After watching Mitt Romney campaign for a few months, I'm forced to ask, is Mitt's campaign being run by a brain trust of infants and angry chimpanzees? Honestly, with the President as vulnerable as he is, I'm baffled by the Romney campaign's inability to ever do anything right. Campaigns for student council president in high schools have been better run.
Now, I'm not rooting for Mitt, but there's always a part of me that roots for the trainwreckiest outcome possible, which is obviously a Romney victory. If Mitt wins, I predict we'll lose an entire state by 2016. We'll have no idea where it went. Mitt might know, but he won't tell us. I hope it's Texas.
Doesn't that sound fun? Not even a little? Well I think it does, so here's what I think Mitt needs to do to win.
How stupid can Mitt Romney possibly be? He's at least smart enough to send his money on permanent tropical vacations. It's unbelievable to me that Mitt doesn't understand how poorly he's handling this thing with the tax returns. Here are some things everybody already knows about Mitt:
1) He's super duper rich.
2) His money lives in far away places.
3) Because he doesn't work anymore, and mostly just makes money from investments, he pays a frustratingly low tax rate.
Mitt's tax returns will tell us all of these things, not that we need them to. Unless Mitt's tax returns will also somehow reveal a 7 figure "hooker disposal" budget, there's no way releasing his returns could possibly be more damaging than four months of stories about how he won't release them. You know what nobody will give a shit about once Mitt releases his tax returns? Mitt's tax returns.
Also, even though the current Republican theory of economics is demonstrably nonsense, doesn't the fact that Mitt has to hide his money off-shore sort of play right into their whole argument about how we need a Republican President to create an environment that's conducive to business and investment? What am I missing?
2) Shut Up About Health Care
Anybody stupid enough to fall for the Republican talking points about the Affordable Care Act is already voting for Romney because they think Barack Obama is a secret muslim communist socialist.
And it isn't just that arguing against, ya know, insuring more people, makes you looks stupid. It also makes you looks like kind of a dick. When Republicans say health care reform will lead to "rationing", what they're really saying is "hey look, if we let more people get insurance, then more people will be going to the doctor, and we might have to wait longer, and we'd rather just let some poor people die than figure out a better system."
If Mitt wants to make the argument that the Affordable Care Act is just a big government give away to big insurance companies, I'm cool with that. But if he wants to make the argument that it's a socialist government take-over of health care, than he's an idiot.
Lost my train of thought there a little, this health care debate still makes me crazy, moving on...
3) Pick a Normal Running Mate
Remember what John McCain did when he picked a running mate? Mitt should do exactly not that. McCain picked a clown to run with him and it turned his campaign into a circus. Romney should pick Tim Pawlenty. He's the vanilla pudding of politicians. He'll sit quietly and not say anything stupid, which already gives him an advantage over Biden. If you ask for anything else from a running mate, you're just setting yourself up for failure.
Also, I like Tim Pawlenty. The fact that he got knocked out of the Republican primaries almost immediately only proves my point that he might actually not be an idiot. And, for all the those evangelicals who are worried about how mormon-y Romney is, I hear T-Paw is super jesus-y.
4) Talk About Results
Don't let the Obama campaign dismiss the still struggling economy by blaming everything on Congress. Is it true that Barack Obama hasn't really been able to do anything about jobs because Congressional Republicans have spent the last two years "governing" like fussy six-year-olds? Yes, but who cares? How does that help anyone? Do you think, if the President gets re-elected, Republicans will suddenly grow up and realize they need to work with him?
Romney needs to make the point that he's not blaming the President for the current state of the economy, he's just saying the President isn't the guy to fix it. It may not be fair, but it's probably true.
(sidenote: there's zero evidence Romney is the guy to fix it, and a decent amount of evidence that the policies Mitt wants to implement are what broke the economy in the first place, but voters really aren't that bright. You have to have like three consecutive intelligent thoughts to get to where I just went, most swing voters can barely string together three polysyllabic words).
Barack Obama's only defense against the unemployment rate is that it's not his fault. If Mitt makes the point that it doesn't matter whose fault it is, the Obama campaign will be mostly defenseless on the economy, which is the only thing anybody really cares about right now.
5) Lower Expectations
Barack Obama is going to murder Mitt Romney in three debates. It isn't really Mitt's fault. How is he supposed to compete with an actual smart person after a year of debating mouth-breathers like Santorum and Gingrich. The only intelligent counter points Mitt ever heard during the primaries came from Ron Paul, and he never had to respond to those because the crowd was always booing Ron ("Boooooooooo! what you said is logical and I hate it! Boooooooo!")
Do you remember the Palin/Biden debates from four years ago? Everything we knew about Palin suggested she wouldn't be able to get through the debate without setting her podium on fire. So, when she managed to make it to the stage without getting lost, half of the media immediately declared her the winner. Sure, her points were mostly incoherent nonsense, but she smiled a lot and seemed to have a decent grasp of the English language, and that was really more than we were expecting.
Mitt needs to pull the same trick. By the time we get to the debates, people should be saying that Mitt wins as long as his battery doesn't run out on national TV. I think he's well on his way.
6) Pretend He's Never Met Congress
Mitt should run as far away from Congressional Republicans as possible. Obama should do the same thing with Congressional Democrats, but this isn't about the President right now. You know who people hate? Congress. You know how Mitt could lock up about a million swing votes in about 10 seconds? Walk up to a microphone somewhere and say "you know, I'm a Republican and all, but Michele Bachmann really is a fucking idiot. I just felt like I needed to share." Wait, are mormons allowed to say that word? He may have to re-write it a little. Can he say gosh darn?
And that's pretty much it. You have a sitting President with a somewhat disappointed base and an unemployment rate over 8%. If Mitt Romney can spend the next four months not being a moron and staying out of his own way, I give him about a 75% chance of winning. Terrifying? Yes. But also true. Luckily for everyone, the chances of him spending four months not being a moron are not quite so high, so there's still hope.
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