Defining Romney

Tax avoidance, felony, possible murder—this is the picture of Mitt Romney that Barack Obama has presented to the American people. One can point out the numerous factual errors and distortions and elisions in the portrait. One can observe, as Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades did in a fundraising e-mail issued Thursday, “This week, the Obama campaign hit a new low.” One can suggest that the race has continued to be stable and that, in the current hostile environment, to be within the margin of error is a good thing for the Republicans. And yet all of these arguments were just as applicable to the candidacy of John Kerry eight years ago as they are to Mitt Romney’s candidacy today.

If Obama loses, it will be because Mitt Romney reminded white voters without college degrees of the threat Obamacare poses to individual liberty and national solvency; of Obama’s ritual sacrifice of energy independence and economic growth on the altar of environmentalism; of the burden that future generations will bear because of Obama’s spending; of Obama’s support for a redefinition of marriage and for an amnesty of illegal immigrants. Whatever prevents Romney from pointing these things out—whether it comes from the Obama campaign or from within Romney’s high command—also prevents him from winning the presidency.