Romney Does Need to Better Define Himself ....

I agree Romney has to do a better job defining himself..telling folks proactively why/how he can run this nation significantly better than Obama....both economically and with regards to foreign policy....energy and national security...


Conservatives warning Mitt he will lose if he doesn’t change campaign


Published: 12:08 PM 09/19/2012 By Alex Pappas


A growing chorus of conservatives are telling Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that he must immediately make changes to his campaign or he will lose.

“The decision not to define Romney, but to attack Obama over the spring and summer was a huge, strategic mistake,” a Republican strategist with knowledge of the inner-workings of the campaign told The Daily Caller in an interview. “The assumption that the race for presidential election defaults in a bad economy to the challenger is wrong.”

But aside from the recent spate in hiccups that give the media and the Democrats reason to hammer Romney on a daily basis — from his convention speech that didn’t mention Afghanistan to his quick political response to the attacks last week on American diplomats — conservatives are pointing to a larger problem: Romney, they argue, is not clearly laying out a specific rationale for why he should be president — other than that he’s not Barack Obama.

“They appear to be realizing right now what many of us having been saying for months: Not being Obama is not enough to get you elected,” said a long-time conservative operative who previously worked on a rival presidential campaign. “You have to believe in something and give people a reason to support you rather than just oppose the other guy.”

The grumbling about Romney’s campaign among conservatives is also airing out in public by prominent opinion makers.

“It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one,” former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

“It’s not big, it’s not brave, it’s not thoughtfully tackling great issues,” Noonan writes. “It’s always been too small for the moment. All the activists, party supporters and big donors should be pushing for change.”

In light of the now famous video of Romney saying he won’t be able to count on the support of the 47 percent of Americans who are dependant on government, others are arguing Romney should use the leak to double down and argue the same points “loudly and often and without embarrassment.”

“We’re all too well acquainted with the cowardly instincts of his campaign staff, as well as with their ineptitude,” Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel of Daily Caller write. “But he has no choice. There can be no needle threading. He said it. He can either explain it and run on it, or he can lose because of it.”

In recent days, a scapegoat has been made of Romney senior adviser Stuart Stevens, who oversees the campaign’s strategy and who worked with the candidate on his convention speech.

Erick Erickson, the editor of RedState who is plugged in with conservative activists, told TheDC he doesn’t know Stevens personally, but he’s heard complaints among conservatives about him.

“The conservatives are particularly distrustful because they see him as a poll driven guy telling him what to do as opposed to using polls to sell what he already wants to do,” Erickson told TheDC.

According to one source with knowledge of the campaign operation, “It’s a much more dysfunctional environment than you know is really reported on…It’s also a campaign that doesn’t ever reach out to anyone, including people who’ve done this stuff successfully before.”

The Republican said Stevens and Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades are known to have tension and Stevens’ “relationships” with many in GOP politics are “generally poor.”

“He’s a guy who [thinks] everyone’s an idiot but him,” the operative said.

But Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, who once worked for Romney, said he “wouldn’t overestimate the conflict in Romneyworld.”

Castellanos told TheDC last week that he’s “not the biggest fan of everybody up there but when I went up to see them not long ago, I’ll admit I found a surprisingly efficient and well-functioning campaign.”

“Doors were open, not closed, a sign of an well-run and focused campaign, not one hobbled by closed-door conspiracies,” he said.

“People should remember that this Romney team has been through a ton of battles together,” the strategist said. “They have gelled. I think they are focused on winning this thing.”

Romney’s campaign appears to be aware of the criticism. In a conference call this week, adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters that the campaign plans to start getting more specific on its policy proposals.

“We are looking forward to this new emphasis and renewed emphasis,” Gillespie said.

“We think people will be appreciative to hear some of those kinds of specifics…A lot of those voters who are in the middle and truly independent, undecided, are looking for information now,” he said.

Here's Another Article...


Romney must own ’47 percent’ argument 100 percent of the time


Published: 8:41 AM 09/19/2012 By Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel


We ran into two well-known political reporters in the lobby of a building in downtown Washington yesterday. It was late in the afternoon, but both radiated energy and good cheer. Before rushing off to their cable news appearances, both made jokes about Mitt Romney‘s now-famous 47 percent. They seemed almost giddy.

There’s nothing the Washington press corps enjoys more than a late-breaking campaign scandal, especially one that confirms their suspicions about a candidate virtually none of them are going to vote for anyway. By describing half the American population as freeloaders, Romney achieved a twofer: he handed the Obama campaign yet another issue to demagogue, and its handmaidens in the press something new to yap about. And yap they will. Endlessly. Self-righteously. Joyfully. In Washington, it’s like Christmas.

Lost in the noise is the fact that what Romney said is true, most of it anyway. And here’s the truest part: An ever-shrinking number of Americans finance an ever-growing proportion of the government’s budget. The tax code is becoming steadily more progressive, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who understands power politics. It’s always easier to force sacrifice on an unpopular minority than it is to ask the majority to pony up.

Why is this bad? Leave aside the question of whether a tax system this lopsided is fair — and by the way, it’s not — and consider a more practical question: Does it work?

Not for long. Like everyone else, rich people respond to incentives. Ask the thousands of high earners who’ve fled California in recent years for Scottsdale and Jackson Hole. Betting the budget on a small, highly mobile group of people doesn’t constitute responsible economic planning.

But that’s not the biggest problem. The scariest effect of a tax code that passes over the bottom half of the population is what happens to that 50 percent. People tend to cherish and take care of the things they pay for and therefore own, countries included. The opposite is also true. When was the last time you changed the oil in a rental car?

There will always be some who for whatever reason find themselves dependent on the charity of others. But when half the population is along for the ride, the system becomes dangerously out of balance. Things fall apart.

This isn’t right-wing theorizing. Decent neighborhoods collapse this way. So do whole societies.

Romney should say this. Loudly and often and without embarrassment. As he suggested at his secretly videotaped fundraiser in Boca Raton, America is at the tipping point. Many Americans sense this, and not just conservatives but independents and hard-working Democrats and anyone else who understands the degrading and destabilizing effects of dependency. Romney’s remarks are defensible. He should defend them.

Yes, we’re aware of his limitations as a public speaker, not to mention as a political philosopher. We’re all too well acquainted with the cowardly instincts of his campaign staff, as well as with their ineptitude. But he has no choice. There can be no needle threading. He said it. He can either explain it and run on it, or he can lose because of it.