So Mitt Romney has decided to go all Culture War on the President, issuing outrageous and racist lies about the President and welfare, and now issuing ads about a “War on Religion.”
Do you know what that means?
It means Romney has lost the election. Already. On August 9, 2012.
Prior to today, the Romney campaign’s strategy was to have a singular focus on only talking about how bad the economy was and how Barack Obama was responsible for it all. Romney was not going to talk about Romneycare or his record as Governor of Massachusetts. Romney was not going to talk about his biography at all, only to the extent that because he was a businessman once he was the right man for the job. And Romney would not dare talk about his plans for actually improving the economy.
You have to give them some credit here, but it really was the only way Romney could actually win the election: make voters believe the economy is worse than it was in 2008 and have them blame Obama for it.
I suppose the Romney campaign has concluded that it can no longer pursue that path to victory.
I’m not privy to the internal debates at Romney HQ, but my suspicion is that Republicans believe the candidates’ credibility on the economy has been severely damaged by coverage of Bain Capital and Romney’s plan to raise taxes on the middle class, and questions about his secret tax returns just aren’t going away quickly enough.
So Romney has apparently felt the need to pivot away from the nation’s top issue — the issue the Republican felt he’d ride directly into the Oval Office — and towards a culture war. It’s a startling development that was very hard to predict.
Culture War issues favor liberals and progressives. Americans like contraception. Americans do not enjoy theocracy. Americans now favor gay marriage. Americans favor reproductive freedom. Americans believe in a separation between Church and State.
So go ahead Romney, lose the election. Make my day.