Report: Axelrod Complains Romney Press Corps Was Too 'Sympathetic'

President Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, reportedly complained that reporters covering Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 were too favorable to Romney.

Axelrod, who orchestrated and manipulated the mainstream media to give fawning coverage to the historical candidacy and reelection of Obama, made his comments to CNN reporter Peter Hamby for his paper for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, titled, “Did Twitter Kill the Boys on the Bus? Searching for a better way to cover a campaign.” 

According to Hamby, the Obama campaign saw the Romney press corps “as a sympathetic and obsequious bunch, more interested in cozying up to the Romney team instead of pissing them off.” Some Obama operatives also felt some reporters covering Romney “had illusions of a President Romney, where they would be the White House beat reporter.”

According to Hamby, “Axelrod pointedly blamed the Romney press for too-eagerly regurgitating Romney spin in their stories without appropriate context, beyond an obligatory ‘response quote’ from the Obama campaign.”

“Our constant challenge was to try and get the Romney press corps to challenge Romney,” Axelrod told Hamby. “There is this Stockholm Syndrome element with the traveling press corps… I guarantee that if you ask the Romney traveling press corps the night before the election, more than a few of them thought he was going to win. They would have thought that because that’s what they’ve been told over and over again by people who they’ve now come to trust.” 

Tim Miller, the former Republican National Committee spokesman during the 2012 presidential election, was in disbelief when he heard Axelrod’s remarks. 

“The Obama campaign complaining about reporters being in the tank for Romney is so absurd it doesn’t merit debate in a Harvard paper,” Miller said.