Jeff Greenfield: “What’s emerged in recent days, however, is something we have never seen before. The hard questions about the character and temperament of the presumptive Republican nominee are coming from within his own party at precisely the time when the most important piece of business for a nominee is consolidation of that party. The weekend gathering that Romney hosted is yet one more measure of just how unmoored his candidacy is from anything remotely familiar in American politics.”
“In a normal intraparty contest, the fights usually take familiar forms: who best represents the party; whose ideas resonate, whose prescriptions are sound, or flawed; who has the experience (or the fresh ideas) that best serve the party. The disputes can be intense—think of Walter Mondale deriding Gary Hart’s new ideas campaign of 1984 by asking, ‘Where’s the beef?’ or George H.W. Bush labeling Ronald Reagan’s ideas ‘voodoo economics,’ or Hillary Clinton in 2008 deriding Barack Obama’s promises of change.”
“Rarely, however, does a candidate take on an intraparty foe on questions of character.”
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