About a month ago, it looked as if Mitt Romney's presidential campaign had the worst surrogates ever -- several of the former governor's highest profile supporters had no qualms about saying how wrong Romney is on major issues of the day.
Five weeks later, Romney's surrogates appear to be even less on-message than before.
Gov. Chris Christie told Oprah Winfrey in an interview broadcast tonight on OWN that a lot depends on whether he'll run for president in 2016, but one thing's for sure: "In terms of me, I'll be much more ready four years from now," he said.
Wrong answer. Four years from now, President Romney is supposed to be seeking a second term, at least according to Christie's preferred scenario. For the New Jersey governor to be talking to Oprah about his possible 2016 intentions is to work from the assumption that President Obama will win re-election.
And that's not what leading Romney surrogates are supposed to say on national television. [Update: Politico reported this last night, but Christie made the remarks in January, three months after he made his Romney endorsement.]
Similarly, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a likely Romney running mate, conceded yesterday, "There are a lot of other people out there that some of us wish had run for president -- but they didn't."
Can't you just feel the passionate support? On Wednesday, Rubio threw his support to Romney, and on Thursday, Rubio admitted he's only backing Romney because better candidates didn't run.
While we're at it, let's not forget that shortly after Bob Dole endorsed Romney, argued support of "some sort of third-party movement or some alternative voice out there that can put forward new ideas."
With friends like these, who needs enemies?