Conservative radio talker and occasional Fox News guest host Laura Ingraham has a dour message for her fellow Republicans: "Romney is losing," she said on her show Friday.
"I might be the skunk at the picnic, but I'm going to say it and I'm going to say it clearly," Ingraham said, citing recent polling that shows President Barack Obama widening his lead in public opinion. "Romney is losing," she deadpanned, later suggesting he'd brought "a down pillow to a gun fight."
Her proposed fix: Start over, and this time wear the brass knuckles.
Ingraham's Friday show puts her in a growing class of conservative pundits apparently angered by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's press secretary bragging to Fox News that Romney's policies in Massachusetts would have saved the life of a woman who died after her husband was laid off by Bain Capital and their health insurance was canceled.
Conservative consensus is that the spokesperson, Andrea Saul, was defending the very thing -- the individual mandate -- on which much public conservative opposition to the President's health care reform is based.
Less than 24 hours after Fox News broadcast Saul's words, both Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were pushing the Romney campaign to fire her.
Ingraham went a step further on Friday and called for a reboot of the campaign's whole message.
"If the election were held today, Mitt Romney would lose," she said. "...Mitt Romney cannot, at this point, be convincing himself that he's winning. I hope they're not. I hope the Romney campaign actually knows what's going on with these numbers."
Ingraham instead recommended that Romney get a lot tougher on what she called the liberals' "cram down" economic policies and produce a "pie chart" that shows America's debt, then make that the centerpiece of his campaign. "Mitt Romney is uniquely suited to [address the economy]," she explained. "This strategy that is in place, and it has been in place for now the last several months, is not a winning strategy. We cannot wait until November to see if it is a winning strategy."
The audio below is from the Laura Ingraham show, broadcast Friday, August 10, 2012, as snipped by Mediaite.
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Photo: Laura Ingraham appearing on "The View." Screenshot via YouTube.
