The myth of Romney momentum Romney Says Heâs Winning â Itâs a Bluff By Jonathan Chait, 23 Oct 2012 "In recent days, the vibe emanating from Mitt Romneyâs campaign has grown downright giddy. Despite a lack of any evident positive momentum over the last week â indeed, in the face of a slight decline from its post-Denver high â the Romney camp is suddenly bursting with talk that it will not only win but win handily. (âWeâre going to win,â said one of the former Massachusetts governorâs closest advisers. âSeriously, 305 electoral votes.â) "This is a bluff. Romney is carefully attempting to project an atmosphere of momentum, in the hopes of winning positive media coverage and, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Over the last week, Romneyâs campaign has orchestrated a series of high-profile gambits in order to feed its momentum narrative. Last week, for instance, Romneyâs campaign blared out the news that it was pulling resources out of North Carolina. The battleground was shifting! Romney on the offensive! On closer inspection, it turned out that Romney was shifting exactly one staffer. It is true that Romney leads in North Carolina, and it is probably his most favorable battleground state. But the decision to have a staffer move out of state, with a marching band and sound trucks in tow to spread the news far and wide, signals a deliberate strategy to create a narrative. "Also last week, Paul Ryan held a rally in Pittsburgh. Romney moving in to Pennsylvania! On the offensive! Skeptical reporters noted that Ryanâs rally would bleed into the media coverage in southeast Ohio and that Romney was not devoting any real money to Pennsylvania. Romneyâs campaign keeps leaking that it is planning to spend money there. (Todayâs leak: âRepublicans are genuinely intrigued by the prospect of a strike in Pennsylvania and, POLITICO has learned, are considering going up on TV there outside the expensive Philadelphia market.â Note the noncommittal terms: intrigued and considering.) The story also floats Romneyâs belief that, since Pennsylvania has no early voting, it can postpone its planned, any-day-now move into Pennsylvania until the end. This allows Romney to keep the Pennsylvania bluff going until, what, a couple of days before the election? "Karl Rove employed exactly this strategy in 2000. As we now know, the race was excruciatingly close, and Al Gore won the national vote by half a percentage point. But at the time, Bush projected a jaunty air of confidence. Rove publicly predicted Bush would win 320 electoral votes. Bush even spent the final days stumping in California, supposedly because he was so sure of victory he wanted an icing-on-the-cake win in a deep blue state. Campaign reporters generally fell for Bushâs spin, portraying him as riding the winds of momentum and likewise presenting Al Gore as desperate. "The current landscape is slightly different. The race is also very close, but Obama enjoys a clear electoral college lead. He is ahead by at least a couple points in enough states to make him president. Adding to his base of uncontested states, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin would give Obama 271 electoral votes. According to the current polling averages compiled at fivethirtyeight.com, Obama leads Nevada by 3.5 percent, Ohio by 2.9 percent, and Wisconsin by 4 percent. Should any of those fail, Virginia and Colorado are nearly dead even. (Obama leads by 0.7 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively.) If you donât want to rely on Nate Silver â and you should rely on him! â the polling averages at realclearpolitics, the conservative-leaning site, donât differ much, either. "If you look closely at the boasts emanating from Romneyâs allies, you can detect a lot of hedging and weasel-words. Rob Portman calls Ohio a âdead heat,â which is a way of calling a race close without saying itâs tied. A Romney source tells Mike Allen that Wisconsin leans their way owing to Governor Scott Walkerâs âturnout operation.â That is campaign speak for âweâre not winning, but we hope to make it up through turnout.â "Obamaâs lead is narrow â narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romneyâs campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game."
Romney's Trajectory http://www.dickmorris.com/romneys-t...s&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
I understand their anxiety at this point, given that polls are currently neutral/negative for them. They don't know how effective their ground plan will really be and therefore how many dems will actually go vote. In addition, there's still a considerable number of undecideds who traditionally break for the challenger. Oh well, we'll see.
