The Obama campaign congratulates the Republican Party's severely conservative presumptive nominee with a video serenade of the hard-right statements Mitt Romney made throughout the GOP primary:
It's a great video, well-worth watching, and is a reminder that Democrats aren't about to let Mitt Romney Etch-A-Sketch away the extremely conservative agenda he's embraced since launching his presidential campaign five years ago. And as Greg Sargent
points out, the Republicans who finally realized they had no other choice than Mitt Romney as their nominee, actually are on the same side as the Obama campaign:
they too want to make sure Romney sticks to his positions.
“Romney has to build bridges to evangelical voters, who he will need to turn out in large numbers in November,” said Ralph Reed, who leads the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Reed added: “I think Romney understands this and will take whatever steps are necessary to energize social conservative voters. Evangelicals will turn out to vote against Obama. Now it’s important that they are enthusiastic about voting for the Republican nominee.”
Tony Perkins, who heads the Family Research Council and who backed Santorum’s candidacy, issued a statement challenging Romney to demonstrate his commitment to the issues most important to religious conservatives. “If the Republican establishment hopes to generate this same voter intensity in the fall elections,” he said, “Santorum voters must see it demonstrate a genuine and solid commitment to the core values issues.”
Yet despite being put in between a rock and a hard place by unlikely alliance between the Obama campaign and the Republican base, Romneyland is suggesting their boss plans to whip out his favorite toy.
On Tuesday, a Romney adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, put it this way: “Voters will now look at Mitt differently and through a different prism. We can use this new beginning as an opportunity to reintroduce the campaign and the candidate.”
Nothing's shocking there: everybody knew the moment would come that Mitt Romney would try to reinvent himself. The challenge for Romneyland, however, is that they aren't going to be able to reintroduce him in a vacuum—the Obama campaign will be defining Romney at the same time, and Romney's base will be watching closely. Even if Romneyland had demonstrated an exceptional ability to sell a positive message about their candidate, they'd have trouble reinventing Mitt in that kind of environment. But as we all know, the only thing Mitt Romney's campaign has demonstrated it is good at is raising money and destroying Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. I'll give them some credit on the money, but given how easy it should have been to nuke Newt and sink Santorum, there's no reason to believe they've got what it takes to successfully reinvent Mitt Romney.