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September 20, 2012 04:41 PM UTC

Mitt's Never Gonna Give You Up, Colorado

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

FOX 31’s Eli Stokols:

Mitt Romney will campaign in Denver Sunday and Monday as his campaign looks to increase the pace of daily rallies and events in an effort to shift the trajectory of the race for the White House.

The Romney campaign confirmed Thursday that all of the events on the visit – Romney’s first to Colorado in more than a month – will take place in Denver…

Since Monday, as Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign struggled to manage yet another unexpected controversy, conservative hand-wringing intensified as Republican partisans worried aloud if there’s any way for their candidate to turn things around.

In Colorado, prominent conservatives far enough removed from the campaign to speak freely and honestly asked the same question about Romney: where has he been?

If you’re counting, that will be 49 days since Romney last visited Colorado. Politico does its best to explain Mitt Romney’s new strategy:

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.”

…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.

To be fair, Romney did try to visit Pueblo last weekend, a campaign stop that was thwarted by a plane crash at Pueblo Airport. On another front, John Ingold of the Denver paper reports this morning on damage control efforts from local Romney surrogates like Colorado Republican Party chairman Ryan Call and 2006 GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez, responding to the exposure on Monday of damaging video of Romney disparaging roughly half of the country as “victims” who “believe the government has a responsibility to care for them.”

Beauprez charges on Romney’s behalf that Barack Obama wants to “out-Europe the Europeans, only do it on steroids.” In response to Romney’s “victims” comments, the Romney campaign is circulating a 1998 video of Obama saying he is in favor of “redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

We’ll let the Obama campaign explain that statement–we suspect it will poll better than Romney’s explanations for his remarks. But while we’re on the subject, what does “out-Europe the Europeans on steroids” even mean? Is that some kind of Lance Armstrong joke?

Romney’s right about one thing. The surrogates aren’t cutting it.

Bottom line: polling has consistently shown, for whatever reason, a tighter race here in Colorado than a surprising number of other swing states. Obama remains narrowly ahead here in most polling, but as other swing states slowly move out of Romney’s grasp, Colorado becomes even more critical to the GOP’s rapidly narrowing path to victory in this election.

As a result, we’re about to see a lot more Mitt Romney, and a lot less Bob Beauprez.

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21 thoughts on “Mitt’s Never Gonna Give You Up, Colorado”

  1. Mail-in ballots change how a campaign times an “October Surprise.”

    These surprises, back when everyone lined up to vote in person on the first Tuesday in November,

    would be sprung late on the Thursday 5 days before the election,

    so that the targeted voters (which today we call “swing voters”) would get to hear about the surprise, but the other campaign, opposing editors and publishers wouldn’t have time to respond.  

    24/7 “news” channels changed that, pushing the optimal announcement timing to sometime late Sunday or early Monday.  

    But mail-in ballots changed the calculus.

    They even changed what the surprise could be.  

    See, rabid partisans on both sides send their ballots back quickly.  Check the mirror.  

    So the “October Surprise” can now piss off the rabid supporters, if it is timed for after they have already voted.  

    Complicating factor: not every state does mail-in ballots like Colorado.  

    But what’s important is what the swing states do, and I’m not up on that.  

    I’m guessing that R-money drops a bomb on 17 October.  

    I’m guessing that Obama is ready with a retaliatory strike later that same day.  

    I even have a guess what the topic will be.  

        1. after partisan Republicans have already sent in their ballots,

          R-money announces that he has consulted experts, names them, and announces that if elected he will have all combat troops out of A’stan by Christmas 2012.  

          I think events of the last couple days open the door to that.

          Then Obama counters that he already planned to get them out by ___ (some date even sooner.)

          ….

          ajb, would that Skywalker thing make him Liz Chaney’s half-brother ?    

          2. but I think that’s what you’re hoping independents/the not bitterly partisan would care about.

            I’d be less shocked to see something about a birth certificate. Or Libya.

            Wasn’t Luke part of a set? I thought I remembered Pandabear giving birth to twins. Holy crickets! Liz Chaney and Obama are twins?! You heard it here first, people! (<–More likely than war being an October (or whichever month) surprise.)

            Pardon the overall lack of snark. It’s kind of sad to me how little people care about this…

          3. Really?

            He spent years running for President and now he gets around to talking to some folks to tell him what to think about Afghanistan?

            And Obama “counters”? Really? Obama would simply laugh and point out how desperate an act that was, and how is shows what little foreign policy and military knowledge Romney has.

    1. He’s not completely disconnected from reality. He’s losing, his campaign knows he’s losing, and they’re going to try and turn it around.

      Of course, they could just double down on what’s not working and go with it. Then they would at least remain true to their principles (as if Romney had any fixed set of political principles to start with…).

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