THANK YOU for leaving insightful comments and suggestions. I have no idea how many people from the campaign read our posts and comments, or who, but I know they do.

One exception: Matt Romney. Last summer I had the privilege of inviting people to the Strawberry Farm bar-b-que fundraiser in Irvine, CA. In attendance was Matt Romney with his daughter. We chatted briefly and he enthusiastically informed me that he loved this site and reads it daily (I did not bring it up; he recognized my name from my name tag). Now, I am sure by now, that cannot be the case as he is so crazy busy on the trail helping his dad. But this is roughly what he told me,

“I am so busy that I don’t have time to read through all the newspapers, magazines, and online political sources to stay up on the current news. I know when I go to your blog that I will be able to read up on all the current news that is relevant and read in depth whatever I need…..”

Again, THANK YOU all for visiting the site often and especially for contributing to the site by leaving your opinions on both sides of the issues. Please keep it up!

In the current situation, though, I’ve been so struck by the fact that essentially “good men”, like Mitt [and, unfortunately for Republicans, Obama] are seeking to change not only the level but the very ”type” of discourse in their respective parties. One of the differences, of course, is that the Media are leveraging and amplifying everything that Obama does, and discounting and diminishing everything that Mitt achieves.

I would love to see old dogs like Clinton and McCain be run off . But, I’ve been frustrated at frustrated, exasperated, and then infuratiated at the difficulties the Romney campaign is having with the Media. I used to specialize in “Media Manipulation”, I used to call it, because that’s what the Media is there for, nothing else. Merely to be manipulated as best as possible, and usually in self defense. A secret: The public loves those candidates who disregard it, and put it into it’s place, albeit with a self of humor accompanying the boldness to speak of them just as they deserve to be spoken, and to now allow them to turn your campaign into “a reality show” for their own exploitation and benefit.

I would love to be be able to help the Romney campaign and so every once in a while I write up a “storm” here and hope someone from that campaign comes across the comments and puts them to use. You know, quite a few things I’ve ranted about have turned up in Mitt’s comments to date, and so I keep on trying.

We may not realize it yet. But the Obama campaign IS the Romney Campaign. Just different parties. The Romney braintrust must sit down and study this speech of Obama’s. It was STRATEGICALLY brilliant. It smashed the Clinton’s with every syllable, and yet never had to mention her name. He is an OUTSIDER, looking for something different in Washington, something different in politics, as he said, “the future and not the past”, not becoming ensnared in the “old politics”, not worshipping longevity and proximity to the seat of power as the requirements for office ["changing chairs in Washington]

Every one of these statements could be made, and SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE by the Romney campaign. The two campaigns are mirror images of each other. Obama’s strategy is more sophisticated than Mitt’s. And, he is not afraid to speak in “concrete personal terms” and examples when need be, and yet utilize abstraction to completely “smash” the Clinton’s without every mentioning their names, but simply “taking what they say and do and labelling it as the OLD WAYS”, the ways of the PAST AND NOT THE FUTURE.

And, let me ask you about that old fossil McCAIN, shouldn’t the same be said about him and the ways he represents.

He praised all the candidates first. And then went to “how the status quo in Washington is pulling out its entire bag of tricks, and lies to stop the campaign…and then he goes on to speak against the old ways, the old lies, the old “do anything to win a campaign” …this is just how Mitt’s campaign should treat the McCain tactics. They should get Obama as the Romney campaign manager. He buried the Clintons, with pity, as out of date examples of the “old ways’ the “Old partisanship”, the “old dirty tricks’ of Washington.

To add to the above, comment, you don’t get wildly angry but you look at the pathetic old weasel and define him and stigmatize him with sympathy, with pity, and not with rancor.

NOT IN THESE EXACT WORDS…BUT WITH THIS TONE:

“How sad that the desperate dirty tricks of Washington have now arrived in Florida with Mr. McCain. We understand sympatize with how he finds himself slipping and the election slipping away. But his desperation cannot be allowed to take us away from the issues of this election. How badly we feel for him. In the wrong place. At the wrong time. A man who was a great soldier four decades ago, but now sees events moving beyond his grasp.”

As above, they have to bring the dialogue back to “Washington is broken” and away from apologizing for not being a military guy like McCain.

Mitt does not seem to have any surrogates to do this, so he has to be able to do this himself.
Clearly, this “desperation” and the deception is exactly parallel to Hillary’s reaction to Obama’s success. And the way to deal with this is

[1] To not to simply immediately ina Pavlovian fashion to recoil into self-defense, but to label it for what it is. Comment on the statement, and dismiss the facts of the statement. That is, come out, either via surrogates or himself, via “how typical this kind of desperate misrepresenation and last minute dirty trickery is of the old tired, sick Washinton. No wonder Washinton is Broken. Instead of running on issues, the sitting, talking Senators, Hillary and McCain [always the two together, more and more, in every way, every day, to identify linkage] seek to play fast and loose and recklessly with national security issues and exploit them. McCain must be desperate

[2] Pause and unleash to take out the military foundation from under McCain, as in my comments above. Frankly, I’ve been boring even myself by touting this approch for a couple of weeks…To PROACTIVELY anticipate the foundation from which your opponent will attack you in the last few days before each decisive election, and not to leave yourself to only REACT at the last minute.

