Michael Tomasky on Mitt Romney’s Closing Con Game

[DonViejo]

by Michael Tomasky Oct 30, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Mitt Romney’s latest political ad makes it clear that he’s trying to portray himself as a uniter who will heal the divisions of the Obama years. Don’t believe it for a second.

So one of Mitt Romney’s closing plays is that he’s the great conciliator. He released an ad several days ago and has been hitting the theme ever since, arguing that we need (as Romney said in the first debate, quoted in the ad) “leadership that … could not care less if it’s a Republican or a Democrat” that said leader is working with. With this, Romney makes the full leap into Orwell-land, but with signs that some folks actually buy or at the very least want very much to believe this, it’s important to point out to those voters the precise nature of this con game.

Presidential candidates always promise that they’re going to change the tone in Washington. They have to. The media demand it. Polls show them that independent and swing voters (two different things, really; the latter is a subset of the former) yearn for it. Their advisers tell them that’s how they win over the undecideds. Also, and crucially, they come equipped with egos that permit them to convince themselves that they are unique among men, and they can indeed change this “tone.”

Barack Obama ventured further than most down this boulevard of broken dreams. He had an analysis, you see: The right hated the Clintons because of certain things the Clintons represented about the ’60s because the Clintons were products of that generation. Since Obama wasn’t a product of that generation, it wouldn’t be so bad for him. He believed it. I believed it too. In a career sprinkled with its share of shoddy predictions, I think that one may have been my worst.

While Obama and I were believing—on Inauguration Day 2009, say—that things would be different, key Republicans were meeting in a restaurant not far from the very mall where the celebrations had taken place that day. They agreed, wrote Robert Draper in his book Do Not Ask What Good We Do, that very night to oppose Obama with all they had. Within the month, the Tea Party movement was born, and compromise with Obama became the moral equivalent of shaking hands with the devil.

more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/30/michael-tomasky-on-mitt-romney-s-closing-con-game.html

[inductivetreasoning]

1. The Death Spiral of a Campaign

His campaign is clearly in a death spiral. Ohio doesn't look like it is going to go his way, so he's lying out his ass about Jeep, Fiat and wherever he is saying that they are moving today.

[1StrongBlackMan]

2. Why won't the media deflate this "bipartisan" romney narrative ...

It would be simple to do. All they'd have to do is note how much of the bipartisan legislation was the result of the Mass. Legislature overturning romney's vetoes.

[Maximumnegro]

3. The election is over. Romney lost.

It's that simple. Impossible for him to win all the states he needs in 7 days. Double impossible with no media coverage. Triple impossible when the nation rallies around the incumbent during crisis. Nature was the october surprise.

The election is over. It just isn't possible for him at this point.