Desperate Team Romney resorts to 'Kamikaze' attacks in final days

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In the final days of the presidential race, a desperate Team Romney has resorted to what you might call a Kamikaze strategy. Greg Sargent explains in Mitt Romney’s Kamikaze strategy:

His campaign is cranking out a startling number of falsehoods and sleazy attacks, drawing widespread condemnation in the media that could ultimately crash his campaign, because that condemnation dovetails with Obama’s closing character argument against him.

Of course, the Kamikaze analogy only goes so far. If Romney’s calculation proves correct — and all the ad spending overwhelms whatever criticism his falsehoods and distortions draw in the media — his quest for the presidency would obviously come to fruition, rather than perish.

However, our democracy as we have known it for more than 200 years would perish under the weight of voters rewarding Big Lie GOPropaganda.

[T]he Ohio press continues to pound Romney for the centerpiece of this Kamikaze strategy: His false claims about the auto-bailout and Jeep supposedly moving American jobs to China. Dems are circulating this scorching editorial in the Youngstown Vindicator that hits Romney’s Jeep lie as an “insult to Ohians” and bluntly states that Romney is “no friend of the auto in­dus­try, on which Ohio re­lies for one of ev­ery eight jobs.” Another hard-hitting editorial in the Toledo Blade blasts Romney for an “ex­er­cise in de­cep­tion about auto-in­dus­try is­sues that is re­mark­able even by the stan­dards of his cam­paign.”

All of this feeds directly into the final argument Obama is making about Romney’s character, integrity, and authenticity: He’ll shamelessly say anything to win and as a result you can’t trust him on anything, let alone to look out for your interests. Romney is banking that he can surf past all the media and Obama camp criticism on a wave of last minute ad spending. Refusing to answer questions from the press is central to pulling that off. If Romney were to take questions from reporters, he’d be asked to answer for all of this stuff.

After all, when reporters do press him on his dishonesty and/or evasions, the results aren’t pretty. Romney faced harsh criticism for his refusal to answer questions about whether he still agreed with his previous suggestion that he favors transferring FEMA responsibilities to the states.

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None of this is to say Romney’s closing strategy can’t work. But it’s a pretty massive and audacious gamble on his part.

UPDATE: The perils of Romney’s Kamikaze strategy are very clear in this new ad [entitled 'Cynical'] the Obama campaign will air in Ohio and Michigan. It hits Romney for his Jeep lie and suggests it’s all about covering up his opposition to the auto rescue:

Ad transcript:

Voiceover:
"Wholly inaccurate. Clearly misleading. That's what news outlets are calling Mitt Romney's latest ads...suggesting auto jobs are being sent to China."

Voiceover:
"GM calls Romney's ads 'politics at its cynical worst'"

Voiceover:
"And Chrysler's C-E-O said it's simply not true."

Voiceover:
"We know the truth, Mitt"

Mitt Romney:
"That's exactly what I said, that headline that you read, which it said, 'Let Detroit go bankrupt.'"

UPDATE: A second ad from the Obama campaign entitled "What he said" has also been released.