Message to Rupert and Bill: It’s not too late to nominate another candidate

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The oracles of the conservative right have a message for Willard "Mittens" Romney: "You suck as a candidate!"

Rupert Murdoch's GOP establishment Wall Street Journal editorializes today Romney's Tax Confusion:

The Romney high command has muddied the tax issue in a way that will help Mr. Obama's claims that he is merely taxing rich folks like Mr. Romney. And it has made it that much harder for Republicans to again turn ObamaCare into the winning issue it was in 2010.

Why make such an unforced error? Because it fits with Mr. Romney's fear of being labeled a flip-flopper, as if that is worse than confusing voters about the tax and health-care issues.

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Perhaps Mr. Romney is slowly figuring this out, because in a July 4 interview he stated himself that the penalty now is a "tax" after all. But he offered no elaboration, and so the campaign looks confused in addition to being politically dumb.

This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign's insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity.

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The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault. We're on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that "Obama isn't working." Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better.

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[The Obama] attacks were predictable, in particular because they go to the heart of Mr. Romney's main campaign theme—that he can create jobs as President because he is a successful businessman and manager. But candidates who live by biography typically lose by it. See President John Kerry.

The biography that voters care about is their own, and they want to know how a candidate is going to improve their future. That means offering a larger economic narrative and vision than Mr. Romney has so far provided. It means pointing out the differences with specificity on higher taxes, government-run health care, punitive regulation, and the waste of politically-driven government spending.

Mr. Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat. So far Mr. Romney is letting them down.

Then there is Neoconservative warmonger "Bloody" Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard, who blogs Dukakis, Kerry … Romney?:

So, speaking of losing candidates from Massachusetts: Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he's running?

Adopting a prevent defense when it's only the second quarter and you're not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign's monomaniacal belief that it's about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it's only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.

[W]hat are voters to think when they hear the GOP nominee say, as he did yesterday to CBS’s Jan Crawford, "As long as I continue to speak about the economy, I'm going to win"? That they're dopes who don't know the economy's bad, but as long as the Romney campaign keeps instructing them that it is bad, they'll react correctly and vote the incumbent out of office?

The economy is of course important. But voters want to hear what Romney is going to do about the economy. He can "speak about" how bad the economy is all he wants—though Americans are already well aware of the economy's problems—but doesn't the content of what Romney has to say matter? What is his economic growth agenda? His deficit reform agenda? His health care reform agenda? His tax reform agenda? His replacement for Dodd-Frank? No need for any of that, I suppose the Romney campaign believes. Just need to keep on "speaking about the economy."

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Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to (narrow) defeat.

Rupert, Bill, huddle up guys. Willard "Mittens" Romney is only the "presumptive" GOP nominee. Not a single vote has been cast where it counts — at the GOP convention. I can't argue with you, you are correct that Willard "Mittens" Romney sucks as a candidate.

But it's not too late for you to nominate another candidate. Primary voters don't matter in the GOP. You guys can cut a deal in a smoke-filled back room in Tampa to kick Mittens to the curb and nominate the candidate you really want in an open convention. It's your only hope. It will be a ratings bonanza on FAUX News, Rupert. Just imagine it.

If Willard "Mittens" Romney is the GOP nominee, Barack Obama is assured a second term.