Top Romney official on Mitt: A 'lousy candidate'

Mitt Romney is a "lousy candidate"? Hard to argue. From Politico, the new spin from Romneyland: Mitt's losing because he sucks at this.

'Lousy candidate; highly qualified to be president,' said a top Romney official. 'The candidate suit fits him unnaturally. He is naturally an executive.'

If this is a strategy to get people to see Mitt Romney as competent, though unlikable, it's the worst strategy imaginable. If Mitt Romney isn't competent to be a candidate'which is as much about creating a strong organization as it is about being able to relate to people'then it's pretty damn hard to argue that he'd be competent as president. As hard as it is to run for the presidency, it's even harder to be president.

On the other hand, if this is a strategy to dump all the blame for 2012 on Mitt Romney in order to shield his staffers and his party, well, then this is just like 2008:

Ten days before the 2008 presidential election, as blame was beginning to be laid out for John McCain's 'likely defeat,' a top communications adviser to the campaign wrote a detailed strategy memo focused on how to preserve the reputation of another key adviser, Steve Schmidt, POLITICO has learned.

That sounds a lot like what's going on now, but the big difference is that when that memo was written, there were just ten days left in the campaign. We're still in September, and the knives have been out for at least a couple of weeks now. And we've still got more than 5 weeks to go. In other words, grab your popcorn. The show is going to be great.