Romney Camp Fighting Over Libya Response

The Romney campaign lobbed an attack at Barack Obama's team over the Libya crisis yesterday, saying that they "can't seem to get their stories straight," after a pair of campaign insiders offered apparently contradictory accounts of it. David Axelrod told CNN that it was clear terrorists had attacked the consulate "the day after it happened," while David Plouffe said it was "not clear" for days, Fox News reports. But insiders tell Politico that Romney's campaign is deeply divided over how far to push this line of attack.

Stuart Stevens has been pressing Romney to avoid the issue and stick to the economy. Libya, a top aide explains, is "not voters' primary concern. And if we're not talking about their primary concern, we're not winning." Others want Romney to go for the jugular. "President Obama has been outmatched by events," one says. Certainly there seems to be fodder for attack. The New York Times today accuses the administration of being lulled into a false sense of security by Libyan security guards' effective response to a bombing on the Benghazi embassy in June. That follows on the heels of a scathing Washington Post piece about the embassy's security yesterday, along with the national intelligence chief defending the shifting views in the aftermath. (More Libya stories.)