Obama's 'ferocious' plan to 'destroy' Mitt Romney

The president's campaign reportedly plans to cast Romney as phony and unprincipled — a political Gordon Gekko. What happened to hope and change?

President Obama's re-election team is reportedly planning a "ferocious personal assault" against Mitt Romney, who they expect to be the GOP nominee in 2012.
(Image credit: CC BY: The White House)

President Obama's political advisers expect to face Republican front-runner Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, and they're preparing a "ferocious personal assault" on his character and business background, say Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin at Politico. Resigned to campaigning in the midst of a sour economy, Team Obama is apparently planning to "destroy" Romney by highlighting his time as CEO of the financial firm Bain Capital, which outsourced jobs abroad, and by painting the former Massachusetts governor as unprincipled, inauthentic, and just plain "weird." (The Romney campaign responded with a web video blasting the president's strategy.) Is this a smart approach for the former purveyor of hope and change?

This negative strategy makes complete sense: It would seem that Politico is overdramatizing the Obama campaign's intentions, says Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, but the basic plan it's outlining sounds about right. "When voters are frustrated and discouraged," of course the incumbent will try to cast his opponent in a negative light. And a "weird, unlikable, and unprincipled flip-flopper with no core values" like Romney makes that job easy.

"Obama campaign team eyes Romney nod"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Obama team is getting desperate: The plan to "kill" Romney is a "tacit admission" that Obama doesn't expect to have a positive argument to run on in 2012, says Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. Obama is also gambling that his personal popularity with voters will withstand both economic malaise and "a series of personal attacks on his opponents." That's unlikely. And what if Romney doesn't even get the GOP nomination? Obama's campaign just flubbed by tipping its hand.

"Obama campaign gearing up to 'destroy' Romney"

And the religious overtones are troubling: Obama's team is probably right to assume that their candidate will benefit "the more the campaign is about personality, especially if you accept the Obama team's claim that Romney is 'weird'" says Michael Crowley at TIME. But the word "weird" also "rings of innuendo about [Romney's] Mormon faith." Let's hope that a president who's been "slurred countless times because of his race" will "take a higher road" when it comes to Romney's religion.

"Operation 'Kill Romney'"

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.