The New York Times reported the circumstances that led to the resignation of Romney foreign policy
spokesperson Richard Grenell earlier this week.
The Romney team had asked him to keep quiet on an important call with the media – one that Grenell had helped to organize. This followed media coverage about outcry from Christian conservatives over Grenell's support for gay marriage, and some of his snarky Tweets.
There's not much sense in a spokesperson with a muzzle, and that was apparently the final insult that led Grenell to resign. Here's an excerpt from the article:
It was the climax of an unexpectedly messy and public dispute over the role and reputation of Mr. Grenell, a foreign policy expert who is gay and known for his support of same-sex marriage, his testy relationship with the news media and his acerbic Twitter postings on everything from Rachel Maddow’s femininity to how Callista Gingrich “snaps on” her hair.
While the Romney team showed some open-mindedness in hiring Grenell, they clearly fumbled in not taking a closer look at his digital breadcrumbs.
They also broke some basic rules about crisis management, because they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, i.e. hire someone with talent who happens to be gay and does not toe the party line in certain areas.- yet not be too "out" with this.
Basic crisis management principles say that you don't go quiet in a crisis, doing this can make a bad situation worse; indeed, that is exactly what happened here.
