This week, many were writing Mitt Romney's obituary of his presidential aspirations and declaring President Obama the winner about five weeks before the election.
Such banal conjecture was flowing from a liberal mainstream media, and even GOP political stalwarts, who had from the start questioned Romney's fitness to win against the personally popular Obama.
On the surface, there were several good reasons to justify pronouncing the race over.
First, Romney was the target of hyped condemnation for his premature, severe criticism of Obama over a news release condemning "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims" after U.S. diplomatic compounds were attacked in Egypt and Libya.
There was also a report by Politico about serious infighting among top staffers of his campaign.
Then, the political Pièce de résistance, an explosive release by Mother Jones of a tape of Romney at a Boca Raton fundraiser stating that 47 percent of Americans are "dependent on government" and that "they think that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it."
If you had to try to define 'pulling a political boner,' this was it.
After the release of the fundraiser clip, GOP leaders and candidates in House and Senate races, fresh from distancing themselves from Romney's Libya remarks, once again were tripping over each other to disassociate themselves from yet another Romney gaffe. Most significant, Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Connecticut GOP Senate contender Linda McMahon both repudiated Romney's remarks.
And gleeful Democrats bounced. President Obama went on Letterman this week and stated "One of the things I learned as president is you represent the entire country. If you want to be president, you have to work for everyone."
And so did the press. Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal blogged "It's time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one." In a piece entitled "Let Them Eat Crab Cake," Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote off Romney's chances of winning "One thing we have to give Mitt, though: He is, as advertised, a brilliant manager. He's managed to ensure that President Obama has a much better chance of re-election." Timothy Noah of The New Republic wrote: "Hmm, maybe it isn't too early to declare Romney's candidacy dead after all."
To make matters worse, all major polls this week showed Romney slipping, particularly in swing states.
Yet, despite all this angst that was endured by Romney and the GOP in the last few days, the perception that these gaffes spelled early political doom was hopeful rather than intelligent reasoning by those declaring the race for president over or even others decrying a poorly run Romney campaign.
As this presidential election grows near, the framing of those gaffes in a context of fatal political blunders is nothing more than a ramping up of the staging of very effective distractions that the Obama camp and an accommodating press has been continuously throwing out there against Romney to keep him and the GOP off balance and sidetracked from pounding the president on the major issues that Americans are really concerned with, such as the economy and a dangerous, failing Middle East policy.
Each one of these three recent gaffes, taken separately or together, realistically had a news spin life of about three, four days at the most, even if they were twisted in the most cynical, direst manner.
If anything, the Obama campaign made a mistake releasing the Boca fundraiser tape way too early in this cycle. At this point, at most, it reaffirmed an already standard perception of Romney's detractors that he is really an unfeeling, out of touch rich guy. It's being made public days before the election would have been much more effective in gaining much of those 47 percenters who are still sitting on the fence in early November.
Unlike other previous presidential races, the velocity of the news cycle and the resulting diminished attention span and interest of American voters have already depreciated the significance, and the relative damage, from these mistakes.
These gaffes signaled not the death of Romney's candidacy, but the beginning of a new, really dirty phase of the 2012 campaign that will become increasingly derisive and combative, particularly when the serious Super PAC money hits the airwaves-and as gas prices continue to climb at the pumps.
The time left to Election Day is a political eternity, and Romney can still win -- and win big -- in November.
Published in Sun-Sentinel on September 20, 2012
Steven Kurlander is a columnist in the Sun-Sentinel and Florida Voices. His blog is www.stevenkurlander.com and he can be emailed at kurly@stevenkurlander.com
Follow Steven Kurlander on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kurlykomments
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 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
His failed economic policies’ critics are attacked as “Wall Street fat cats.” His failed foreign policies’ critics are demonized as ominous neocon puppet masters.
This is going to be a dirty campaign. You ain't seen nothing yet.
The Boca tapes help set Obama up to win the debates, by bringing up the still unanswered questions from them, and there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Romney's attempted diversion of the redistribution tape AND dumping his tax "summaries" bought him a news cycle, but that was all. Romney is using up the things he intended for distractions faster than the Dems are using up their own attack material.
Romney's gaffs reveal a couple of major structural weaknesses to his campaign. First, he attempts to avoid angering both his base and independents by never speaking in specifics. Second, his response to criticisms from the primary on has been to distract and counterattack. With the result that his supporters aren't prepared to deal with the criticisms on their own merits. So they keep coming back.
And that is more than being out of touch, that is being a direct threat.
No one buys that cleaning out the SEC so that Wall Street can trample us all again is the path to prosperity. What else does Romney have--more tax cuts for the wealthy? GMAFB. The debt? The debt ballooned when GWB cut taxes, fought 2 wars w/o paying for them, and introduced the prescription drug (part D), also w/o paying for it.
Two gaffes do not make a campaign, but they reinforce the truth--zero foreign policy experience, and no experience that enables him to understand the difficulties the middle class faces. He has never taken a single risk in his life (even at Bain, he had a pre-written termination notice that said he was being "asked to return because they needed him" if the Bain Capital venture failed).
His remaining ace-in-the-hole: lying. THAT he does very well.