Shannon O'Brien: 'Make Or Break Night for Mitt'
Democrat who debated Romney in 2002 says Barack Obama must be on his toes tonight.
Mitt Romney's been down in the polls before, says Shannon O'Brien, the former Massachusetts state treasurer who battled him for governor in 2002. "I've seen him turn things around."
O'Brien is referring to their 2002 debate, which was seen as a springboard for the millionaire businessman. Romney has since sparred in numerous GOP debates, in 2008 and 2012, and has smoothed out some of that stiff Romney from yesteryear, she says in an interview with Patch.
His is a familiar strategy, says O'Brien, who now owns a consulting business in Boston:
- Spend a ton of money on TV attack ads.
- Target "punch lines" in a debate to crystallize said attacks.
Those punch lines she refers to are the supposed "zingers" Romney is reported to have rehearsed over the past month. How many will he fire off? And how well will the sitting president fend them off?
Obama has to be ready to parry or counter any of these attack lines, according to O'Brien. He has to be concise, stick to the issues, and present a vision for the country.
O'Brien recalls Romney, in their critical 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial debate, showed a "lack of empathy," including declining to say something nice about his opponent when asked by the moderator. In one exchange, Romney also chided his opponent for being "unbecoming." Their final debate also included an O'Brien joke that went over flat: "Would you like to see my tattoo?"
It's an opportune time for both candidates. Many Americans are only now starting to pay attention to the race. And O'Brien says people are only now starting to swing to Obama on the economy. Remember that secret taping of Romney, the one in which he remarks about 47 percent of the country? Expect to hear that tonight, too.
O'Brien calls it "the gift that Mitt Romney gave to Barack Obama."
And what about Romney, her old political foe?
"I think it is a make or break night for Mitt Romney," she says. "I think he's got to hit it out of the park."
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Bob Tak
2:35 pm on Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Reagan was a president who went from an actor to a politician. Obama is a politican who has become an actor. He has successfully learned how to play to multiple audience types. Through his diverse performances to the minorities, unions, an undefined middle class, college age students, women, moslems, the far left he has built a foundation large enough to win the election. He has disenfranchised businesses of all sizes, world leaders, anyone not in his defined middle class, conservatives but they aren't large enough to win. So Romney has 4 choices: 1) play into Obama's foundation to try and capture some of it; 2) pray that the turnout of the Obama base is low; 3) pray that the disenfrachised base turnout is heavy; 4) strengthen his base by getting more independants.
What concerns me more is that a person's foundation as a child tends to play a large roll in their actions as an adult. Obama's birth father and mother were both radicals, anti-America, anti-capitalist, pro left wing (some even suggest communist), His birth father died hitting a tree with his car in Africa, his Mom walked awy from him as a child. He was raised by his moderate grandmother and step father. He has a void in his life that he wants to heal. It is healing it by adding 10 trillion to our debt and will add another 10 trillion if re-elected because as an anti-colonialist he wants the supremecy of the US to be reduce to that of Greece, Spain, England and other traditonal colonialist countries.