Brushing aside a growing chorus of criticism and second-guessing from within his own party, Mitt Romney tells “60 Minutes” his campaign is “doing a very good job,” and “doesn’t need a turnaround.”
After a week in which a secretly recorded tape surfaced of the Republican presidential candidate dismissing 47 percent of the electorate as “people who pay no income tax,” Mr. Romney has been under fire from opponents and supporters alike, but in transcripts of the “60 Minutes” interview, to be broadcast on Sunday, he stands his ground.
“We’re tied in the polls … There are some days we’re up. There are some days we’re down,” he told Scott Pelley. ” … It doesn’t need a turnaround. We’ve got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent president to the United States.”
Some Republicans, though, have distanced themselves from the comments caught on the “47 percent” videotape and questioned whether Mr. Romney is bungling a race he should be winning.
Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, a Republican locked in a close race for re-election, said of the “47 percent” comments, “That’s not the way I view the world.”
Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan called the Romney campaign “incompetent,” and former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said if he were the party’s standard-bearer, he would be leading President Obama.
Mr. Romney acknowledged some of the criticism in the “60 Minutes” sit-down: “Not everything I say is elegant. And I want to make it very clear, I want to help 100 percent of the American people.”
• David Eldridge can be reached at deldridge@washingtontimes.com.
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