Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s re-election campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.
The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for re-election in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.
In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied President Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John F. Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.
“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.
The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s re-elect will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”
…Romney officials shrug off the tough talk, arguing that there’s nothing Obama can do that will turn the campaign away from functioning as a referendum on his stewardship of the economy.
“There’s so many wonderful ironies here: Obama spent his whole political career perfecting the best argument against Bush 43 and now he’s going to run as 43?” said Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, who also worked for Bush. “They can try anything they want — but this race is going to be about the economy.”
I’m sure that, in between Iftar dinners (breaking the fast during Ramadan) Obama and these advisors can figure out all sorts of ”weird” stuff about that clean-cut, good father, decent man who is a Latter Day Saint.
I wonder if Romney’s ”weirdness’ would express itself in a BOW to Saudis?
My plan is to vote for an actual fiscal conservative.
The right-wing should name the “prominent democratic source” whose words started this conservative-slanted rumor. Also, where were you’all when the Swift Boat rumor scrubbed Kerry’s chance at the Presidency–I don’t remember too many right-wingers standing up against that.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
I wondered about that, too, Liberal1.
Do you recall the Sunday’s New York Times article called, “What Happened to Obama?” by Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen?
Look it up and read it.
Westen tore into Obama for not denouncing Republicans as “bullies!”
Next, Westen is upset with Obama for not providing us with” stories”—stories “with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought.”
Finally Westen finishes with the idea that Obama fails to furnish us with “the villain who caused the problem.”
REALLY???
Isn’t that mostly what Obama’s recent teleprompter readings have all been about?
Obama might be losing his base, but it is a deserved loss.
Why any of them stay with him is testament to the idea of not having anywhere else to go.
Just wait IF Dems mount a Primary Challenge to Obama!
Then they will have somewhere to go away to.
Adding to Prof. Westen’s essay is the fact that this ”destroy him” technique has been an arrow in Dems quiver for years as is seen by the 2007 New York Times article by Patricia Cohen.
Title?
“Counseling Democrats to Go for the Gut”
I would think that by the time Conservatives get finished bashing Romney in the primaries the Dems. job should be a lot easier. I repeat,he’d be real smart to pick Conservative Rubio as his running mate.
Perry should get in this weekend ending any chance of Palin entry. After Bachmann win in IOWA and big win for Romney in N.H., Perry wins in S.C. and Texas.
@rich wheeler, #5:
I agree. Romney is clearly the best choice of the republican field. Dissatisfied Americans on either side of the center point could vote for him. He could actually win the election. For that reason, the far right will use their hold on the GOP to bring him down early.
If Obama wanted to eliminate Romney in the republican primaries, all he would probably have to do is start saying complimentary things about him. That should do the trick. No other plan would be necessary.