BOSTON — More Mitt.
After taking a beating for comments he privately wishes he never made and from conservative critics he wishes he could muzzle,
Mitt Romney
and his campaign are settling on a rescue plan to show more of him — in
ads, speeches and campaign appearances. A big focus, according to
campaign officials, will be on Romney talking a lot more about how his
ideas will help regular Americans who remain deeply suspicious of him
“He has to own his message for people, especially women, to buy the messenger,” one top adviser said.
A campaign official said: “In a lot of the current survey data,
there’s a desire among the electorate to know more about Mitt in terms
of how he would lead. Over the next six weeks, the campaign is going to
provide a lot more of that.”
Aides also expect more joint appearances by Romney and running mate
Paul Ryan – most likely in the
swing states of Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
The plan, described by top aides and advisers in interviews this
week, is an acknowledgment that Romney is in enough of a hole that he
cannot depend on the presidential debates to turn his candidacy around.
In fact, Romney, who recently did five mock debates in a 48-hour period
to practice, has confided to advisers that it may be hard to win a
debate because every attack against President Barack Obama will seem
stale while the attacks on him will seem fresher and newsier to a
hostile media.
Instead, Romney plans to dial back on fundraisers and vastly increase
his personal appearances — on the stump and in ads — to convince what’s
left of the undecided voters that Obama has been a disappointment and
that he has a specific plan that is less risky than the status quo.
Rather than talk about the broader economy, Romney will increasingly
talk about his plans in terms of the effect on families, the aides said.
This started before the Republican convention, when he boiled his
59-point plan for the national economy down to a five-point “Plan for a
Stronger Middle Class.”
The emerging strategy comes after several days of soul-searching.
Romney officials are very clear-eyed about the damage done by two
straight weeks of bad media coverage and the embarrassing comments
caught on tape
(see below for their assessment of what hurt the most in the past 10
days). They don’t dispute they are locked in serious turbulence, but
they also take solace that things are not worse after what they consider
the darkest stretch of the campaign.
“We are going to look back at this as the week he got his act
together, or the beginning of the end,” said a top Republican who works
closely with the campaign.
The campaign is moving fast to calm nerves, especially
among donors.
To get a flavor of the challenge before them, a top donor said that
after Romney spoke at a fundraising breakfast at the Hilton New York on
Friday, a will-Mitt-win poll was taken at one table of 10 men, each of
whom had paid at least $2,500 to attend, and some of whom had raised as
much as $50,000 for the campaign. Not a single man said yes
Ann Coulter’s latest book — “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama”
— comes out on Sept. 25, just weeks ahead of Election Day, but it’s not
the kind of tome you’d expect from the conservative firebrand.
“Professor Warren claimed that she was a Native American, a person of
color and as you can see, she’s not,” said Brown, who repeatedly called
on Warren to release her personnel records to put to rest whether the
claim helped her gain employment at Harvard University or the University
of Pennsylvania. “When you are a U.S. Senator, you have to pass a test
and that’s one of character and honesty and truthfulness. I believe and
others believe she’s failed that test.”