The Republican problem: The public still likes Obama (White House photo)
This is
a bit curious:
Republicans on a private Republican National Committee conference call with allies warned Tuesday that party surrogates should refrain from personal attacks against President Barack Obama, because such a strategy is too hazardous for the GOP. [...]
Voters "don't think he's an evil man who's out to change the United States" for the worse--even though many of the same survey respondents agree that his policies have harmed the country, Thompson said. The upshot, Thompson stressed, is that Republicans should "exercise some caution" when talking about the president personally.
So Obama remains personally popular, in spite of the clusterfudge that is our national economy, government, discourse, etc., and as such the Republican National Committee folks warn that personal attacks against him could very well backfire. Why do I find that curious?
Because attacking Obama personally has been a mainstay of GOP politics the last few years. He's not just a guy with policies you don't like, he's a "socialist" implementing "death panels." He's "anti-business." He's almost certainly secretly Muslim, and he may not even have really been born in the United States!
This isn't low-level flacks saying this stuff. It was the 2010 election strategy, and in 2011 has all been featured in some form or another on the GOP presidential campaign trail. I'm left, then, with wondering how exactly the Republican National Committee might plan to run a campaign not reliant on such vitriol. I don't think it can be done: I suspect it is simply so ingrained into the Republican base that, at least at the presidential level, they simply won't tolerate anyone who does not attack Obama personally as evil, the antiChrist, a communist, anti-business or anti-your-grandma-staying-alive.
Evidence of this can be found by watching any GOP debate and noting which lines get the most applause; evidence can also be found in the Huntsman campaign, which has yet to go anywhere despite his marked lack of batshit insanity compared to other, better polling candidates. Huntsman worked with Obama; that's nearly a campaign killer right there. Romney, too, tends to temper his rhetoric, primarily because Romney's entire campaign involves hiding out in the woods until the rest of his opponents immolate themselves.
This is yet another case where the Republican leadership is simply not in charge of their own party anymore. It's worth noting that they have parsed out that general election voters might not react very well to personal attacks on Obama. Their base and their top political campaigners, however, know no other way of operating. Good luck turning off that level of crazy come general election time.