The Mitt Romney campaign will allegedly launch a personal attacks effort against Barack Obama. This is yet another indication that he and his campaign are in well over their heads: their effort will have limited effectiveness and is the opposite of what the country (and the GOP) needs.

From [1]:

In speeches from Des Moines to Dallas, Romney has always been careful to hedge his tough digs at Obama with a civil nod toward the president's moral character: "He's a nice guy," the Republican has often said. "He just has no idea how the private economy works." But Tuesday's speech included no such hedge — and one campaign adviser said there's a reason for that.

"[Romney] has said Obama's a nice fellow, he's just in over his head," the adviser said. "But I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he's really disappointed. He believes it's time to vet the president. He really hasn't been vetted; McCain didn't do it."

Indeed, facing what the candidate and his aides believe to be a series of surprisingly ruthless, unfounded, and unfair attacks from the Obama campaign on Romney's finances and business record, the Republican's campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisal, said two Romney advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the next chapter of Boston's pushback - which began last week when they began labeling Obama a "liar" - very little will be off-limits, from the president's youthful drug habit, to his ties to disgraced Chicago politicians.

1. All of that information is "in the market", just ask people like Stanley Kurtz. In 2008, Obama opponents probably wrote a trillion words about the Chicago Way, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and on and on and on. Some of that was just speculation or was false, but some of it was backed up with facts. The McCain campaign didn't get down in the muck, but it's not like large numbers of voters weren't exposed to the torrent of information. Certainly, the Romney campaign has a greater ability to get the word out than rightwing bloggers or National Review but it seems like most of those who'd be concerned about a link between Obama and Rod Blagojevich will already know all about that link. Just recently, the Breitbart sites tried to continue the "vetting", with little impact.

2. Based on various polls, more people like Obama personally than like his policies. Romney's efforts will allow the Obama campaign to present themselves as innocent victims of yet another smear campaign, rallying his base and perhaps gaining more support from the undecided. Obama's surrogates - picture Howard Dean - will play the race card and put the Romney campaign once again on the defensive. The Obama campaign already has a site they can use: 2008's fightthesmears.com (now the "Obama Truth Team").

3. In 2008, the establishment media pushed back against attempts by Obama opponents to "vet" him. Sometimes the media showed how claims about Obama were wrong. Sometimes the media simply misled or lied for Obama. And, sometimes the media engaged in their own smear campaign, such as by playing the race card. That's exactly what they'll do this time, and now as then, Obama opponents don't have the ability to push back. The Romney campaign is not exactly an intellectual powerhouse; they aren't in the media's league.

4. Instead of repeating failed, four-year-old efforts and instead of getting down in the Alinsky muck like the Tea Parties, the much smarter thing for the Romney campaign to do is to show how Obama's ideas are wrong (or how they think they're wrong). Not only would that be better for them, but encouraging real debate about real issues would be better for the U.S. as a whole.

Instead of launching personal attacks, show Obama's base how he misleads them. Instead of yet another boilerplate speech about the economy, point out how Democrats will be the ones most impacted by Obama's amnesty. In the area this site covers, Obama has repeatedly lied, misled, and promoted bad policies (see Obama immigration); point that out to his supporters.

The Romney campaign would also need to be prepared to defend their ideas and be able to engage those who disagreed or who engaged in less reputable forms of pushback. The problem, of course, is that would require the Romney campaign to be entirely different people than what they are.

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[1] buzzfeed . com/mckaycoppins/
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