Mayhem
Banned
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/02/wsj-mitt-romneys-policy-vague_n_1850214.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577623702131613774.html
The Wall Street Journal on Friday criticized Mitt Romney's speech at the Republican National Convention this week as too vague and "failing to explain his own agenda."
Romney's speech hinted at major policy ideas, the editorial said, but didn't offer substantial details.
The piece explained:
He and Paul Ryan promised to help the middle class, but they never explained other than in passing how they would do it. In his acceptance speech, Mr. Romney tossed out his five policy ideas almost as an afterthought. Energy got one sentence, education scored big with two. Neil Armstrong received almost as much speech time as what Mr. Romney would do specifically to spur faster growth and raise middle-class incomes.
The WSJ warned that if Romney doesn't define his own policies, Democrats will do it for him.
"We wouldn't be surprised to see them pivot away from personal attacks on Mr. Romney and Bain next week and devote all of their time to assailing his policies," the editorial staff wrote. Democrats "will have a blank canvass on which to paint because Mr. Romney did so little to explain what he would do and how it would help improve the economy."
This isn't the first time Romney has been criticized for being nonspecific. Earlier this week, an opinion piece in U.S. News & World Report said that the convention speech was "was too vague and impersonal to be helpful to Governor Romney." Conservative columnist Bill Kristol told Fox News Sunday in July that "I don’t think you can beat an incumbent president, even if the economy is slow, if 27 percent of the voters think you as the challenger don’t have a clear plan for improving the economy."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577623702131613774.html
The immediate media consensus, especially on the political right, seems to be that Mitt Romney "did what he had to do" in his GOP convention speech Thursday. He repaired an image battered by Obama attack ads, showed he appreciates women, defended Bain Capital and criticized President Obama more in sorrow than in anger. On to the White House!
Well, maybe. Mr. Romney's speech did hit all of those essential points, but the one thing it didn't do constitutes a major political gamble. Neither he nor the entire GOP convention made a case for his economic policy agenda. He and Paul Ryan promised to help the middle class, but they never explained other than in passing how they would do it.
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Romney tossed out his five policy ideas almost as an afterthought. Energy got one sentence, education scored big with two. Neil Armstrong received almost as much speech time as what Mr. Romney would do specifically to spur faster growth and raise middle-class incomes.
This isn't because Mr. Romney lacks an agenda. His platform is brimming with ideas, most of them good and many excellent. He simply didn't talk about them. No doubt this was a strategic political calculation—perhaps a judgment, based on polling, that Mr. Romney's main challenge is to reassure undecided voters that he's not heartless, scary or extreme.
The thinking would be that Mr. Obama's approval rating remains below 50% and voters are prepared to fire him, so all Mr. Romney needs to do is to show Americans that he's competent and presidential. Thus Mr. Romney and the GOP staged a convention intended mainly to rehabilitate their political brands, show off a younger and more diverse party, and leave the policy stuff to the dull wonks on editorial pages.
Ergo, the "safe" political strategy.
Perhaps this is how it will all turn out, but someone should point out that this policy-free zone is risky in its own way. By failing to explain his own agenda, Mr. Romney has left an opening for Democrats and Mr. Obama to define it instead. We wouldn't be surprised to see them pivot away from personal attacks on Mr. Romney and Bain next week and devote all of their time to assailing his policies.
Beyond the "war on women" nonsense that Mr. Romney debunked this week, Democrats will tear into Paul Ryan's House budget and Mr. Romney's tax plan. They'll say he wants to favor his rich friends and political donors, that he'll loot the middle class and brutalize the poor with spending cuts on everything from disaster relief (see Louisiana) to Pell grants to food stamps.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama will explain in glorious detail all of the "investments" he wants to make in schools, roads, college tuition, medical research, electric cars—which Mr. Romney's "savage" cuts would take away.
These Democratic attacks will be caricatures or worse. But they will have a blank canvass on which to paint because Mr. Romney did so little to explain what he would do and how it would help improve the economy. His only references to taxes were that he won't raise them on the middle class and he'll cut them for small business.
Perhaps this near-silence is pure political genius, but was it too much to devote a single paragraph to pre-empting the attacks on Mr. Romney's tax reform?
Something like this: "President Obama will say I want to cut taxes on the rich. But a fairer tax code with lower rates for everyone will lead to more investment, faster growth and more middle-class jobs. I want to eliminate the special tax favors that the rich can exploit because they have political power that average Americans don't. Mr. Obama wants to keep the current tax code because it gives the rich and powerful in Washington more power. I want average Americans to have more money and power instead."
Our point isn't to throw cold water on the Tampa afterglow so much as to point out that sooner or later Messrs. Romney and Ryan are going to have to make the case for their policies. If not in their own speeches, then surely at the debates when Mr. Obama and the moderators won't let them avoid it.
If they can't confidently and aggressively win the argument for tax reform and spending restraint and why they promote faster growth and more jobs, they will give Mr. Obama an opening to win an election he should lose.
