Skip to main content

The Jed ReportRSS
Daily Kos staff

Fri Feb 24, 2012 at 12:17 PM PST

Mitt Romney once again proves that destroying his opponents is the only thing he's good at

by Jed LewisonFollow

65,000 seats. 1,200 people. No enthusiasm.
 
Mitt Romney's big Florida win on Jan. 31 turned out to be not so big after all for one simple reason: Everybody quickly figured that Romney had won not by selling his own strengths to Florida Republicans, but by destroying Newt Gingrich. In the process, Romney had driven his own negatives through the roof, and while he'd dispensed with Gingrich—at least for the time being—Rick Santorum was the ultimate beneficiary.

Flash forward three weeks and three days, and now Mitt Romney is in the middle of running nearly the exact same playbook against Santorum that he ran against Gingrich. And as it did with Gingrich, Romney's playbook appears to be working. At least as of Friday afternoon, Santorum had lost his lead thanks to attacks from Romney's Super PAC and Romney himself. (Romney's campaign is even bragging about it's prowess at negative campaigning, just as it did before Florida.)

But as his failure at Ford Field underscores, Mitt Romney has still got the same problem now that he had then: Despite having been a presidential candidate since at least 2007, he cannot articulate a credible and compelling rationale for why he should be elected. He might have world-class skills when it comes to exploiting his opponents' weaknesses (a skill that in the case of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum really isn't terribly impressive), but when it comes to making the case for his own candidacy, the best Romney do is give an empty speech to an even emptier stadium.

Originally posted to The Jed Report on Fri Feb 24, 2012 at 12:17 PM PST.

Also republished by Daily Kos.

Tags

You must add at least one tag to this diary before publishing it.

Add keywords that describe this diary. Separate multiple keywords with commas.
Tagging tips - Search For Tags - Browse For Tags

?

More Tagging tips:

A tag is a way to search for this diary. If someone is searching for "Barack Obama," is this a diary they'd be trying to find?

Use a person's full name, without any title. Senator Obama may become President Obama, and Michelle Obama might run for office.

If your diary covers an election or elected official, use election tags, which are generally the state abbreviation followed by the office. CA-01 is the first district House seat. CA-Sen covers both senate races. NY-GOV covers the New York governor's race.

Tags do not compound: that is, "education reform" is a completely different tag from "education". A tag like "reform" alone is probably not meaningful.

Consider if one or more of these tags fits your diary: Civil Rights, community, Congress, Culture, Economy, Education, Elections, Energy, Environment, Health Care, International, Labor, Law, media, Meta, National Security, Science, Transportation, or White House. If your diary is specific to a state, consider adding the state (California, Texas, etc). Keep in mind, though, that there are many wonderful and important diaries that don't fit in any of these tags. Don't worry if yours doesn't.

You can add a private note to this diary when hotlisting it:
Are you sure you want to remove this diary from your hotlist?
Are you sure you want to remove your recommendation? You can only recommend a diary once, so you will not be able to re-recommend it afterwards.
Rescue this diary, and add a note:
Are you sure you want to remove this diary from Rescue?
Choose where to republish this diary. The diary will be added to the queue for that group. Publish it from the queue to make it appear.

You must be a member of a group to use this feature.

Add a quick update to your diary without changing the diary itself:
Are you sure you want to remove this diary?
(The diary will be removed from the site and returned to your drafts for further editing.)
(The diary will be removed.)
Are you sure you want to save these changes to the published diary?

Comment Preferences

99 comments | Permalink

Permalink

Subscribe or Donate to support Daily Kos.