The Romney campaign has been oddly mute on the questions surrounding the Benghazi attacks, giving the political media yet another excuse to ignore the story altogether. But now that the Obama administration’s narrative on Libya has collapsed and the drumbeat of questions has started getting louder, the Romney campaign seems finally to be picking up the issue. The candidate penned an op-ed on Middle East policy for the Wall Street Journal today, and his campaign is slamming the White House over its conflicting story on Libya:
Ryan Williams, Romney campaign spokesman, said in a statement: “The Obama White House and the Obama campaign can’t seem to get their stories straight on the attack on our consulate in Libya. This morning, they offered conflicting stories on if and when the President thought the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist act.”
“These inconsistencies raise even more questions about the confusion and mixed messages that have marked the White House’s response from the very beginning,” Williams added.
Could this be the issue that reenergizes and refocuses the Romney campaign? A Bloomberg opinion poll out late last week found that Romney has pulled ahead of President Obama on the question of which candidate would be tougher on terrorism. As Foreign Policy reports, this has been an issue Obama led consistently on up until the terrorist attack in Benghazi:
The foreign-policy results of the new Bloomberg National Poll haven’t gotten much attention yet, but the survey contains some bad news for the Obama campaign. According to the poll, Mitt Romney has a 48-42 advantage over Barack Obama on the question of which candidate would be tougher on terrorism. Romney, in other words, has encroached on one of Obama’s signature strengths.
What makes this result so surprising is that the president has consistently trounced Romney when it comes to counterterrorism.
Obviously the economy is the overriding concern among voters, but foreign policy issues still register. A new Foreign Policy Initiative poll found that terrorism remains a major concern for Americans, despite the killing of Osama bin Laden:
A majority of Americans (61.2%) do not think that the threat of “additional terrorism on American soil” has decreased since September 11, 2001, with 44.0 percent of respondents saying that threat actually has increased and 17.2 percent saying the threat has stayed constant. The level of concern about future terrorist attacks against America appears to vary along partisan lines. Whereas 55.7 percent of self-identified Republicans and 43.0 percent of self-identified Independents say the threat of foreign terrorism within the United States has increased, only 33.3 percent of self-identified Democrats share that view.
Romney has an opening here, and it looks like he may finally be seizing it.
I must agree with Jennifer Rubin — Romney may be able to nuance everything through three levels of advisers (and I am impressed with the fact he appears to have John Bolton on his team), but the average voter has an attention span for this stuff that makes ADHD look insignificant. The nuanced compound-complex sentences and passive voice may be appropriate for the corporate boardroom but they are not going to win this election! n nRomney needs to go to simple sentences and active voice. He needs to write as if he is shouting to voters from a moving vehicle, he needs to shout out five-word sentences about what he believes in and why he is better than Obama. And it has to be simplified to concepts that can be understood in 3 seconds or less – preferably less. n nMy field is education and Romney is better than Obama on that in every possible way. And while I would actually understand what he was talking about were Romney to actually express any of his thoughts on education (which I haven't even seen happen yet), most folk would get lost. n nRomney almost needs to say something like "I made Massachusetts schools the best in the nation and Obama is destroying what I accomplished." Follow this up with "my idea of 'equal opportunity' is to teach every child how to read and write (or) to give every child the skills to compete in the 21st century workplace." n nThis is how Romney wins – if he still wants to, and I really do hope he does.
Day late and a dollar short. And "oddly mute" is not the outlier attribute of his campaign but SOP. To make this stick they have to get beyond their comfort zone and periodically "raising questions". They have to paint a negative picture of who Obama is and then tie that to how and why he lied about Benghazi in that first critical week, and then tie those data points to the disastrous Middle East policy. n nIt is up to him to make the case that affairs of state are bad *because* Obama is the kind of man he is with the ideology he holds, not because Obama "does not understand that an American policy that lacks resolve can provoke aggression and encourage disorder." It is not a question of incomprehension but attitude, priorities, and character. n nIf Romney can't get beyond this "my my my why is this good man allowing all these bad things to happen domestically and internationally" he locks in his defeat, still chasing after those low-information independents and still unwilling to engage in what he calls "character assassination". n nHe can't just raise questions. He has to nail down the answers. n nAnd that he waited until even the mainstream media had begun to run stories challenging the Team O timelines on Libya, until "now that the Obama administration’s narrative on Libya has collapsed," while letting the conservative media do their work for several weeks unsupported by the supposed Republican candidate for President is not a good sign. He is supposed to be a leader, not a follower two weeks behind the curve when his "me too" seems a safe position to take. Who knows if he'll pivot to something else if focus groups and polls aren't immediately reassuring?