What's behind Mitt's meltdown
By Howell Raines, Special to CNN
September 18, 2012 -- Updated 1611 GMT (0011 HKT)
Raines: Real problem is Romney based his run on faulty premise that Obama very vulnerable
(CNN) -- For students of journalistic feeding frenzies in presidential politics, the Romney campaign meltdown story merits close study.
The first striking feature is that the flashpoint story that pulled together his missteps -- the bungled foreign trip, his lackluster convention, his widely denounced response to the Libya carnage, to name a few -- appeared in the "new media." The article on his slipping campaign ran on the Politico website under the headline "Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled," rather than in mainstream newspapers or on the networks' evening news shows, the traditional pacesetters in campaign coverage. (This was on Sunday, well before his cherry-on-the-top comments about the freeloading 47% hit the headlines on Monday night.)
By Tuesday, as Romney's controversial comments to a roomful of potential funders, recorded in secret, went rocketing around the Web, every follow-up "stumble story" had a fresh headline.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/17/opinion/raines-romney-media/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
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