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Jewish World Review April 24, 2012/ 2 Iyar, 5772 Why Romney's most effective booster is . . . Obama By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
On Feb. 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali, then known by his birth name, Cassius Clay, shocked the boxing world by defeating heavyweight champion Sonny Liston. Ali used his superior quickness to evade Liston's ponderous punches, and counterpunched so effectively that Liston didn't answer the bell for the 7th round.
The opening rounds of the general election campaign have resembled the Clay-Liston fight. Mitt Romney has counterpunched so effectively Democrats were lying bleeding on the canvas before they knew what hit them.
Within hours after Democratic operative Hilary Rosen said on CNN that Mr. Romney's wife, Ann, a mother of five, "actually never worked a day in her life," Democrats were running from her like scalded dogs.
On a vacation trip in 1983, Seamus, the Romney family dog, rode in a crate on top of their station wagon. Democrats hyped this as evidence of Mr. Romney's "insensitivity." As a boy in Indonesia, Barack Obama ate dog, he said in his autobiography. The Romney team pounced.
"One tweet from an iPad, and the Romney campaign had knocked back five years of dog stories," wrote Dave Weigel of Slate with grudging admiration.
Twice in as many weeks, the Romney team turned Democrat attacks against them. I expect this to happen again and again.
With no achievements to tout, Democrats feel they must run down the other guys. A CBS/New York Times poll last week indicated 42 percent of Americans like Mr. Obama personally, but only 29 percent like Mitt Romney, so Democrats think personal attacks on Mr. Romney will work.
But when a president seeks a second term, the election is a referendum on his performance in office. The president's percentage of the popular vote tracks closely with his job approval, noted psephologist Sean Trende.
Americans give Mr. Obama such low marks on job performance that Washington Post political analyst Ed Rogers thinks "a serious challenge for the Romney campaign will be how to stay out of the way while Obama loses."
The president's numbers will improve if the economy does, but it is getting weaker. So Democrats double down on personal attacks. Their strategy is doomed.
Mr. Romney's low personal approval rating is chiefly the residual effect of a nasty primary campaign. It will dissipate as Republicans consolidate around their nominee.
Mr. Obama's rating will drop. Personal approval and job approval tend to converge, because if you don't like what a president is doing, you tend not to like him much, either. And instead of attacking Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, Mr. Romney will run ads criticizing the president.
Mr. Obama's campaign strategy will accelerate the drop. In Michigan Wednesday (4/18), he said: "Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth." This strikes Americans as more petulant than presidential.
The more the president talks about Mr. Romney, and the less he talks about the issues which concern Americans, the more he seems out of touch, in over his head.
But Democrats are so accustomed to turning every issue into a personal attack they can't stop, even when its counterproductive. To mix sports metaphors, Democrats are like a football team that runs the same play over and over, without regard to down and distance.
Early indications are a strategy of distract and smear won't work against Mitt Romney. He counterpunches fast and hard, and then returns swiftly to the issues Americans care about.
Because he knows Americans don't have to like him to vote for him, or dislike President Obama to vote against him, Mr. Romney focuses like a laser on competence. He uses effectively the contrast between Mr. Obama's words in 2008 and his subsequent deeds to make his points. He doesn't call the president names. He acts like the grownup in the race.
Even in polls which oversample Democrats, Mr. Romney already runs even with the president. The whopping 10 point advantage the GOP enjoyed last Monday (4/16) in Rasmussen's generic Congressional poll indicates Republicans are more popular (or Democrats less popular) now than on the eve of the Republican landslide in 2010.
In every election but one (2004) since 1964, undecideds have broken heavily toward the challenger. It's early yet, but the signs indicate Mr. Romney will win, and win big.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2011, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
