Mittens Goes All In On The Media

The Romney campaign response to their latest false attack ad?  You paid attention to us, ergo we win.

The offending moment comes when Obama says "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." That was a quote from a way-too-honest McCain adviser that Obama loved to repeat on the trail. By evening, the ad had been attacked, derided, parodied, and ruled "pants on fire" worthy by Politifact. The Romney campaign could have cared less.

"We want to engage the president," explained Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom in the spin room. "We look at him as our rival. It's all deliberate; it was all very intentional."

Romney adviser Ron Kaufman, an RNC committee member and longtime operative, simply said that the ad "worked."

"They always squeal the most when you hold a mirror up to them," he said, "and they overreacted, clearly. All they did was make the ad more effective."

"There was a time when the Obama campaign had real discipline," joked Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney strategist. "Today was a total meltdown. You had the press secretary to the president of the United States talking about an ad that was running on one station in New Hampshire. There was a time when Jay [Carney, a former reporter for Time] wouldn't even have written about this. Total meltdown. It's as if you have somebody on a witness stand, accused of anger management issues, and he jumps off the stand and comes after you."

If the President's camp ignores the lies, Team Romney claims victory.  If they respond, Team Romney claims victory.  No matter what, Team Romney claims victory.  It's how spin works.

Why is anyone surprised that the McCain-Palin campaign model is exactly what Romney is following, with a year left to go?  Prepare for more as Romney continues to declare himself the default GOP candidate.

Of course, the far right isn't exactly going down without a fight, either.  The Village's response to Romney's victory lap?  Ugly.

Representatives for leading social conservative groups in Iowa held a secret meeting Monday as part of an effort with one main goal: find and support a Republican presidential candidate who can stop Mitt Romney in Iowa.


The idea: avoid splintering the conservative vote in the state by rallying around one GOP rival who could win Iowa's Jan. 3 caucus and then challenge Romney in New Hampshire and the other early voting states.

Many social conservatives and other religious leaders in the state have openly labeled the former Massachusetts governor as a "flip-flopper," a criticism the campaign frequently beats back, while others have seen Romney's Mormon faith as an issue. And many of them have openly hoped for someone to emerge as a viable alternative to the former Massachusetts governor.

CNN reached out to the Romney campaign for reaction to the secret meeting and the overall anti-Romney effort.

Anybody But Romney is now officially pulling into high gear, and right now that "anybody" is Newt Gingrich.  Should get interesting here.