It’s notable how often the phrase “double-down” comes up in various contexts with regard to Nit.

Mitt Romney’s Libya Blunder Reflects Larger Failings : The New Yorker

“It almost feels like Sarah Palin is his foreign policy adviser,” Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush, told the Washington Post. “It’s just a huge mistake on the Romney campaign’s part—huge mistake.”

Obama’s subsequent jibe that Romney “shoots first and aims later” hit home. …

[I]t is widely thought that Romney’s political advisers aren’t the brightest bulbs—his entire campaign has been a litany of errors. What has been less remarked upon is the makeup of Romney’s foreign-policy team. For a former businessman who claims to willing to hire the best and smartest regardless of background, it is a remarkably unimpressive and ideologically driven group, consisting largely of washed up neocons and Cold Warriors, many of whom served in the Administration of George W. Bush. …

Kristol, Bolton, Gerecht, Cohen, and several other of the people who are listed as informal advisers on Romney’s Web site are former members of the Project for the New American Century, the neocon think tank that will forever be linked to the invasion of Iraq.

My theory is that in this area, as in others, Romney has demonstrated that he’s a poor politician, allowing himself to be co-opted and hoodwinked by the right.

When Romney decided to run in 2012, the best argument for his candidacy was that he had nothing to do with the Bush Administration and could appeal to moderate voters. But rather than trying to make a break with the Bush Administration and portraying himself as a different sort of Republican, one who has learned from the mistakes of the past, Romney has embraced the Bush heritage—one that delivered the Presidency to Obama in 2008.

Mitt Romney’s Libya Blunder Reflects Larger Failings : The New Yorker

Be afraid. Be very afraid of Gnit.