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发帖数: 2273 | 1 Mitt Romney, his presidential aspirations suddenly endangered by Newt
Gingrich’s rapid resurgence, is employing aggressive new arguments in an
effort to disqualify Mr. Gingrich as a credible choice to Republicans,
calling him “zany” in an interview on Wednesday and questioning his
commitment to free enterprise.
But in an acknowledgment that he might not be able to reverse Mr. Gingrich’
s momentum quickly, Mr. Romney and his team are bracing for a far rougher
slog through the early Republican nominating contests than they had
envisioned even a few weeks ago and preparing for months of a state-by-state
, delegate-by-delegate fight.
The Romney campaign and its allies are unsure whether the attacks on Mr.
Gingrich’s stability, temperament and worldview will take hold before the
voting begins. Mr. Romney and some of his aides and advisers suggest that
their revised campaign strategy will rely on advantages in organization and
financing for the long run while moving quickly in the short term to turn Mr
. Gingrich’s own words against him.
Mr. Romney is seeking to paint Mr. Gingrich as “an unreliable conservative
” on issues like climate change. And he is seizing on a remark Mr. Gingrich
made this week, condemning Mr. Romney for profiting from layoffs and
corporate restructuring he oversaw in his years running Bain Capital, that
many conservative commentators said sounded like a Democratic antibusiness
refrain.
Mr. Romney said voters should take a closer look at Mr. Gingrich’s history
of policy ideas.
“Zany is not what we need in a president,” Mr. Romney said. “Zany is
great in a campaign. It’s great on talk radio. It’s great in print, it
makes for fun reading, but in terms of a president, we need a leader, and a
leader needs to be someone who can bring Americans together.”
Supporters, advisers and donors to Mr. Romney acknowledge a deep sense of
concern. Mr. Romney finds himself in the vexing position of being perceived
in many polls as the strongest Republican candidate to challenge President
Obama by being able to attract moderates and independents, but facing an
increasingly difficult battle for the Republican nomination because of
resistance to his candidacy among conservatives.
Mr. Romney said he would “keep on battling” if he fell short in the first
contests in Iowa, where he has stepped up his efforts in recent weeks, and
New Hampshire, which had always seemed to be a secure launching pad for him
but now seems to be in play.
His aides are vigorously organizing in Florida, where absentee voting begins
right after the New Year, and in states far down the line, to build a
backup plan when the nominating battle becomes a delegate fight.
When asked what he would do if he failed to slow Mr. Gingrich or other
Republican rivals in the early balloting, Mr. Romney said, “Make sure my
message is as clear as it can possibly be and wait for other individuals who
might be ahead of me to suffer the agonizing reappraisal and rude awakening
.”
As the Republican candidates gather for their final debate of the year on
Thursday night in Iowa, longtime supporters of Mr. Romney are questioning
whether he can blunt Mr. Gingrich’s rise before the Iowa caucuses and the
New Hampshire primary.
“I would feel much better about the outcome of this campaign if the primary
were three months off rather than three weeks away,” said Sam Fox, a co-
chairman of the Romney finance team in Missouri and an ambassador to Belgium
under President George W. Bush. He said he believed Mr. Romney would
ultimately prevail, yet for now, “I don’t think there is much that they
can do.”
Mr. Romney, whose aides have been debating the wisdom of keeping him
cloistered from news media interviews and aggressive campaigning for much of
the year, has abruptly shifted course. He has conducted nearly as many
interviews this week, including with The New York Times, as he has since
declaring his candidacy in June.
He took a break from a whirlwind day of fund-raising in Manhattan on
Wednesday, which stretched from breakfast to dinner, to discuss his campaign
. As Mr. Romney took a seat in a suite at the Regency hotel on Park Avenue,
he was smiling and upbeat. His tone did not convey the worry that is etched
on the faces of many of his advisers, saying that his second presidential
bid had made him wiser, calmer and less reliant on winning Iowa and New
Hampshire.
