Romney is Still Trying to Make this a Referendum

      That's what you come away with both in his speech and what you get when you add up cumulatively, the entire week.

      Last night his biggest lines were about buyer's remorse over Obama. In many ways this has been his whole campaign-focus relentlessly on undecideds who voted for Obama in 2008 but are now on the fence. So much of his campaign has been appealing to the 'Right and getting their trust.

      He has taken a surprisingly long time to get to it, but he seems now based on last night's speech anyway, to be moving more to the Center.

      Now the Right trusts him so much that he can get away with touting passing ObamaCare in Massachusetts. When he did that the first time, Ann Coulter demanded that his spokeswoman be fired.

      Now he himself said the same thing on Sunday-while at the same time in the same breath promising to eliminate ObamaCare his first day in office-and there has been little blowback from the Right.

      If you look at his speech and most of the night-other than Crazy Uncle Clint and Jeb Bush's whining about how nobody likes his brother-it was more of the same.

      It's what Mitt has tried to run about from the start. Two things:

      1) This election is a pure referendum on the President's handling of the economy. It's a simple up and down vote. Yes or no: do you like how the economy is performing today or not?

      If you do then you have every right to vote for him and we can't tell you not to and can't reproach you. However, if it's no then you have to vote against him. Obviously if it's this simple then Obama would lose in a landslide-as who is really happy with where the economy is right now? At least if you don't compare it with Britain-where the Conservative government has a policy agenda very similar to what a Romney-Ryan Administration would look like: lots of austerity except for the rich who get huge tax cuts.

     Heck if it were this simple I'd have to vote for Romney and hopefully you have an idea of how unlikely that is.

       2) Mitt Romney is Mr. Fix It on the economy. Full stop. After all he worked at Bain Capital. Full Stop.

        That's been the blueprint from the start and that's how he played it last night. He also made some very generic and big promises and no clue how we get there. We're going to have 4 million new jobs-250,000 a month; particularly impressive when you factor in how much he and Ryan plans to shrink the government and "energy Independence" for "North America."

         He used North America whereas in the passed candidates have promised energy independence just for the United States; if he promised that today of course it wouldn't pass the laugh test-any more than Ryan's whopper about the factory closing in his hometown.

         Recall that the Romney campaign has admitted that this campaign can't be about policy details if they are to win. This was certainly in evidence last night.

         Yet it seems that this is not enough. What they have realized is that no election can be purely a referendum.

          Yet what did Romney do last night as this election is a choice not a referendum? Well, maybe the attempt at a more personal Mitt might be hoped to make people feel a little bit better about a choice for him rather than just a choice against Obama.

          Maybe they hope to move the needle a little there though Obama still wins the Who you would rather have a beer with? poll hands down.

           But the other leg of the stool will remain Birtherism. From Romney's birth certificate "joke" a last Friday, to this "need an American" gloss last night, they need Birtherism-first and foremost the fake welfare attacks to give them any chance of getting over the finish line.

           http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/08/romney-advisers-bad-economy-not-enough.html