I've been told that Mitt Romney's been putting Bill Clinton on a pedestal while attempting to knock down President Obama by calling him "a welfare
Regardless of the fact that the differences between Clinton and Obama are effectively non-existent, what exactly is Romney's plan when Clinton starts campaigning aggressively on Obama's behalf, delivering a major primetime address in support of Obama during the Democratic National Convention?
Or more to the point, if Romney is spending much of 2012 telling voters that Clinton is reliable and worthy of respect, won't that be a problem when the Big Dog is urging voters to rally behind Barack Obama and reject Romney's candidacy?
Oh yes, that's most definitely a problem. As Jamison Foser points out, the Dems tried this whenever John McCain stumped for a GOP candidate and in those cases, the plan never worked out the way they thought it would:
Just about the best the Democratic campaigns could hope for as a result of these tactics was a line or two deep in a newspaper writeup of the GOP campaign event noting an area of disagreement between McCain and the Republican candidate. Meanwhile, they’re enhancing the credibility of someone who is endorsing and campaigning for their opponent. And, as an added drawback, they’re building up the credibility of someone who was widely seen as the best future presidential candidate the Republican Party had to offer.
If such tactics have little potential payoff, and obvious unintended consequences, why do campaigns seem to like them so much? In part because it’s the kind of superficially smart thing that wins political operatives praise from their colleagues and reporters. And because a lot of people don’t know the difference between superficially smart things that win praise from political reporters and operatives and things that are actually smart.
But leave it to Romney's campaign to not do their homework and learn from the mistakes of others. Now the RMoney team has to sit and watch as the Big Dog not only gives President Obama his endorsement, but poor Mitt has to take a trip to the hospital so the doctors can remove that size 13 wingtip from his narrow orifice and unwedge that bit of magic underwear it took with it. Don't worry - he's got pretty good health insurance for those sorts of things.
Meanwhile, Artur Davis is now heading up Mitt's new Black Leadership Council, a collection of 18 black conservative politicians and leaders trying their damnedest to figure out why other blacks simply won't vote for poor Mitt. Here's a clue: as long as people assume that black Americans vote for black Democrat leaders out of racial solidarity, the BLC and their GOP paymasters will always remain, pardon, in the dark.