“Those early states continue to shout, they’re powerful, they have a big
impact, but the later states have a lot of delegates,” said Mr. Romney, who
has studied the epic Democratic primary fight between Mr. Obama and Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton. He added, “People are not out until they’ve
actually closed the doors and turned off the lights.”
Mr. Romney, whose 15 years of buying and selling companies at Bain Capital
has at times proved a thorny credential, now plans to embrace that career
aggressively as he seeks to portray Mr. Gingrich as ignorant about the most
pressing issue in the race: the economy.
Pushing back on the claims earlier this week by Mr. Gingrich that he should
return profits from Bain, Mr. Romney framed it as a liberal-minded attack on
the capitalist system itself — a line of attack that aides said would
intensify and sharpen in the coming days.
Mr. Romney also plans to embrace his time at Bain to contrast his role in
the private sector with that of Mr. Gingrich, who profited from consulting
deals with, among other companies, Freddie Mac, the housing-finance giant
whose meltdown in the mortgage crisis has cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
“He lashes out at me and lashes out at the free enterprise system,” Mr.
Romney said.
In the interview, Mr. Romney laid out his argument against Mr. Gingrich in a
methodical, businesslike manner, his voice steady and calm, unlike his
posture during some of the televised debates when he has gotten rattled or
agitated.
“He’s a great historian,” Mr. Romney said of Mr. Gingrich. “If we need a
historian leading the country, I’m sure people would find that attractive.
I actually think you need someone who actually understands the economy
leading the country.”
Signs of trouble emerged for Mr. Romney in New Hampshire on Nov. 18, the day
a poll in The New Hampshire Journal showed for the first time that Mr.
Romney and Mr. Gingrich were essentially tied, defying months of data that
had suggested Mr. Romney’s lead in the state was unassailable. His aides,
who had considered the state a political firewall, were suddenly spooked,
said two people who have advised the campaign.
The campaign dug into the numbers, and found what they considered flaws, but
also unmistakable evidence of an ascent by Mr. Gingrich. A person who has
advised Mr. Romney in the past said, “That rattled them.”
The Romney campaign leapt into action, rolling out its biggest endorsement
in the state two days later: Senator Kelly Ayotte, a freshman Republican and
darling of New Hampshire conservatives — the kind of news-making event
that campaigns typically reserve for a few days before voting begins.
By early December, the Romney camp, which prides itself on its cool
unflappability, appeared to be fretting over Mr. Gingrich’s rise and
encouraging the news media to focus on his record.
Stuart Stevens, a Romney strategist, took out his Kindle after the debate
last Saturday night at Drake University in Des Moines. He drew the attention
of reporters to the opening passages of a book about Mr. Gingrich called “
Tell Newt to Shut Up,” which features the former House speaker sobbing as
he described the toll that charges of ethics violations had taken on his
family.
“Have you read this?” Mr. Stevens asked, offering a rousing endorsement.
“I’d blurb it.”
Mr. Romney, as he prepared for the debate on Thursday and an interview on “
Fox News Sunday,” his first appearance of the year on a Sunday television
public affairs program, said he did not think his campaign made a mistake
taking a cautious approach for nearly all of 2011.
“Just the idea of trying to be a front-runner for a year would be an
extraordinarily unwise course in my view,” Mr. Romney said. “I was
building support, honing my message, raising the funds necessary to run a
campaign. The limelight can make people get tired and people can get bored
with it.”
At this point, the campaign is seizing support wherever it can find it,
including accepting the endorsement of Christine O’Donnell, an unsuccessful
Republican candidate for the Senate last year in Delaware, who had
introduced herself to the political scene by saying, “I am not a witch.”
“Hey, if Christine O’Donnell supports Mitt Romney, this guy has the kind
of principles Tea Partiers can be happy with,” Mr. Romney said with a smile.
When asked about other endorsements he was seeking, he said: “Everybody!
Everybody!” |
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