Mitt has had to sit down, brainstorm and pull the ground out from under McCain on this military posturing for weeks and apparently hasn’t done it. How pathetic for the scurrilous little weasel to seek to claim credit for the bravery of President Bush in sticking to his guns, and the skillful guidance of General Petraus and our military men. What posing? What self-aggrandizement? What a conspicuous lack of loyalty to the present Commander in Chief? This is the kind of guy McCain is. What kind of “soldier’ seeks to take credit for what his commanding officer does.

But now, the first step is to not become “involved’ in defending yourself by relfex, but take the comment as a “symptom of the deficiencies of your opponent..and then, pause, breathe deeply and then hammer him on the way his attacks and statements show up all his deficiencies [Washington is Broken, McCain and Hillary, and self-centered, self aggrandizement]….This is the old Washington way that people are sick of……plus where were you during the past two decades, Senator McCain, in the cloakroom with Kennedy, Clinton and your Washington cronies? The Romney people have to understand this.

Lets assume the campaign does get it what tactic will they use?

They have to put McCain on the defensive on this very “military issue”. How does interfering with our questioning of al queda help our troops. How does giving Guatanomo prisoners civil rights protect our troops? How does not fighting strongly for the Patriot Act protect our troops.

It is the Washington establishment, including Senators Clinton and McCain, which owes an apology to our troops.

The campaign must define “McCain” and cannot allow him to define ‘Mitt”. Can’t they see this?

Identify the linkage between the two, Hillary and McCain, both seeking to take credit for the recent success, at the expense of the President and General Petraus, and neither being able to own up to the responsibility for the Military being shrunk, ill-equipped, not supported, and then mistreated when they come home.

How?

You simply state to Mr McCain [not General McCain] that he is a fine man, a fine American, and a patriot, whose heart in terms of the military is doubtlessly in the “right place’, but he has “lost his way” since coming to Washington. He has become part of the problem of a broken Washington. What is required is not an “insider’ to secretly hide in the cloakrooms of the Senate and make deals, while the Military suffers. What is required is an “outside” who can come in and turn Washingont “inside out” as Mitt said, and, I should add “from the outside in”.

You reiterate that you respect McCain and what he has done while in service, but not what he has done in Washington. He is just not the right man for this job, right now.

”Now, one of my opponents wanted to set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster,” McCain said about Romney, at a stop in Fort Myers. Then McCain added, “If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher.”

When told of the comments, Romney got visibly testy. ”That’s dishonest, to say that I have a specific date. That’s simply wrong,” Romney said at a stop outside Tampa. “To say something that’s not accurate is simply wrong, and he knows better.”

Romney demanded an apology from McCain, which seemed to simply delight McCain, since he used it to escalate the war of words even higher. “I think the apology is owed to the young men and women serving this nation in uniform,” McCain said. Then his campaign started sending out a blizzard of emails, including comments from former CIA director James Woolsey knocking Romney’s support for the war.

To review: In the course of a few hours, McCain said that Romney once wanted to set a date to withdraw from Iraq, accused him of working on the same side as Hillary Clinton in the Iraq debate, and accused him of disrespecting American servicemen and women. Is any of this true? Not that much.

It is certainly true that in the spring of 2007, McCain stood virtually alone in trumpeting the then-unpopular “surge” strategy that Bush had ordered in Iraq. The other GOP candidates technically supported the surge, but unlike McCain they didn’t like to talk about it. When Romney took questions about Iraq on the trail, he would say he supported the surge, that the war on Islamic radicals was important to win, and that he wanted the troops to be able to come home as soon as possible. He also left open the possibility that the surge would fail. But I know of no evidence that shows Romney said he wanted to set a date to abandon the war effort and bring the troops home.

So what evidence does McCain have that Romney supported withdrawal? McCain points to this interview Romney gave to “Good Morning America,” on April 3, 2007:

QUESTION: Iraq. John McCain is there in Baghdad right now. You have also been very vocal in supporting the president and the troop surge. Yet, the American public has lost faith in this war. Do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops?
MR. ROMNEY: Well, there’s no question but that — the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, and the leadership of the Iraqi government.

QUESTION: So, private. You wouldn’t do it publicly? Because the president has said flat out that he will veto anything the Congress passes about a timetable for troop withdrawals. As president, would you do the same?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, of course. Can you imagine a setting where during the Second World War we said to the Germans, gee, if we haven’t reached the Rhine by this date, why, we’ll go home, or if we haven’t gotten this accomplished we’ll pull up and leave? You don’t publish that to your enemy, or they just simply lie in wait until that time. So, of course, you have to work together to create timetables and milestones, but you don’t do that with the opposition.

McCain says that he thinks this amounts to Romney supporting a drop-dead deadline for withdrawing troops. But that’s not what happened. A more fair reading of the exchange shows that Romney was instead talking about private benchmarks that would allow Bush and Maliki to measure success or failure. In fact, Romney says flat out that he would veto any bill from Congress that contained such a timetable for withdrawal.

