Obama's Campaign Strategy Against the Mittster Beginning to Take Shape; Updated; Second Video Added
Posted on
January 07 2012 - 11:15 AM - Posted by: Doug Brady
I've argued many times that
Team Obama will have a field day with Mitt Romney should Republicans be dumb enough to make him their nominee. He'll fit in perfectly with Obama's "us versus them", Occupy Wall Street campaign strategy. Indeed Obama couldn't ask for a better face of the opposition for his class warfare campaign if he called Hollywood central casting. Our esteemed Republican Establishment, evidently, is more than willing to assist the Obama campaign by doing everything possible to smooth the way for the Mittens to win the nomination and give Obama the perfect foil. Not that Obama's campaign will need any help given the billion dollars they'll have to spend on ads to paint Mitt Romney as, well, Mitt Romney. In a post yesterday, Dan Riehl discussed just how easy — and effective — this will be:
I get it. Romney's world was one of high-finance, creating efficiencies, thereby freeing up capital – while raking in hefty profits. But try and sell that to blue collar conservatives in swing states still suffering high unemployment and doing it on the part of an unlikeable guy who looks to have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, spending the Vietnam years in a French villa on a religious mission. Oh yeah, Team Obama is going to have a blast painting Republicans like Romney as part of their alleged greedy 1% that doesn't care about people, or American industry. Good luck with that. Lacking in charisma, Mitt will look like a deer in the headlights in some critical swing states and both Democrats and blue collar conservatives love to hunt. Video below. Now, stack Perry's bio against that, or those of the other more genuine conservatives still in the race, and it all goes away.
Reuters published a blockbuster story today on GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City that was acquired by Bain Capital, leading to the layoffs of some 750 workers. In this case, the workers lost promised severance pay and health insurance; their pension benefits were slashed. and a federal government insurance agency had to bail out the company's pension plan — even as Bain raked in millions and millions of dollars in profits.
Now a man who says he worked at the plant for 34 years — a self-described conservative — is speaking out about Romney.
To be sure, we don't know how accurate the video is as it was produced by Obama surrogate Moveon-org. But does it really matter? Political ads are not measured by accuracy, but by effectiveness. Ask Newt Gingrich, who bore the brunt of Romney's multi-million dollar negative ad campaign in Iowa. I would also note that factories do (and should) close, that being a natural economic process to which the great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter referred as creative destruction. It's a good thing we no longer have factories which produce buggy whips and typewriters, for example. But that said, in this anemic Obama economy abstract economic theories, regardless of how sound they may be, are no match for people's insecurities, especially for those who are unemployed or know someone who is.
As Riehl notes, this devastating line of attack for Obama would disappear if his opponent were anybody but Romney. Why, then, do the Republican powers that be insist on giving it to Obama on a silver platter? Obama's two biggest vulnerabilities are ObamaCare and the economy/unemployment. We already knew a Romney nomination would take ObamaCare off the table. Now it's becoming increasingly clear that it would also make an attack on Obama over unemployment a dicey proposition, as the above ad illustrates. Any other Republican candidate could go after Obama with both barrels on these issues. Not the Mittster. In short, he will be unable to credibly go after Obama on two huge issues. How does this make him the "electable" candidate?
Update: (h/t blackbird) Here's a similar ad with the same basic them:
Effective? No question. Fair? Probably not. But that really doesn't matter, does it?
Update II: The video in the update above, "When Mitt Came to Town", has been removed by the user. I'll leave the link intact in case they put it back.
