{"id":16029,"date":"2012-10-02T14:32:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T18:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=16029"},"modified":"2012-10-02T16:16:56","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T20:16:56","slug":"why-do-romneyites-always-telegraph-their-punches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/16029\/why-do-romneyites-always-telegraph-their-punches\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Romneyites Always Telegraph Their Punches?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Costa at NRO has a great column out today<\/a> about what the Romney insiders hope their candidate accomplishes in tomorrow’s debate. Excellent reporting, interesting content.<\/p>\n

But I am moved to make the same point Jonah Goldberg of NRO made<\/a> a few days ago:<\/p>\n

[T]he Romney campaign is shaping up to be something special. It seems to be part of their strategy never to miss a chance to tell the press why they\u2019re doing what they\u2019re doing. \u2026 The Romney campaign is so careful not to distract the voters with actual ideas and arguments \u2014 or, heaven forbid, ideology \u2014 that it seems at times determined to run on stage directions alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why is anybody<\/em> inside or close to the campaign coming anywhere near telling outsiders what they hope Romney accomplishes in the debate and how he intends to do it? Unless this is all a clever misdirection play (which I seriously doubt), this lets the Obama team know exactly what to prepare for. It\u2019s as if a head football coach did an interview before a big game and said: \u201cWell, we really want to blitz a lot on defense, because we aren\u2019t really satisfied with our pass rush without the blitz; and on offense, you can expect to see a lot of play-action passes because we want them to think we\u2019re running when we\u2019re really gonna throw the ball\u2026. Oh, and by the way, we\u2019ve also been practicing lots of screen passes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagine if Ronald Reagan\u2019s team had said in advance of the second Mondale debate that everybody should be looking for a good one-liner to deal with the \u201cage issue.\u201d How stupid would that have been?<\/p>\n

If I were Romney, I would send an edict to his entire team that they are no longer allowed to discuss anything about campaign strategy, tactics, \u201cpositioning,\u201d or the like. Problem is, once he put out such an edict, the next report leaked through \u201cfriendly\u201d media outlets would be about how bold a step Romney just took by ordering all of his advisors not to talk about campaign tactics, and about how they expect the no-tactics strategy to bolster the campaign\u2019s standing with part-time self-employed Hispanics in Colorado\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Costa at NRO has a great column out today about what the Romney insiders hope their candidate accomplishes in tomorrow’s debate. Excellent reporting, interesting content. But I am moved to make the same point Jonah Goldberg of NRO made a few days ago: [T]he Romney campaign is shaping up to be something special. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[333,2579,3026,3845],"class_list":["post-16029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-jonah-goldberg","tag-robert-costa","tag-romney","tag-tactics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16029","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16029"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16033,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16029\/revisions\/16033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}