Normally I consider Bill McGurn to be the kind of establishment, RINO political strategist who I instinctively distrust, but Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal he hit the nail right on the head:
“Even before the voting has begun in Tuesday's primary, polls show Mitt Romney with a comfortable lead. If the former Massachusetts governor wins by a respectable margin, it would be completely understandable to take it as confirmation that he needs to stick with his campaign strategy.
It would also be a colossal mistake.
At least since South Carolina, Mr. Romney has been laboring under the assumption that his most serious challenge is to defeat Newt Gingrich. It's not. Mr. Gingrich's viability after months of also-ran status owes itself almost entirely to Mr. Romney's glaring weaknesses. The governor's challenge is not merely to best Mr. Gingrich but to do so in a way that addresses those weaknesses.”
“Even before the voting has begun in Tuesday's primary, polls show Mitt Romney with a comfortable lead. If the former Massachusetts governor wins by a respectable margin, it would be completely understandable to take it as confirmation that he needs to stick with his campaign strategy.”
“At least since South Carolina, Mr. Romney has been laboring under the assumption that his most serious challenge is to defeat Newt Gingrich. It's not. ... The governor's challenge is not merely to best Mr. Gingrich but to do so in a way that addresses those weaknesses.
Ronald Reagan always understood that ideas were more potent than invective. Nor was he above looking to others for those ideas. The across-the-board tax cut he made the heart of his 1980 campaign was largely the work of a then-obscure congressman from upstate New York named Jack Kemp.”
There is only so much that one can accomplish with negative attack ads. While they certainly have their place in scaring the undecided voters into your column at the last minute, all truly successful campaigns begin with a strong, compelling positive message.
This is because a completely negative campaign will repel voters from you as well as your opponent. The reason the Florida primary had a low turnout was because a pure negative campaign is a negative sum game. Dick Morris has made much the same point.
When going up against Obama in the general election, negative ads will work a bit - to bring items like Solyndra and Fast and Furious to the attention of the disengaged voter who has been kept in the dark by the main-stream media. But if negative ads are allowed to dominate the way they did in Florida, the Republican nominee will be making a big mistake. Obama has inherited a lot of good will from the American people by virtue of being the first black President. The American people want the first black president to succeed. They feel it is their patriotic duty to help him succeed. This is what is holding up his polling numbers in such a dismal economy. If all he does is slime President Obama, the GOP candidate will be working against this dynamic – and making himself a hated figure.
The win was anything but cheap! Frankly Romney is going to win the nomination, Newt is just trying to chop him down so he won't beat Obama. I think Newt is campaigning for Obama.
Posted by: The_Iceman | February 02, 2012 at 12:44 PM
Iceman- Funny. I thought Newt was running so that liberal squish Romny wouldn't get the nomination, because we all know what will happen if we get another John McCain running against a fellow liberal, Obama.
Posted by: WiseGuy | February 04, 2012 at 02:42 PM