The Obama Strategy: Bain Softens Up Romney For The Real Blow: the Ryan Budget

[deminks]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/19/1111710/-The-Obama-Strategy-Bain-Softens-Up-Romney-For-The-Real-Blow-the-Ryan-Budget

Earlier this week it was Romney's tax plan creates jobs, but they're overseas and not here. Today, Romney will end Medicare as we know it.

Bain is the jab to the stomach that soften up Romney for the haymakers on policy (to use boxing metaphors). Both are essential, and in multiple ways. The Obama campaign has a plan and they are executing it well.

For several weeks, pundits like Greg Sargent, Jonathan Chait and others have discussed the Obama campaign strategy. The campaign found in focus groups that people simply did not believe Romney's actual policies were what they were. They thought it was all attacks and no one would really want to voucherize Medicare, give more tax breaks to the wealthy, etc.

The average American does not understand how radical this Republican Party is. So the only way to get folks to listen to the truth was to attack Romney on Bain, showing people that he was the sort of person who would do these things. Yes, he outsourced lots of folks, ran a corporate chop shop and got rich on the suffering of working people. A guy like that would screw the middle class by destroying Medicare and running the country for the rich only.

(end snip)

Swiss Mitt is in some deep doo doo. And the first punches have gone virtually unanswered.

[flamingdem]

1. Good. That budget will make independents think twice about losing

Medicare to coupons for cancer. Etc.

[Pirate Smile]

2. The real strategy re Bain & Ryan Plan: a lot of people (R, D & I) don't think Romney would actually

DO to Medicare & Social Security what the Ryan Budget calls for in it.

Romney's Bain history shows he is perfectly happy to throw people - working people, middle class people, people like you and me - off the health care coverage which they have been contributing to, working for and counting on for years and years. He has no qualms about destroying the pensions that people have been contributing to, counting on and, literally, living off of for years.

It is how he got rich. He is that ruthless and uncaring. He's already done it. No one should assume he won't follow through with the draconian Ryan budget. He believes it. He lives it.

The Obama Campaign figured out that they needed to convince people that the threat of the Ryan Budget is real or else people just shrug it off.

I'll look for the link spelling out this strategy.

Edit to add:

“First, it goes to the heart of his primary rationale for being better on the economy,” Garin said. “Second, once people have learned that Romney was willing to fire workers and terminate health and pension benefits while taking tens of millions out of companies, they are much more ready to understand that Romney would indeed cut Social Security and Medicare to give tax breaks to rich people like himself. This provides a foundation to build the core policy critique against Romney.”

“We’ve firmly established that Romney’s tenure was not about creating jobs,” Garin added. “This sets the stage for what we’ll be doing later on.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-strategy-behind-the-dem-attacks-on-bain/2012/07/10/gJQAWvgObW_blog.html