{"id":6653,"date":"2012-10-02T17:54:03","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T21:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6653"},"modified":"2012-10-09T13:52:52","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T17:52:52","slug":"100-day-sprint-how-romney-can-win-the-most-important-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/10\/02\/100-day-sprint-how-romney-can-win-the-most-important-month\/","title":{"rendered":"100 Day Sprint: How Romney can win the most important month"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>With just over 30 days before most of us go to the polls, Mitt Romney has struggled so badly through this general election that even now his conservative allies are asking basic questions about his policies, his convictions, and his temperament.<\/p>\n

It’s very late in the game for a politician to be trying to fill in those kinds of blanks on their resume.\u00a0 But Romney is still a plausible contender for two reasons:\u00a0 because the economy is funky and Barack Obama is intensely disliked by about 40% of the country.<\/p>\n

How can Romney eke out a win?\u00a0 Let me join the army of volunteer advisers urging their wisdom on the Republican.\u00a0 Here is my three step plan for a Romney-Ryan victory in November.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Be believable and serious.\u00a0 One of Romney’s chief arguments is that Obama is a media celebrity poser, with no real ideas for a second term.\u00a0 The premise here is that we might like Obama — and most polls show that a majority of Americans do — but he’s not competent or effective.<\/p>\n

The problem is that Romney’s two major policy proposals, reforming the tax code and repealing Obamacare while preserving its most popular features, are entirely implausible, or have been sketched so cursorily that no one can take them seriously.<\/p>\n

Romney has promised to cut taxes by 20% without ballooning the deficit.\u00a0 If he wants to be viewed as the grown-up in the room, the competent alternative to Obama, he has to show us the math.\u00a0 Otherwise, he’s just name-calling.\u00a0 And voters smell that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

In Paul Ryan’s interview with Chris Wallace, you could see him struggling to craft a plausible narrative for how these things might work.<\/p>\n

So get serious.\u00a0 Put together a simple, workable explanation for how you reform health insurance and manage taxes that actually adds up.\u00a0 If you can’t, then you’ve talked yourself into an ugly corner, crippling your own most effective attack on the president.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 If your heart is in the center, be a centrist.\u00a0 At this point, it’s a little hard to know for sure, but my sense is that Romney is a fairly moderate Republican, even if he has tilted to the right a bit in recent years.<\/p>\n

If that’s true, relax and let it shine.\u00a0 Find a nice, moderate issue that you care about — creating a legal path to citizenship for undocumented workers maybe? — and talk about it.<\/p>\n

As things stand, Romney has ceded an enormous amount of the middle to Obama, posing as more hawkish than the Democrat, more ferocious on immigration, more ideologically rigid.<\/p>\n

George W. Bush managed this balance far better with his “compassionate conservatism,” his focus on public school education reform, and his expansion of the drug benefit entitlement for seniors.<\/p>\n

The bottom line?\u00a0 This isn’t the primary any more.\u00a0 It’s time to lead your movement back toward the center, where American elections are (still) won.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Work harder and have fun.<\/p>\n

Obama can afford to take a few days off to prepare for debate prep.\u00a0 He can afford to do more fundraising events on some days than big campaign rallies.\u00a0 He’s winning.\u00a0 You — on the other hand — have to run, fight, shout, beg and laugh all at the same time.<\/p>\n

It’s been a long time since you had to really hustle.\u00a0 The day after the election, you might be America’s CEO, but for the next 35 days you’re the guy in the mail room trying to win a second look from the folks who might just give you a promotion.<\/p>\n

So go for it.\u00a0 And don’t worry about making mistakes.\u00a0 You’re going to make mistakes.\u00a0 Even great campaigners screw up, and you’re not a great campaigner.\u00a0 So swing for the fence and laugh, publicly, at yourself when you stumble.<\/p>\n

The truth is that this thing’s a long shot.\u00a0 Always has been.\u00a0 You can — and very will might — win Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia — and still<\/em> lose.<\/p>\n

Guys walking that kind of tightrope can’t afford to play it safe.<\/p>\n

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With just over 30 days before most of us go to the polls, Mitt Romney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6548,6550,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6657,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653\/revisions\/6657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}