I Have a Theory About Romney's Recent Behavior

I think that after the convention, Romney and Co. expected Obama to sink fast following the August jobs report. When it didn't even seem to slow Obama down one bit, they (finally) realized that people are not going to flock to Romney because of the economic conditions. They either still don't blame Obama or they don't trust Romney, probably a bit of both. So they decided their economic argument was a bust, and started to look elsewhere for something to run on. Two stories likely caught their attention. First, people were hitting Romney for not mentioning foreign policy, at all, during his convention speech and second, a poll came out showing Obama with a 10 point lead in who people trust on foreign policy. I think they decided to go with the old Rove strategy of "attack your opponent on their strength", in an attempt to pull in some hawkish independents ("security moms" and so forth). Almost immediately after they decided to pivot to foreign policy, the protests in the Middle East started, their campaign got overexcited and way ahead of themselves, and tried to go for the jugular on national security. Of course they ended up looking totally unhinged and even sociopathic. However, since they can not run on cultural issues, they can't run on the economy, they decided they could not back down from this. Instead, they went all in and hoped somehow people would turn against Obama on national security issues, and thus close the rather large gap between Obama and Romney in the polls.

Of course, this plan seems to have completely imploded and this has all been a sign of absolute desperation, but I think this may explain why they are doing what they are doing. Nothing from the past 48 hours out of that campaign seems rational and like something that a candidate that feels like they are going to win, would do. If Romney was ahead in the polls and if they felt they were going to win, they would not be acting like this. It has been said before, trying to "shake up" a campaign and "go bold" fails 99% of the time. The candidate always just ends up looking panicked and makes career ending mistakes.