Fundamentals
Josh Marshall
The news this morning is filled with stories about in-fighting in the Romney campaign or new promises of either a more culture war based campaign or one where Romney finally gets specific on his key policy proposals. It’s all standard for when the media and a campaign itself believe it is losing.
But don’t be distracted by the various plot lines. Romney’s core problem is this: the campaign’s strategy has always been that the economy itself will defeat Obama. So the economy defeats Barack Obama. And Mitt Romney is the can-do business man who the country turns to. In other words, Romney takes the presidency by default. This is hardly a crazy strategy with unemployment stuck above 8% and an economy that has actually decelerated over the course of the year. But it does not appear to be working. That’s the key.
The race to date has been characterized by a remarkable stability. Going back a year and a half President Obama has held a small — sometimes extremely small — lead over Gov. Romney. Like a distance runner coming into the final lap, the logical moment — the moment the Romney campaign was banking on — for Romney to make his move was at the convention. Only that didn’t happen. In fact, at least for the moment Obama seems to have broken out into a new lead. That’s left Romney with a broken theory of the campaign and an urgent need for a new strategy.
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Republicans can say Obama represents socialism and a slow descent into the awfulness of the German welfare state until they’re blue in the face. But voters get that Obama is pushing a basically pragmatic approach to taxes and spending. Polling has always shown this. His approach to social insurance programs is more popular as is his support for letting the Bush tax cuts expire for upper income earners. A campaign focused on actual policy details would only drive this point home. Don’t take my word for it — listen to the Romney campaign itself. The refusal to offer any detailed policy proposals speaks for itself.
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Mittwit put all his eggs in the economic basket and tried to fool the public with a bullshit unworkable plan, hoping for a convention bounce and a bad jobs report. That was the strategy.
Mitt screwed up, and he knows it. He's also boxed in, and his attempts to shift from the economy to foreign policy have been disastrous.
I mean, the guy screwed up a simple trip overseas where all he had to do was play nice and say hi!
His latest craven actions regarding the attacks on American in Libya are, without question, one of the worst self-inflicted disasters suffered by a candidate ever!
His campaign has been going off the rails for months, but with every derailed car, the pundits found a way to keep him in the race.
They didn't even mention his clueless statement to the homeless victim of Isaac. He's a disaster.
2 replies
Josh Marshall: Fundamentals (Original post)
randome (14,028 posts) 