Obama V Romney Round 3 by Fred Thompson One of these guys looked presidential and one of them looked like a somewhat desperate challenger. Romney looked like the president, and Obama looked like the challenger. In preparing for this debate Romney may have demonstrated his presidential mettle in a way that he has not demonstrated before now. He showed guts and the willingness to go against mainstream thinking, even some in his own party. He was also willing to place a substantial bet on his own intuition about the mood of the American people. This is the stuff of presidents. I believe that Romney took a cold, hard look at the numbers and decided that on the current course, he would win. The only thing that could side track him would be to make women and independents feel that, even if he was strong on economic issues, he was not up to the potentially-even-more-important challenges that foreign policy presents to a president. It seems to me that Mittâs thinking went something like this: âSome American voters are fed up and disillusioned, but are still looking for a level of comfort before they vote to replace Obama. I must not scare them off by playing into Obamaâs mantra that Iâm eager to get the United States into another war. Thatâs the last thing I want and I think I can persuade these folks of that. âBut in order to seal the deal, Iâm going to have to absorb some hits. If Obama is looking at the same numbers and trends that I am (and he is), then he will come out aggressive and unpresidential. He feels he has no choice. He is under pressure, however he doesnât do well under pressure. As the mediaâs favorite son, Obama has seldom been tested. It has taken a tough campaign and a challenger who would go toe to toe with him to bring out Obamaâs natural resentment of anyone who criticizes or contradicts him. He much prefers to talk down to people, literally, such as when, during a State of the Union address, he castigated the Supreme Court and misled the American people about what the High Court had done, or when he lectured and denigrated Paul Ryan to his face in a speech before Congressional leaders after Ryan submitted a budget plan. âPeople are not used to seeing that look on Obamaâs face when the shoe is on the other foot â when he is desperate. I want them to see that look. Obama will be even more frustrated when I donât take the bait. When Obama takes a serious, debatable issue of foreign policy and turns it into a personal shot at me, I win, he loses. If Obama is vulnerable on anything more than his disastrous past record, itâs his total failure to put forth a credible plan for the future. So when he attacks me, instead of answering the attack, Iâll just pivot and say that an attack on me is not a plan for the future, reminding everybody of his weakness. âHowever all of the hits wonât be from Obama. His tactics will appeal to those who judge a presidential debate as they would an Olympic boxing match. He will win some snap polls right after the debate. Among the media, especially, âfeistyâ has become synonymous with presidential. Thatâs just the opposite of what most think when we are talking about foreign policy and issues of war and piece. He will âwinâ as Nixon won against Kennedy, Kerry won against Bush, Mondale won against Reagan and even Ford won against Carter, until what was said was absorbed. Iâve got my eye on a bigger picture. âEven my supporters will be disappointed initially. They want me to pound him, especially on his weakness in failing to provide security for our people in Libya, and for the obvious cover up after the attack. But thatâs just it: it is obvious. And when I calmly lay out Obamaâs overall weakness on foreign policy, Libya will fit right in for those who have followed the matter. For others, what I say about it wonât matter anyway. âItâs also not going to hurt my cause to agree with the President on some things. How could I not when most of his successes in fighting terrorism have been when he has followed the Bush policies or reversed his own positions. âThe most surprised and disappointed person in America that I didnât come out swinging on Libya will be Barak Obama. He and his team have had several days to prepare for this. âYou can bet that they have a game plan to deny, obfuscate and mislead, then try to turn it back on me. Heâll rely on the limited time I will have to pin him down. All of this planning will be wasted time for him and we will be able to see the disappointment on his face by the end of the debate. And, long before, my supporters will have seen my strategy and will be in full support. âI have a fine line to walk. If I come off as weak because I over-compensated for the warmonger image Obama will try to paint of me, I will have blown this thing in the 9th inning. But Iâm going to trust myself and be myself. I am self-confident, knowledgeable and moderate in my temperament. Thatâs what Iâm going to go withâ Iâd say Romneyâs strategy worked beautifully. And Iâd say that he walked away from that debate having checked the final box to qualify as the next President of the United States.