Romney's Santa routine may hurt him long term

Guest post by Frank Moraes

Ed. note: This is Frank's fourth guest spot for us (in addition to live-blogging the debate with us last night). You can find his first, on the recent 60 Minutes interviews with Obama and Romney, here; his second, on European monetary policy and Spanish austerity, here; and his third, on conservative desperation, here. -- MJWS 

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor with much too much education. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it is really hard to be a liberal, and writes the blog Frankly Curious.

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I spent the debate "live blogging" here at The Reaction. Check out our live-blogging post to see my reactions as they occurred in real time. My initial thinking was that Romney did better than I had expected -- and I expected him to do fairly well. But I didn't think that Romney necessarily "won" the debate, whatever that might mean. He did, however, dominate it.

What surprised me was just how hostile the liberal reaction was to the debate. I guess this makes sense, though. They want the president to be a fighter. I feel the same way. For example, I couldn't believe some of the things that Romney was able to get away with. In particular, I hate his claim that he can't give specifics about his policies because that's not how you negotiate. Never has a bigger pile of bullshit excreted from a politician.

Regardless of how the debate went for the pundits, my overall reaction was that Romney was even worse than I had thought. For a while, I've been pushing this line that Romney's tax plan is, " Trust me." But now I see that this is his plan for everything. Education reform? Trust me. Financial reform? Trust me. Health-care reform? Trust me. It reminds me of Nixon's secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. You may remember that the war didn't actually end until he was out of office.

The more substantive point regarding the debate was that Romney's policy ideas changed radically. Now he's not giving a tax break to the wealthy! Now he's going to cover pre-existing conditions by -- wait for it! -- magic! He'll increase funding for education. And the military. And anything else that you might like. It reminded me of the Michael Dukakis line from 1988: Mitt Romney is the Joe Isuzu of politicians. Or if you're too young to get the reference: Mitt Romney claims to be Santa Claus.

President Obama has always been an "eat your broccoli" kind of guy. So we shouldn't be too surprised that he used the debate to talk to the American people like they were adults. (As my friend Andrea would say, "That's a mistake!") But in the end, I think there is much fodder for the Obama campaign. Romney will get a bump from this, but over time, I think it reinforces the Romney nobody likes: the guy who will say anything to get elected.

 

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)