Romney Doesn't Have a Clue...

Romney Doesn't Have a Clue...
Posted by Christopher Manion on April 30, 2012 07:11 AM

...about what's going to hit him this fall. Dr. James Lucier, longtime adviser to the late Senator Jesse Helms, has the best analysis I've seen of the debacle to come (in a European paper, of course).

Well, who wrote the worst? Probably Pete DuPont, stealing the title of Phyllis Schlafly's 1964 classic in a desperate attempt to convince the Pentagon Spending Times that there's a difference between Romney and Obama (having fun, Pete?). Of course, there are about twenty million conservative voters who don't trust Romney, since he just spent $100 million bashing them, but hey, he's got billions more (Yeah, but so does Rupert Murdoch)!

DoubleThink, call your office!

Meanwhile, Ron Paul keeps packing in the crowds and racking up convention delegates. They'll have to sleep in the Orlando Youth Hostel, if the Rove Machine has its way, but if Romney thinks he can win by stiffing them too, then may his campaign rest in peace ­ because it's DOA.

xxx

Romney wraps it up, but Obama has a different campaign in mind
By James Lucier

Mitt Romney returned to New Hampshire, the place where he began his campaign,  after winning five primary elections on Tuesday, and took effective control of the Republican presidential nomination. There he laid out his new vision for America, expressed in various shades of grey with a wash of umber here and there. His partisans loved it.

Once again, the speech showed that money can buy happiness, but good ghostwriters are hard to find. John F. Kennedy had his Ted Sorenson, George H.W. Bush had his Peggy Noonan, and Barack Obama had his Bill Ayers. Romney is reportedly a very disciplined individual, but there is scarcely a glittering generality he can't resist, a worn-out phrase that doesn't trip off his tongue, or another sentimentality for which the occasion does not call.

He told us his campaign was launched, inevitably, "on a beautiful June day," and that he had been on "an extraordinary journey," although his opponents may have had a different recollection. We learned from his lips that Americans "are eternal optimists," yet their "hopes and dreams" were "diminished by false promises" put forward by one whose name may not be pronounced.  He said his campaign would be addressed to all those who want "a better chance, a fighting chance." He asked them all to hold on a little longer because--and here's the bumper sticker--"a better America begins tonight."

Romney expressed a gentle critique of President Obama saying that government is at the center of the President's vision, a vision putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. Romney seems unaware that that's already the case, and an effective campaign should demonstrate how to dismantle the soft totalitarianism of the Democrats. Instead Romney's speech gingerly criticizes a handful of Obama policies but only in an elliptical manner.

For example, Obama is in lock-step with the teacher's union in blocking Federal funding for inner city parents who want to send their kids to independent charter schools. They are begging for their kids to be able to escape from the collapsing discipline and standards of union-controlled government schools. In Romney's view, this becomes a bland statement about "the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice."

And another instance: Romney shrinks from condemning Obama's corrupt deals with pay-for-play businessmen. A case in point concerns the Federal loans made to the Democrat campaign-fund bundlers running the failed green energy company, Solyndra. Romney simply says "we will stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friend's businesses." Doesn't the Governor know this is not a question of  "unfairness?" Doesn't he know it's criminal?

In a week in which the Dutch government fell, the Socialists took the lead in France, Greece was under a new attack from the Furies, and the Eurozone economic crisis continued to twist in the wind, Romney had not one word about U.S. leadership in the world. With China continuing to manipulate its currency and pushing its hegemony over the East China Sea, and with the U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitting that China may have provided some assistance to North Korea's missile program, Romney seemed to be oblivious to the need to provide a clear definition of U.S. goals in world affairs.

During the same week, two major arms control issues collapsed under the hands of the Obama administration, but it is very hard to find out whether Romney has any knowledge of either. The new boy toy President of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, the third of the dynasty, defied all international obligations by conducting a test of a new long-range missile. The fact that it fizzled like a wet firecracker 90 seconds into its flight is amusing, but what is not amusing is the North Korean regime's intent to save face by conducting its third nuclear test soon.

Similarly, in Iran this week, President Ahmadinejad was happy to continue negotiations about its own rogue nuclear program, even while rejecting a proposal by the west to reprocess its nuclear material in a third country while shutting down its own facilities.

