"Romney's Heavy August" - Dan Balz WP

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romneys-heavy-august-workload/2012/08/04/39b5606c-dda1-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html

The best that can be said about how Mitt Romney fared in July is that he survived. That has only raised the stakes for what the presumptive Republican presidential nominee needs to do in August.

July was not a good month for Romney. His foreign trip drew extensive and negative news coverage, although there were also some pluses, and it’s not clear in any case that it will have any real impact in November. Back home, due to the daily combat between his and President Obama’s campaigns, Romney sustained some damage.

Overall, the head-to-head polls have moved little since the end of June. Obama holds a small but hardly comfortable lead. But the evidence that Romney has been hurt nonetheless came late last week in a poll by the Pew Research Center. Pew found that voters have a more negative impression of the GOP presidential candidate than they did only a month earlier.

Romney’s image has long been a problem, dating back to the nomination contest. As he fought off one after another of his rivals, and as they went after him, the public saw him in increasingly negative terms, despite the fact that he was winning."

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