{"id":15137,"date":"2012-07-17T17:51:46","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T21:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=15137"},"modified":"2012-07-17T17:51:46","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T21:51:46","slug":"romney-needs-to-toughen-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/15137\/romney-needs-to-toughen-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney Needs to Toughen Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a typically insightful column, Byron York<\/a> says there are at least five reasons why Mitt Romney\u2019s campaign seems to be flailing.\u00a0 Two jumped out at me:<\/p>\n

Romney\u2019s business history and taxes are two issues left unresolved from the primary campaign.\u00a0 During the primaries, Republicans didn\u2019t want to hear fellow Republicans criticizing Romney\u2019s record at Bain Capital.\u00a0 Some characterized attacks on Romney\u2019s Bain history as attacks on capitalism itself.\u00a0 Democrats and many independents don\u2019t feel the same way, and Obama and his SuperPAC allies are relentlessly slamming Romney\u2019s business history both nationally and in key states around the country.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Newt Gingrich complained loudly \u2014 some called it whining \u2014 when Romney first hit him with a negative ad barrage in Iowa.\u00a0 Then, when Romney attacked on a far bigger scale in Florida, Gingrich reacted badly again.\u00a0 Privately, the Romney campaign, which at times seemed to delight at kicking the hell out of a Republican opponent, had no respect for Gingrich\u2019s tendency to complain when attacked.\u00a0 Just take it and hit back harder \u2014 that was the way they saw it.\u00a0 Now, however, Romney is complaining about Obama\u2019s attacks.\u00a0 Romney is far more self-controlled than Gingrich, but the effect is the same; he\u2019s whining about the other guy treating him badly.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same thing that happened in the primary campaign, only with Romney on the hurting end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The good news for Romney is that these are correctable problems.<\/p>\n

There is an excellent defense to the \u201cvulture capitalism\u201d charge the Obama Administration is recycling from the GOP primaries \u2013 Troy wrote it back in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for hitting back, one of the factors York mentioned but I didn\u2019t excerpt was that GOP SuperPACs aren\u2019t landing as many punches on Obama as Democratic SuperPACs are landing on Romney.\u00a0 The latter is drowning in negative ads in swing states.<\/p>\n

Of course, legally, SuperPACs can\u2019t coordinate with presidential campaigns.\u00a0 But York\u2019s reporting implies that those running GOP SuperPACs aren\u2019t sure how hard to hit Obama and on what issues.\u00a0 My guess is that Romney doesn\u2019t know himself, and is communicating that with his defensive rhetoric.<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s not how the Obama campaign operates.\u00a0 Like Romney in the primaries, they\u2019re in the general to win.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the Democratic SuperPACs aren\u2019t suffering from the confusion plaguing Romney and his SuperPACs; probably because they know President Obama will \u201cjust take (whatever Romney throws)\u201d and want his supporters them to \u201chit back harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like I said above, these are correctable problems, if Romney is willing to make the changes necessary to sharpen his rhetoric and toughen up his persona.<\/p>\n

So far, that\u2019s a BIG if\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a typically insightful column, Byron York says there are at least five reasons why Mitt Romney\u2019s campaign seems to be flailing.\u00a0 Two jumped out at me: Romney\u2019s business history and taxes are two issues left unresolved from the primary campaign.\u00a0 During the primaries, Republicans didn\u2019t want to hear fellow Republicans criticizing Romney\u2019s record at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2033,143,645,1193,160,3340,1006],"class_list":["post-15137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2033","tag-barack-obama","tag-byron-york","tag-campaign","tag-mitt-romney","tag-super-pacs","tag-troy-senik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15137"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15141,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15137\/revisions\/15141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}