Posted on 09/15/2012 7:07:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Why is Team Romney slamming Obama's foreign policy as Americans die overseas? Michael Tomasky says they can't win the swing vote, so they're going with Plan B: Rile up the base.
They keep piling on. You’d think Mitt Romney and team would have stopped with the foreign-policy attacks— if not because of the political costs, then at least because real, living Americans are now under very serious threat in a number of Middle Eastern cities. But no. Instead they keep at it, with Paul Ryan and old “Blackjack” Bennett pressing ever onward at the Values Voter Summit on Friday. Do they think they’re “winning” this? The longer they keep at this, the more they’re heading into dangerous territory indeed, because the only way they can win this argument is for something horrible to happen overseas, which will set them up to say we told you so.
I can’t imagine what would make them think these attacks are helping them. Check that. I can. They came out of the conventions a couple more points behind than they were. Romney is, I’d say, four points behind Obama now (excluding dear old Rasmussen). And it’s a little worse in the key swing states. The latest reliable poll, from NBC/Wall Street Journal by Marist, gives Obama a seven-point lead in Ohio, and five-point leads in Virginia and Florida. If Obama wins two of those states, it’s over. Heck, if he wins one of them, it’s most likely over, provided he holds on in the other swing states where he now holds small leads (Colorado, Iowa, etc.)
To the extent that Romney is losing ground in those states, he’s obviously losing it among swing voters. I wouldn’t be surprised if his campaign is sitting on polling showing them that, given the trends, there are only so many inroads he’s likely to make among swing voters in each of the key states. They know, or should know, exactly how many there are in each state, and what percentage they can get, and whether that percentage can put them over the top. And maybe they know that it can’t.
So they need to run a base-centric election in the final push. Hope for bad jobs numbers for the next two months to bring in some of the undecideds, but basically, push every known button of the wingnut psyche and hope that, despite their tepid feelings about their candidate, they’ll march to the polls like columns of ants to stop the Kenyan appeaser from destroying America.
That means they have to go all in on every front—class warfare, culture, and foreign policy. The rapturous cheers Ryan and Bennett hear at events like Friday’s seem to affirm to them that they’re on the right track. I’m sure also that Richard Williamson, the Romney foreign-policy adviser who has been making various eye-popping statements in the media these past few days, is getting nice, rah-rah text messages from the usual suspects egging him ever onward.
So no doubt Williamson thinks he got off a great zinger when he commented to The Washington Post that “for the first time since Jimmy Carter, we’ve had an American ambassador assassinated.” But let’s think through the ramifications of that comment, and of the posture the Romney campaign has now staked out, given that it has already demonstrated that it’s perfectly happy to try to use attacks on American territory and personnel for political gain.
The main thing that wrecked Carter, of course, was the Iranian hostage crisis. I’m not saying that Mitt Romney and his people are hoping and praying for Americans to be taken hostage or harmed. But neither am I saying that, within limits, they would exactly mind. Such an eventuality would, after all, fulfill their Carter talking point and enable them to go to town on it. They presumably don’t want bad things to happen to their country, but they most certainly do want bad things to happen to Obama. That can be a pretty fine moral tightrope to walk. And Romney’s already fallen off it once.
What’s been happening since Tampa and Charlotte is that Americans are finally taking the time to size up these two men next to each other, and it’s pretty clear which way they’re leaning. This is shocking and inexplicable to Romney and his partisans in anti-Obama America, so they seem to think that if they can just manage to show the country the real Obama in ever-starker terms, people will finally see the prince of darkness they behold.
But instead of seeing this “real” Obama, Americans are seeing the real Romney, a man with exactly the wrong proportions of ambition and core. I would guess that we’ll see in the next round of polling that these attacks, too, didn’t quite work. And then they’ll try something else desperate, and something else. They’ll wake up on November 7 wondering why America rejected them, without realizing that the candidate and his surrogates showed America why every day of the campaign, and never more so than during this past, disgraceful week.
Well this is new. I hear from the ABRs that he isn’t doing enough.
Which is it?
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Will America be lost because noone had the guts to expose Obama?
The best Obama exposure site on the net:
(by our own FReeper, Beckwith)
The Obama File
http://www.theobamafile.com/index_next_personal.html
The United States Library of Congress has selected
TheObamaFile.com for inclusion in its historic collection
of Internet materials
http://theobamafile.com/LibraryOfCongress.html
Just a few of the pages:
http://www.theobamafile.com/index_next_politics.html
http://www.theobamafile.com/BarackObama.htm
http://www.theobamafile.com/_family/FamilyPage.htm
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaEducation.htm
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaPsychology.htm
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaReligion.htm
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaWife.htm
http://www.theobamafile.com/_associates/ObamaAssociates.htm
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaIconography.htm
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Zero avoids real press.
Romney does a presser and is asked the same question seven ways.
Romney is criticized form”making them” focus on attacking him instead of covering news.
?
Talk about projection! What was the adoption of extremly radical extremist positions on God, Israel, Abortion and Gay Marriage adopted at the 2012 Democrat National Convention?
Michael Tomasky is a liberal American columnist, journalist and author. He is the editor in chief of Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The ... Wikipedia
Say no more.
Like we need Romney to “rile” us up? I think Obama has done more than exceed our limit of rile up without a bit of help.
“That means they have to go all in on every front—class warfare, culture, and foreign policy”
Class Warfare-Obama’s campaign is doing this.
Culture- Obama’s campaign trying to define it.
Foreign policy-Lack of one will be Obama’s undoing
“To the extent that Romney is losing ground in those states, he’s obviously losing it among swing voters.”
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Is that why he has an appx 15 point lead among Independents in the latest polls?
Pure Libtard desperation.
No, we’re all going to stay home unless someone throws red meat to us and the Koch brothers tell us who to vote for on the magic box.
Riling up the BASE is exactly what Mitt needs to do and keep it up, long overdue.
We can't help it if Obama is supplying all the ammunition himself. Seems every day brings us just one more round to attack him with. Keep up the good work BOZO.
a Forrest Gump moment. stupid is as stupid does. checked my brain outside the door and just started writing drivel.
liberals will suck it into the vacuum of their brains because nothing else exists there.
can’t even debate them. not even fair. no logic, no morals, no principles, just drivel.
blessings, bobo
You know the Democrats are really hurting when they say that the issue is hurting the Republicans.
“Why is Team Romney slamming Obama’s foreign policy as Americans die overseas? Michael Tomasky says they can’t win the swing vote, so they’re going with Plan B: Rile up the base.”
can’t win the swing vote?? that’s funny as despite all these polls which outsample rats by as much as 10% one theme has rung true; Romney almost always has an 8%-to-15% advantage from independents in these polls...
Thank you for posting these links.
They can’t do much to defend Obama’s bumbling [or intended] actions, so they choose the old Alinsky, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” to put the focus on Romney.
That means something else is going on: a suppression campaign.
The only way Obama wins for sure is if GOP voters are demoralized.
Were they concerned about John F Kerry attacking Bush's foreign policy when real Americans were dying overseas? NO.
Were they concerned about Barack Obama attacking Bush/McCain on foreign policy when real Americans were dying overseas? NO.
Yeah, I’m inflamed alright . . against him. What a disaster.
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