Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, now a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, decried the first night of the Republican National Convention as “very angry” and “full of insults.”
“I don’t have any idea who Chris Christie was describing in his speech, because I don’t think Mitt Romney throughout this campaign or for one moment on the campaign trail has told any person a hard truth,” Gibbs said last night on MSNBC. “I cannot recall one moment in two years that he’s taken on the belief structure of his own party.”
“I think it was a very, very strange night,” he added.
Gibbs said that he was in the Tampa convention hall “and I think folks were a little surprised and they did a few double-takes, but they were quite cordial.”
But, he maintained, “the night was sort of highlighted by lots of anger and lots of insults.”
“I mean, in Mitt Romney, you have this — you have a piece of history in that he enters this general election as the single least popular nominee to run for president in probably 10 elections,” Gibbs said. “So the work they have cut out for them in the race is to build up Mitt Romney. And all they really tried to do tonight was be angry and tear down Barack Obama. I think in that respect it was a huge missed opportunity and a huge failure for the Republicans in the Republican Convention.”
He said that the language being used by Republicans is “off-putting to people.”
“And I think I heard someone earlier talking about, well, John Sununu loved this speech and John Sununu loved — if John Sununu is the focus group that this party and tonight was trying to reach, then it is going to miss a huge swathe of undecided voters that are going to decide this election,” Gibbs said. “John Sununu is already probably far more wound up than he needs to be.”
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