Two masterful strategic moves by a brilliant political operation.

[grantcart]

The President has now boxed in Romney and the Republicans in a masterful way that will be studied for years in the future.

Every since Mondale went down to a crushing defeat to Ronald Reagan it has been the fundamental rule that if you advocate for increased taxes during a campaign you will go down the same way that Mondale did, and so no one has. Number One Rule for Presidential candidates? Never talk about raising anyone's taxes.

Strategic Move One, send the Republicans that worship at the Defense Budget altar and those that worship at the Cut Tax Altar at each other's throats.

The President undermined the basic Republican mantra by providing tax relief for the poor and middle class by initiating a temporary reduction in payroll taxes. Then when the Republicans were caught over playing their hand on the debt ceiling 'crises' the President pulled back and let Bohner squirm facing a US default right in the face. He had a way out. Come to a short term agreement and establish a budget trigger that would force massive social spending and military cuts if a long term deficit agreement could not be reached.

Bohner took the short term fix, claimed he got 99% of what he wanted and now has a ticking time bomb on his lap. The Republicans worship at two altars, unlimited funding for defense and cutting taxes, especially for the rich. Now with the Bush Tax Cuts expiring the Republicans are faced with two dilemmas; 1) refuse to compromise on taxes to the rich and cause everyone's taxes to go up, and 2) refuse to come to a comprehensive budget agreement (which will include increased taxes on the rich) and see the defense budget cut by 30%.

The result of this is that the two largest competing factions of the Republican Party, the Tax Cut addicts and the Military Budget addicts will go to war against each other, Ryan vs McCain. In the end both sides will be weakened and the President will be able to forge a budget that has a significantly reduced defense budget (but reduced in a rational way) and have taxes increased on the rich.

Not only has he turned the tables on the "never talk about a tax increase" rule, he has taken it out and hits the Republicans with it every day of the campaign.

Which brings us to the second brilliant strategic move by the President.

Strategic Move Two, