Romney Debate Performance Out of Focus?

      A most debatable question about last night's debate is just what Romney was doing last night. It is that, as some suggest, his team's internal polling has then convinced that it's his race to lose and all he had to to last night was to not say anything really crazy Right wing and he'd be ok?

     Or was it that his team knew that he's rather clumsy on foreign policy terrain anyway so better play it safe and as Al Sharpton suggested post-debate, just hug the President-and his positions-and minimize the damage he sustained?

      In theory the two explanations need to contradict each other. Both could have been motivating factors of various proportion. Maybe they don't think he's a shoo-in but that he has a good chance and it was too risky to go balls to the wall.

      They have certainly sounded very confident if not overly so-and they may be-lately. On Monday they were making noises about the idea that they think Romney may be on his way for not a tight victory but a stronger victory with over 300 electoral votes. They think that from his momentum from Denver he will be carried to winning most swing states. If this is what they really think it's not necessarily such a bad thing if you're on the Obama team as it would mean they are overconfident at Team Romney now.

      Another explanation for Romney's "subdued" performance is that it may be that he was trying to appeal to female swing voters and assure them he's no George W. Bush itching for gunboat diplomacy and new wars.

      "Jim Geraghty of the National Review gave the edge to Romney, but still said, "I think Romney’s answers were tailor-made to wow a focus group, and I don’t mean that entirely complimentary." Bing West, a former Reagan administration official, wrote:

Only gradually did it become clear that the Romney strategy was not to fight, but to woo. The difference between the genders in the choice of candidates has been striking, and Romney’s performance would lead no reasonable undecided voter, female or male, to worry he was too bellicose.

      "But that doesn't mean Romney actually did well with the much-mocked public opinion surveying method."

       "Among a National Journal group of "Walmart moms," "President Obama scored a decisive win with the swing voters," the magazine reported. Romney's answers seemed "hypocritical" and canned.
Among voters pooled by Frank Luntz -- who also asked them how Mitt Romney had done on economic issues, during the foreign policy debate -- the vast majority likewise went with Obama as the winner."

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/mitt-romney-foreign-policy-debate_n_2004895.html?ref=topbar

     So maybe in this case the focus groups led the candidate astray. In many ways it seems very similar to the President's strategy in Denver which of course was a total disaster. At the least it's very hard to see how last night helped Romney. If it has no impact maybe we should ask why we had the debate at all. I still suspect that if Romney had done well we would be hearing that it did matter.