Romney’s plan

I watched the debate and the extremely interesting after-debate commentary on Fox, and I agree with the Fox commentators that Romney made a strategic decision not to go after Obama, especially on Benghazi (an issue on which, in my view, he could have destroyed Obama and sealed the election), in order to appear above-it-all and “presidential.” Romney, the man of plans, had a plan for the debate and he followed it assiduously. He conceded foreign policy to Obama, in order to keep turning the subject back to the economy, his own strong point, and say that we can’t have a strong foreign policy without a strong economy. Further, based on the responses of Frank Luntz’s focus group which was shown on the Hannity program after the debate, the ploy worked. Several of the focus group members (all of whom Luntz said were Undecideds prior to the debate) repeated Romney’s point that if our economy is in the doldrums, we can’t have a strong military and be assertive abroad. But the focus group was surreal. On one hand, Luntz described them as Undecideds. On the other hand, they seemed overwhelmingly pro-Romney. Were we to believe that they went from Undecided to strongly pro-Romney in the course of watching last night’s debate?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 23, 2012 08:10 AM | Send