Mitt Romney’s Honey Badger

[Geee]

National Review:

In presidential politics, the man cable-television pundits may fear most is a 73-year-old retired mechanical engineer from southern New Hampshire.

John H. Sununu, the former Granite State governor, is Mitt Romney’s most pugnacious and ubiquitous surrogate, and he’s shaking up the 2012 campaign.

“He is our party’s honey badger,” says GOP chairman Reince Priebus, playfully referencing an Internet meme about a relentless badger.

Over the past year, Sununu has castigated Fox News’s Juan Williams, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, among many others, for defending the president’s record or touting left-leaning positions.

Most of Sununu’s televised battles have become viral sensations on YouTube. His volatile exchanges with O’Brien alone have garnered over 300,000 views.

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During a recent visit to his home near the Atlantic coast, and in a subsequent follow-up interview, Sununu told me that he relishes his unique position in Romney’s hierarchy.

“I should be playing golf and skiing,” Sununu chuckles. “But I’m scared to death for my kids and grandkids.”

By day, Sununu operates as a campaign confidant, advising Romney strategists. By night, usually during primetime, he heads to Saint Anselm College’s small TV studio, puts on an earpiece, and unloads on the Obama campaign.

Sununu’s specialty is the harsh rebuke, and his persona is part Archie Bunker and part schoolteacher. During a recent interview with frequent foil Soledad O’Brien, for example, he mixed Congressional Budget Office citations with a dressing-down of the host.