Posted on 09/15/2012 11:20:24 AM PDT by Steelfish
Only Explain SEP 24, 2012 BY WILLIAM KRISTOL
Early Friday morning, September 14, a movie-loving and Romney-supporting friend emailed: “I’m starting to panic. Tell me not to.”
I sent back the obvious response, citing the great Aladdin: “Abu, this is no time to panic. Start panicking!”
A little panic never hurts a trailing campaign. Panic can be your friend if it leads to a few basic adjustments. And with a few basic adjustments, Mitt Romney can win the presidency without the help of a magic lamp or a genie.
On August 11, the day Romney picked Paul Ryan, he was down by about four and a half points in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Two weeks later, on the eve of the Republican convention, after a period of intense and policy-heavy debate on the Ryan budget, welfare reform, defense spending, and Medicare and Obamacare, Romney and Ryan had closed the gap to a point.
Then came a Republican convention whose main message in its most important moment Romney’s speech was that the GOP nominee is a decent family man who isn’t engaged in a war on women. Why Romney and his top strategist, Stuart Stevens, set aside speech drafts that made the case for a Romney presidency in order to spend valuable time trying to reassure Americans that Mitt and Ann Romney would be nice and considerate neighbors (in the unlikely event they happened to move into your neighborhood) remains a mystery.
Romney’s speech may have addressed the concerns of mythical swing voters conjured up out of many focus groups sessions. It predictably failed to win over actual voters, who wanted to hear what Romney plans to do as president of the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Can’t really argue with his point.
Romney. Eight years and $800M. And blowing it. Pathetic.
Romney needs to convince the “independents” that he’s ready to govern. He needs to immediately fire his campaign manager and change course.
Why should he? Romney got this far as an empty suit and plenty of money.
Do you ever read any of the stuff that is posted here? Can you read? In these manufactured bogus polls that oversample Rats, Romney is winning Indies by 10 to 16 percentage points.
Don’t thrive on conspiracy theories. By your lights, the WSJ, FoxNews etc are all oversampling. The models used are the same ones used to predict an Obama victory in 2008 and the Tea-Party sweep in 2010. Romney is running a poor campaign as Bill Kristol and Laura Ingraham have said. Do you ever read stuff outside than what is posted here?
So, you believe that RATs will out poll GOPers by 10 percentage points in November, yes or no?
Polls change. The same Rasmussen polls that now show Romney edging up with a lead had him down 4 points earlier using the same polling methodology. We need to stop blaming the messenger and stop sleepwalking along with our candidate to defeat in November. Losing by even 1-point is still a loss. Romney unlike Ryan appears cautious and is using the same vacuous campaign strategy he did to win the primary. This won’t work here.
He needs to present a bold Reaganesque like plan that will sway the 5%-6% independents. All sides agree that this will be a close election. What were formerly solid red states have become “swing” states like FL and VA. Romney needs to win them both and OH. A OH loss and its all over. Bush II narrowly won OH over Kerry. Had OH gone to Kerry we would possibly have had 8 years of Kerry. We don’t do our side any favors by shooting the messenger. There are none so blind than those who refuse to see. As Laura Ingraham said, if Romney loses this, we may as well shut down the Republican party. With this dismal Obama record, as Krauthammer has written, Romney should be 15-points ahead of Obama.
We must all begin to shout and scream and light a fire under the Romney camp.
I asked a simple question, Do you think Dems will outpoll the GOP by 10 percentage points? Yes or No.
Anything could happen in the next 24 hours. So who knows? Do you?
Pretty funny, coming from lil’ billy.
I did not ask what would happen I asked you what you thought would happen. You silence in itself is an answer.
What “would” happen? No one knows, not even the psychics, but the polls show that Romney is blowing it away. Our task is to recognize this and not shoot the messenger regarding over-polling and the rest of the nonsense that is peddled around here and do what Kristol and others are urging Romney to do.
Good advice.
I don't live or die by what Bill Kristol says, but he's often a sensible pundit.
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