The purpose of arms control negotiations has always been a strategy to allow the nuclear-seeking nation time to continue to develop a lethal or improved lethal capability even as the talks go on and on. The diplomats of the western nations are pleased with such a strategy because it allows them to postpone actually doing something, while the nuclear-seeking nation is pleased to postpone international action while it is rushing its program to completion. Perhaps Romney should be asked what he would do about the philosophy of arms control. Is the status of arms control a sham or a shame

In Syria, the minority Alawite dynasty, led by Bashar al-Assad, was in mopping up operations this past week, after slaughtering some 5,000 opponents designated as terrorists, although they were mostly majority Sunnis and Christians. In Egypt, the Arab Spring of democracy has given way to Sharia fanatics now that the Obama Administration has cast its lot with the Muslim Brotherhood in the form of $1.5 billion in foreign aid released all in one tranche. The secularists are marginalized, the Coptic Christians were pushed off the constitution-writing committee, Christian churches are burnt, and this week Egypt's most famous comedian, Adel Iman, was convicted of blasphemy for some films he made 20 years ago. What is Romney's view of the viability of Egyptian cinema?

It is true that foreign policy is seldom a winner in a domestic campaign. Perhaps for many voters the only thing that they have heard lately about foreign affairs is the secret trysts of the Secret Service. Nevertheless, the willingness of China to purchase our debt has contributed to the vast expansion of the federal government and federal power over U.S. citizens. Our dependence on the monopoly power of OPEC, (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has resulted in a doubling of the price we pay at the gas pump, and the jihadist attacks against the infrastructure of the west have seriously diminished our freedom of movement.

Romney's failure to engage on real issues is the result of misplaced campaign strategy. Like Admiral Titanic and Colonel Blimp his handlers are busily preparing to fight the last war. They think that there is a spectrum of voters ranging across a spectrum from left to right. Now that the right wing voters have been disenfranchised or neutralized by the campaign to date, the Republican strategists feel that they must now make an appeal to the mythical middle. They hope to peel off enough of these middle voters, many of whom voted for Obama in 2008, to give them a narrow margin of victory, particularly in a dozen battleground states with the most electoral votes.

In order for this strategy to succeed, they believe that the candidate must switch to a strategy of sweet reasonableness, a campaign that avoids sharp elbows and seeks an overriding consensus attracting a 52 or 53 percent majority. The meme is Massachusetts moderation. According to reports, they plan to spend millions on a massive TV barrage on the theme that Obama has not lived up to his promises, that his administration is a failure. The basic assumption to be presented to the voters is that Obama meant well, but was just not up to the job. They hope that a reasoned debate will win the undecided over, vote by vote.

But the Obama crowd has an entirely different kind of campaign in mind. While the Republicans have been nattering among themselves, the Obama for America campaign has been burning through tens of millions of dollars organizing shock troops state by state. TV is strictly secondary in getting the message across. The official Obama website announced on April 25 that "the President will take to the campaign trail in ten days," although in point of fact the President has been on the campaign trail for months, usually on the taxpayer's tab. This week, the President has visited three universities to publicize his proposal to renew the temporary cut-rate interest on student loans before the law expires in July.

The real purpose of this proposal is to energize youth cadres by website, twitter, Facebook and other social media. The Community-Organizer-in-Chief is going to install a new model of community organizing nationwide. The campaign has set up twelve-week Obama Fellowships to be deployed to each state in spring, summer and fall. Applicants have to answer detailed questionnaires about their organizing background, their willingness to travel to other states and to work long hours. The Obama fellows are expected to go door-to-door spreading the Obama message, and training local community organizers. They are asked whether they can work with diverse communities.

The Obama campaign will be about turnout, not truth. The organizing effort will coordinate with teachers unions, auto unions, government unions, racial and Hispanic pressure groups and other special interest organizations. Group identity and race will be the prevailing electoral argument, not ideas or failed promises. Obama stands for the politics of division. His informal slogan will no longer be hope and change, but hate and envy.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2135513/US-election-2012-Romney-wraps-Obama-different-campaign-mind.html