While John Podhoretz writes from a right-wing perspective, he does seem to be pretty clear-headed and fair-minded. I can't stand Karl Rove's meanderings, and I usually learn something new from Podhoretz.
Today he indicates that
Romney may surprisingly hit just the right nuance to develop a winning strategy.
To paraphrase, for Romney to go on the attack against Obama, he risks alienating all those who voted for Obama in 2008; he can't afford to make them feel like he is saying they did a stupid thing in '08. So Romney says, "given Obama's promises, of course you voted for him. He presented himself as a very attractive candidate. However, he's broken those promises. He promised hope and change yet all he's delivered is unemployment and misery. Now, I
do represent genuine hope: hope that a free people who are rewarded for hard work and extra effort will help us recover our national greatness. The only thing Obama promises these days is more regulation, more bureaucracy, more red tape, more stagnation, ever-growing deficits."
It's a marked improvement over "he's a nice guy who's over is head."
Let's see if he has the discipline and the fortitude to keep his focus. Obama's minions will do everything they can to distract and obfuscate. It's a shame he's abdicated governance so soon; it's not even summer, yet he personally is already in full campaign mode. They just have to be careful and not try to portray Romney as weird, because no matter how weird Romney's background may seem, Romney's people so far in counterattack have made Obama seem even weirder.
Interesting how Romney's team has not yet launched any attacks on Obama himself, only on his record. Anything about Obama personally has come out only in response to something one of Obama's supporters put out there first. You can bet that if Obama's team tries to hound Romney about his income tax returns, he'll respond with something like "right after Barry releases his transcripts".
I think Romney may surprise us. He's certainly surprised me so far. I was not expecting him to be as effective as he's been so far.
It's the Harvard MBA vs the Harvard JD. Another Ivy Leaguer (from grad school) either way. Haven't we had enough of them already?? sigh. Although undergrad, BYU vs Columbia is about as far to either pole as you can get.
