Friday, September 14, 2012

A MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT

Jennifer Rubin (naturally) thinks the reason Mitt Romney is losing is that he can't get his message through the "media filter" put up by the evil liberal press (of which she is so not a member); however, she has a brilliant idea for how Romney can deal with this:
He can start with something he did earlier in the year and then inexplicably dropped: a major speech, once a week, on a single topic.... Give these speeches outside the Beltway, in the swing states.
Genius! For instance, he could be completely candid and forthcoming about his economic plans:
He and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) often talk about two visions, but there is a need to explain what voters' lives would be like in each of them. What does the economy look like under Obama's tax-hike scenario and what does it look like under Romney's tax-reform scenario? What does an energy worker get under Obama's scheme (complete with Environmental Protection Agency legislation, denial of the Keystone XL pipeline, etc.), and what does he get under Romney's push for North American energy independence? Simply saying that you have a different view and that the other guy's for more government really doesn't do it.
So Romney should spell out in detail exactly how life will be different for ordinary voters if he's president. Tell them the whole truth!

Well, not the whole truth:
That doesn't necessarily mean drowning the audience in minutiae. The press insists that Romney must tell us all the base broadeners in his tax plan. He's got good reason not to, according to aides. They believe they have offered as much detail as the Simpson-Bowles report and that providing more detail would unnecessarily constrict him from reaching a deal with Congress.
Oh. So Romney should "explain what voters' lives would be like" if he becomes president -- but, y'know, leave a little mystery. Voters should know about all the wonderful freedom-y, reform-y things they'll get, but if voters want to know about "base broadening" -- i.e., the collecting of more taxes from more ordinary Americans after the elimination or reduction of tax breaks for the middle class and less well off -- well, Mitt shouldn't spoil the surprise, right?

Brilliant, Jennifer.

3 comments:

Victor said...

Do idiots like her really not realize that the whole reason sociopaths like Bush had to be called a "Compassionate Conservative," and the reason Mitt and Ryan won't get more specific, is that if they got more specific and spelled things out for voters, all but the most moronic of the morons would run away from the Republican Party as fast as their Medeicare buggies could go?

Why do you think, Ms. Rubin, they need wedge issues and dog whistles?

I love these pundits who think that all the Conservatives have to do, is tell people what life under a Conservative regime would really be like.
They are so in their own echo chamber, that no other voices but those already in the chamber, can get through.

Dark Avenger said...

Just remember that she had high expectations for Romney's Magical Mystery Tour of Europe:

The worst part of Romney’s trip, from Obama’s perspective, is that Romney is going to Israel, which Obama has not visited since his election. He memorably traveled to Cairo for his big speech but failed to stop by the Jewish state while he was in the “neighborhood.” The Obama team told reporters today that his not going to Israel in the first term was a “distraction,” but Obama would go to Israel in a second term. If it’s important to go then, why not do it in the first term? It’s a sore point with the Jewish community and with other pro-Israel Americans.

And, anyway, why have the conference call to sway the media coverage? It risks coming across as awfully defensive. The Obama team is entirely confident, I guess, that the mainstream media won’t go back to his promises and compare them to his foreign-policy performance. And the Obama operatives are so clueless that they don’t see how the Berlin speech illustrates how an egomaniacal candidate became a foreign-policy flop.

trnc said...

If the press is so liberally biased that republicans can't effectively deliver their messages, how do any republicans anywhere ever get elected?

This is the corollary to "if taxes and regulations strangle businesses as badly as republicans claim, why do any businesses exist?"