President Obama’s re-election team is already aggressively targeting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, even as Romney is far from sealing the GOP nomination. Here’s a look at how they are trying to define the man mostly like to be President Obama’s opponent in November.
1. Turn Bain into pain
A super-pac funded by supporters of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is preparing to release on Wednesday a half-hour video full of criticisms of Romney’s tenure as head of the private equity firm Bain Capital.
On the website for King of Bain Romney is described as a “predatory corporate raider” and “the worst possible kind of predator.”
Obama aides couldn’t say it better themselves. Romney has cast his experience as a co-
founder of Bain as evidence of his knowledge of job creation and the broader economy, in contrast with Obama’s careers in law and then politics.
“His partner said in the L.A. Times our job was not to create jobs; our job was to create
wealth for our partners. And here’s what they did,” Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said in a recent interview with ABC News. He added, “I don’t think those are the values that people want to animate our economy.”
Romney’s primary opponents, trying to take him down before he seals the nomination, are now pounding his record at Bain. Obama is likely to use some of those quotes if he ends up facing Romney in a presidential debate.
This strategy of course has its challenges. As Romney repeatedly notes, Obama has presided over historically high unemployment rates, making it harder for him to attack Romney’s company for job losses. And capturing the exact details of the work of Bain
may be a hard argument for voters to follow.
“This is an old line of attack that Barack Obama and the Democrats have tried to use against Mitt Romney for years,” said former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a prominent
supporter of Romney.
2. Cast him as a flip-flopper
Surprisingly, Romney’s opponents in the nomination process have done little to highlight his shifts on issues like abortion and gay rights. Trying to woo Tea Party conservatives, they have focused on Romney’s previous moderation and tried to cast him as too liberal.
Obama aides intend to argue repeatedly Romney is untrustworthy.
“Mitt Romney is a man who has positions on every issue, and usually several,” says
Axelrod.
This approach too, has its challenges. If Romney can win a GOP primary in which many voters are intensely focused on issues like abortion on which he has reversed himself, couldn’t he even more easily survive a general election, when most swing voters will be singularly obsessed with the economy?
3. Argue Romney will pursue the policies of George W. Bush
Democrats have circulated a recent analysis of Romney’s tax cut proposal by the Tax Policy Center that showed it would drastically reduce taxes on some upper-income families, but get rid of some tax breaks for low-income people passed under President Obama. Romney would also extend tax cuts for upper-income Americans passed under Bush.
It remains a question if this is a potent political attack. Obama successfully tied Sen. John McCain to Bush in 2008, but two years later, congressional Democrats tried the same approach and suffered heavy losses.
