Scapegoating

Posted By on October 25, 2012 at 4:07 pm

Team Obama is showing signs of desperation, and the blamecasting has already begun. First target? Rather surprisingly, it’s Bill Clinton.

[T]here is one crucial way in which the 42nd president may not have served the 44th quite as well. In these final weeks before the election, Mr. Clinton’s expert advice about how to beat Mitt Romney is starting to look suspect.

You may recall that last spring, just after Mr. Romney locked up the Republican nomination, Mr. Obama’s team abruptly switched its strategy for how to define him. Up to then, the White House had been portraying Mr. Romney much as George W. Bush had gone after John Kerry in 2004 – as inauthentic and inconstant, a soulless climber who would say anything to get the job.

But it was Mr. Clinton who forcefully argued to Mr. Obama’s aides that the campaign had it wrong. The best way to go after Mr. Romney, the former president said, was to publicly grant that he was the “severe conservative” he claimed to be, and then hang that unpopular ideology around his neck.

Interestingly, it’s Mitt Romney who has taken the 1992 Clinton campaign’s most memorable axiom and put it to work: it’s the economy, stupid.

Which, given my opinion of Obama’s intelligence, may be somewhat apropos.

(Link via Ace.)

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