There’s a lot of chatter—and presumably more to come—about this Politico story today (8/9/11):
Obama Plan: Destroy Romney
By Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin
August 9, 2011 04:29 AM EDTBarack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.
It’s a safe bet that the Obama campaign, being a political campaign, will engage in some pretty rough stuff. But this piece makes it sound like something terrible is already happening. (Look at the headline!)
Politico talks about a “dramatic and unabashedly negative turn” in a campaign that hasn’t really started, but concludes nonetheless that
the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.
Smith and Martin explain:
The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”
I’m not sure how that would necessarily qualify as a plot to “destroy” Romney. It’s been more or less the consensus view after his 2008 campaign that Romney had trouble with authenticity—something Republicans have talked about.
They go on:
The second aspect of the campaign to define Romney is his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that was responsible for both creating and eliminating jobs. Obama officials intend to frame Romney as the very picture of greed in the great recession–a sort of political Gordon Gekko.
They’re going to use his record against him?!
The piece goes on to say that the campaign will make an issue of Romney’s flip flops–again, I’m not sure how this is any different than saying they’re going to run a political campaign.
The piece talks about how Obama’s campaign has studied Bush’s 2004 campaign against John Kerry; they seem to express some professional admiration of the Bush team’s ability to turn the campaign into something other than a vote on Bush’s first term in office. This doesn’t seem all that remarkable, given that campaigns study other successful campaigns in order to figure out what made them successful.
I don’t doubt Obama’s people feel like they’ll need to play dirty in order to win. There’s some speculation that “weird” means “talking about his Mormonism.” That could be true (and an unwillingness to vote for a Mormon has held pretty steady in polling on potential candidates).
But thinking they’ll do any of this is different than actually showing that they’re doing it. Politico‘s role in Beltway journalism is to try and drive the narrative; they’re already out now with a “Romney campaign responds to Obama campaign” piece.
it needs to be noted that the quotes from the politico article were totally unsourced. one was attributed to “a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.”
one person “aligned with the White House”? authoritative!
The Obama team need not go to the dark side in order to make Romney seem weird. Just let Romney speak for himself like he did yesterday when he claimed that corporations are people.
If “corporations are people”, shouldn’t they be taxed like people, at about 35%?
Politico or someone else led Chris Matthews to say that President Obama was going to swiftboat Romney. Democrats don’t spread lies like republicans do. We sure had liars in league against John Kerry for President and that was run by the very same republican billionaires still funding republicans and swiftboating Democrats with lies, hate, back-stabbing, evil and more hate and lies.
With respect to the â┚¬Ã…“issueâ┚¬Ã‚ of Romney’s Mormonism, it is illustrative of the evolving and pernicious authority of fundamentalist, Dominionist, and Christian Reconstructiionist â┚¬Ã…“theologyâ┚¬Ã‚ among rightist believers in the USA.
Back in 1968, I don’t believe Mitt’s George Romney, ever had to deal with his own Mormonism at all, even pitted against Richard Nixon in the GOP primaries.
In America, this is what passes for â┚¬Ã…“progressâ┚¬Ã‚ in rightist precincts.
There is nothing weird about any of this.The thought that Obama would run a principled campaign is as foreign as a moon rock.Not that any of them do it mind you.It is just that coming from the Chicago thug background, will probably make him the worst of the lot.He will use anything he can to get re elected ,except….his record.It is the one thing he can’t use.If Mitt can’t weather that storm he does not deserve to be there.That is a grudging respect i have for George Bush,Palin,and Obama.They can meet it out ….AND take it.Like water off a ducks back.Steel spines.It really is a primary job qualification, and one of the few “moldings”that I feel every president must endure.Bring it on.Yeah yeah he is a Mormon with 6 wives.Good for him.Now how is the economy stupid?
I was going to comment on this the other day and ask why you were so sure Obama wouldn’t do this – he’s a really unprincipled guy who has surrounded himself with vicious, ruthless people (the new mayor of chicago, for example) but I didn’t get around to it. Wish I would have – Obama’s started on it already. The idea of going over to the dark side – like he had ever been anywhere else – is laughable. He pretty much has to go negative, because in his record is there to be positive about?
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