I am informed that on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod declared that the recent Politico article suggesting the Obama campaign was ready to slam Mitt Romney as “weird” and to “kill” his campaign early is false. “All of that is garbage,” Axelrod said.

Axelrod said he would fire anyone who is depicting Romney as weird, “using that kind of terminology.”

If so, good for him. But somehow I hear this and cynically conclude that the “Romney is too strange to be president” message will just be outsourced to non-campaign staffers and Democrats not employed by the campaign.

Axelrod also said the president “hopes to” join his family on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard next week, which seems to suggest he might not join them – and that perhaps the White House understands the dangers of the optics of Obama relaxing on vacation while the market tumbles another couple hundred points…