listen to good advice.” Thursday night, The Washington
Post reported Romney would act in response to the criticism — bringing on new communications
staff but keeping his inner circle of advisers in tact.