by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n Mitt Romney was recently derided by the Obama campaign for his appearance with Donald Trump. Trump is supposed to be radioactive because of his stubborn insistence that the Obama birth certificate is inauthentic. Romney\u2019s supporters, however, ignored the complaint and pointed instead to Obama\u2019s ongoing ties with Al Sharpton \u2014 of Tawana Brawley infamy \u2014 and disgraced Wall Street manipulator and former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, who is bundling cash for the president\u2019s reelection.<\/p>\n So far the campaign could be summed up as trivial tit-for-tat. Romney had a dog on his car; Obama once ate some dog. Romney is supported by supposed misogynist Rush Limbaugh; Obama got a million dollars from unapologetic misogynist Bill Maher. Romney had a great-grandfather who was a polygamist in Mexico; Obama\u2019s father was a polygamist in Kenya. Romney was a profit-mongering capitalist whose Bain Capital strangled companies; Obama was an incompetent investor who squandered billions of taxpayers\u2019 money on failed green companies. Romney is a square who avoided coke; Obama used to like a \u201clittle blow.\u201d For every rumor about Mormonism, there is yet another unappreciated lunacy of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright\u2019s Trinity Church. And on and on.<\/p>\n What to make of the puerile back and forth? It would be easy to tsk-tsk the shallowness of such kindergarten name-calling, which diverts attention from domestic and foreign policies. Or political observers could argue that the Obama campaign is successfully creating all sorts of diversions from a dismal economic record; in each instance Romney\u2019s handlers are forced to take their eyes off 40 months of 8 percent-plus unemployment or 50 million people now on food stamps.<\/p>\n But there is a far better lesson from the Romney counterpunching: Apparently his campaign is not going to be a repeat of Mike Dukakis\u2019s smiley-face efforts when knocked silly by the late Lee Atwater\u2019s no-holds-barred management of George H. W. Bush\u2019s 1988 campaign. Nor will 2012 prove anything like 2008, when John McCain took all sorts of issues off the table \u2014 from Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers to scrutiny of Obama\u2019s memoirs. Note in this regard the frequency with which an increasingly desperate Obama is now praising the McCain campaign, in contrast to the supposed extremism of Romney \u2014 as if an incumbent president George H. W. Bush would have admonished a \u201cwar room\u201d Bill Clinton to emulate the more noble tone of Dukakis\u2019s failed effort.<\/p>\n Romney\u2019s ostensible point, of course, is not to allow scurrilous stories to linger in the press. And he probably wants to create deterrence by warning the Obama campaign that for each petty story of a teenager pushed down by Romney a half-century ago, there will be a middle-school girl whom a younger Obama rudely pushed away \u2014 and that was according to Obama\u2019s own telling.<\/p>\n But the real significance of firing back is not just to balance impressions with the general public or to warn Team Obama of the boomerang effect each time they offer up a new diversion. Instead, it is to remind the Republican base that Romney intends to go all out, and would rather win a bloody fight than lose in noble aloofness.<\/p>\n It was not McCain\u2019s intention to alienate conservatives by his campaign style \u2014 again, now disingenuously cited by the Obama campaign as a model for bipartisan centrism \u2014 but that was surely the effect of his constant assertions of moral superiority. Each time McCain took an issue off the table or rebuked a zealous supporter, it had a depressing effect on his base, as if to say, \u201cI want your support and your money, but not quite your crude self.\u201d<\/p>\n When on occasion I have asked conservatives why they did not give to or work for McCain in 2008, almost none cited any policy differences. They had no complaint with McCain\u2019s sometimes wooden campaigning style. Instead, it was a deep anger that, apparently, McCain felt that he would rather win the approval of the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0editorial board or an NPR commentator than of those who really wanted him to win \u2014 he was harder on a sympathetic talk-show host than he was on Pastor Wright. Some cite the further irony that it was the often-rebuked conservative base that stood by McCain, not his natural moderate allies like Colin Powell, who jumped ship.<\/p>\n Similarly, when I now ask conservatives why they are keen on the suspect conservative Romney, they do not mention his \u201cevolving\u201d turn to the right. They say little about his \u201cappearing presidential.\u201d Instead, almost always they cite the fact that he ran a tough primary campaign that took apart those whom they actually preferred \u2014 Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, or Rick Santorum. In other words, conservatives most of all just want someone to fight back and not, like Bob Dole in 1996 or McCain in 2008, to lecture, lose, and return to the sober and judicious status quo in Washington.<\/p>\n So when Romney refused to disown the mercurial Trump, he sent quite the opposite message from McCain\u2019s or Dole\u2019s \u2014 something like \u201cI don\u2019t need the associate of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko to tell me with whom to appear.\u201d Apparently, each time Obama issues a \u201cHow dare you?\u201d Romney is not going to point fingers at his own backers, but rather will fire back with a \u201cHow dare you dare me?\u201d<\/p>\n Romney is taking the gamble that whatever damage may be done by his overzealous supporters is hardly commensurate with the damage of sanctimoniously castigating them in order to win approval from the press and the Obama campaign. In other words, Romney would prefer winning in 2012 to being praised by liberals in 2016 for running a model, but losing, campaign.<\/p>\n That fact alone \u2014 not litmus tests of his conservatism or assessments of his style \u2014 will be the dominating factor in the Romney campaign, and it will make 2012 quite unlike 2008.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Mitt Romney was recently derided by the Obama campaign for his appearance with Donald Trump. Trump is supposed to be radioactive because of his stubborn insistence that the Obama birth certificate is inauthentic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[96],"tags":[12,207,98,211,32],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-bI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":769,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-romney-doggy-wars\/","url_meta":{"origin":726,"position":0},"title":"The Obama-Romney Doggy Wars","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Last week the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0ran a piece on presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney\u2019s high-school years, in which he supposedly was cruel to a shy, perhaps gay fellow student. 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Last night\u2019s debate clarified the stark choice facing American voters on November 6. On the one hand, we heard a candidate who endorses limited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-debates-taught-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":726,"position":3},"title":"What the Debates Taught Us","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The president of the United States in the last debate chose to go on the attack against his challenger, Mitt Romney \u2014 and once again largely failed to convince the American people that he was the more presidential alternative. But how did the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1360,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/romney-the-castor-oil-candidate\/","url_meta":{"origin":726,"position":4},"title":"Romney: The Castor-Oil Candidate","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Nominating Mitt Romney is sort of like taking Grandma\u2019s castor oil. Republicans are dreading the thought of downing their unpleasant-tasting medicine but worry that sooner or later they will have to. 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