Politics
Obama aides: Romney weak, but beating him will be hard work
U.S. President Barack Obama (l) and GOP candidate Mitt Romney. PHOTO/AP
President Barack Obama’s top reelection strategists derisively painted Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney on Wednesday as a weak candidate who alienates key voting blocs and seems unable to unite his party. But they then warned any complacent Democrats that it would take a massive, well-funded and organized campaign to beat him in “a tough race” to November.
The two seemingly contradictory arguments were on display as Obama reelection campaign manager Jim Messina and senior strategist David Axelrod worked and joked their way through a post-Super-Tuesday conference call with reporters.
“Instead of Super Tuesday, it became ‘Super Glue Day’ for them: They’re still stuck with Santorum and with Gingrich and with the prospect of a long race,” quipped Axelrod.
Axelrod said Romney was laboring to “grind out” a series of “tactical victories in a kind of death march.”
The two aides pointed to what they described as drooping Republican turnout, predicted Romney would struggle to unify the party, said he was alienating groups like independents, Latinos, women, middle-class voters, and young people, and accused him of pandering by taking “extremist positions” on issues like immigration.
So, November 6, 2012? Cakewalk? Not so much, the two officials acknowledged.
