So he's just apologized on Fox News about his 47% gaffe? Will he be asked what about it he was sorry for saying? Not really.
Anyway, what I find worrying is that this is an apparent continuation of his "pivot to the center" last night at the debate. I suspect that the Romney campaign has decided to go all in with the sudden reasonable, centrist, SOUNDING Romney.
Remember before the debate he suddenly said he wouldn't revoke temporary immigrant work visas that Obama had awarded. He's talking about caring, bragging about the insured he's covered, and passionately saying on national TV that we "need" regulation.
The danger here is that Romney will suddenly start SEEMING reasonable, caring, and not so bad an alternative to Romney. At this stage Romney will ignore the right. Not only that I think they'll give him a pass to beat Obama. I think we were braced for it to get "ugly" and for him to get increasingly unhinged, but I think to their credit the Romney campaign faked everyone out and is doing the OPPOSITE thing.
The Obama campaign cannot let him get away with this. I'd like to see two things happen:
- Repeatedly force Romney to state his positions.
- Do not let people forget the Romney of 'self-deportation','10:1 tax cut revenue is a no-no', etc This stuff is from 2012. Dig out the youtube tapes.
Do not let him hoodwink the electorate into suddenly thinking he's a moderate.
Jonathan Chait sees this coming:
Tonight’s debate saw the return of the Mitt Romney who ran for office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002. He was obsessive about portraying himself as a moderate, using every possible opening or ambiguity — and, when necessary, making them up — to shove his way to the center. Why he did not attempt to restore this pose earlier, I cannot say. Maybe he can only do it in debates. Or maybe conservatives had to reach a point of absolute desperation over his prospects before they would give him the ideological space. In any case, he dodged almost every point in the right wing canon in a way that seemed to catch Obama off guard.