But even if Romney had explicitly supported withdrawal, what exactly does McCain mean by demanding that Romney apologize to American troops? Is McCain suggesting than any American who opposed the surge was somehow not supporting American troops? Is he saying that it is unpatriotic to debate American policy in Iraq? It sure sounds like it. And it is an unbecoming posture for McCain, who has been boasting in recent days about the “respectful debate” he would have with Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Barack Obama should he win the nomination.

Bennett’s been a McCain defender, certainly more than other conservative radio-talk-show hosts. On CNN, he just called today’s Iraq hit on Romney “below the belt” and said “honor has been McCain’s watchword” — he should admit that was wrong to do.

Here we have Mitt running around on the ‘defensive’ as McCain lies about him and feels smugly comfortable about his strength. You cannot win in politics by being on the defensive and letting the other candidate “define you and your actions in the arena”

The way to deal with this is to boldly attack the supposed “strength” and take it out from under McCain. You must hit him precisely on his strength and put him on the defensive.

His bragging is a vulnerability. His presence in Washington as a supposed military expert is a vulnerability. Simply look him in the eye and ask “where were you during the decades when our troops were cut by hundreds of thousands. Where were you when we failed to give our troops proper support with armor. Where when you when we stopped our troops from properly questioning captive terrorists and sequestering them for more questioning in Guantanomo?
Where were you during those two decades when Walter Reade Hospital became an atrocity

What answer can he give. Well, I was in Washington, help it become a broken Washington.

Just watch him hem and haw when you catch him with the Walter Reade Hospital question. He tried to do this, he tried to do that, but what did he do. Why didn’t he get his Demcratic “Friends’ like Hillary and Kennedy to help with the troops. What could he say to the American people, to the veterans? He says he is their “man”. Well………

.

But Mitt cannot afford to sit back like an intimidated “churchmouse” and let McCain get away with his “bogus” self-touting of his “national security” strength. I wish that someone in the Romney campaign would “prep” a proper response.

Here are some points, above and beyond my previous posts on this.

First, the point must start with his “Washington is Broken” theme. What does this mean? Well, that the sitting ‘talkers” in the Senate do nothing but talk, and whenever something happens they seek to take credit for, and without actually being on the line to ever “do” anything, they seek to skirt all blame. In this way HILLARY and MCCAIN are quite alike. No wonder they are the best of friends. NOT JUST HILLARY, BUT MCCAIN represents the worst of what makes “Washington Broken”.

Mitt got applause for pointing out how audacious it was for Hillary to seek to take credit for the Surge, but McCain has sought to do the same thing, when [a] the actual Surge, organized and planned and executed with the hard work of the military was not at all like his “, and when he is, just like Hillary, actively seeking to usurp “credit” for something which was really done by those on the line, President Bush and General Petraus. It is less than appropriate to seek to not give proper credit where it is due, especially when it is the President for his courage, and for Petraus for his skills.

When he says in debate for all to see that “I was the only one in support of the Surge”, he is misleading viewers and voters, and here is where MITT cannot sit by like a frightened little mouse and “take it”. He should correct him and say that “You were the only one who was quick to send out a Press release and seek to take away credit from the President andthe Miliary. The rest of us, Rudy, Thompson, myself and Huckabee were all busy doing things that had to be done. We all supported the surge, but we did not leap in and get our Press offices to send out press releases at the time.

If McCain wishes to ururp credit for the Surge, then he has to accept responsbility and blame for the atrocious conditions in Walter Reade and the mistreatment of our veterans all building during the decades when he was in Washington, or the diminution of our armed forces funding and the support for them during all those years. We don’t see Press release from his office accepting responsibility for those sorry conditions which make all Americans feel “shame” at the way our Armed Forces have been constrained in so many ways and mistreated when returning home.

The problem with the War was never the MILITARY. It was WASHINGTON and its gridlock and the self-centered, politically self-enhancing verbiage from the talking, squawking Senators and Congressman. The problem with the War was not the military campaign but the breakdown in Washingon, with its politics, squabbling, political correctness, and gridlock that shaped the way the situation was managed AFTER WE WON.

It is unseemly for a sitting, talking Senator with no more than squatting rights in Washington to now seek to take credit away from Bush and Petraus, and then, ironically seek to claim credit for being the only one among the candidates “seeking to take credit from those who rightfully deserved it for being on the line and doing their jobs”, while the rest of us were simply there, not in WASHINGTON, like the American public, in suppport. This is just another example. There is more to be said about this issue, but Mitt must be able to handle it. He cannot let McCain get away with this. Each time he does it, the campaign will “bleed”.

The Romney campaign must address this NOW.

If there is a backlash from the majority of the media on Monday, it may backfire and aid Mitt. I hope that talk radio is all over it as well as local Floridian news stations.

Obviously, Mitt’s numbers are trending upwards or else McCain would be playing the role of Mr. Magnanimous.

If you are looking for more information on this subject visit http://corner.nationalreview.com/ Mark Levin has some good response on the matter.