◼ Behind his confrontational strategy: A bet that the base cares more about grit than policy, and doesn't want him to apologize for Donald Trump. “This is right out of Breitbart's playbook” - (left-wing) Buzzfeed
After a day spent waging bi-coastal combat with the Obama campaign, Mitt Romney's team in Boston earned the highest compliment Rush Limbaugh has ever paid them Thursday afternoon: "I'm telling you," he said. "This is not the McCain campaign."
Once-skeptical conservatives knew exactly what he meant....
The unapologetically aggressive tone of Romney's campaign is manifest at every turn — from his aides' fierce Twitter wars, to the candidate's surprise press conference at failed green solar company Solyndra, and the campaign's continued refusal to apologize for Donald Trump's outlandish conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate. It's all part of a deliberate — and, so far, successful — strategy aimed less at convincing undecided voters, and more at rallying the Republican Party around its candidate.
..."Time and again, he(McCain) pulled back from lines of attack that could have been productive against Obama," said Rick Wilson, who cut slashing ads for the National Republican Trust PAC, an outside group McCain denounced. "He undercut surrogates and supporters. His consulting team acted like it was wine-tasting night at the Borgia's."
"Conservatives want a fighter, and Romney's been stepping up fast on that front,” he said.
Romney aides, too, privately contrast their no-holds-barred approach to McCain apologizing for his party's rowdy base in 2008. And for now — while swing voters go on vacation, and activists stay tuned in — the campaign is welcoming the comparison to a confrontational icon of the conservative movement.
Told that conservatives were comparing Romney’s tactics to Breitbart’s, one aide responded: "Oh great, that's what we were going for."
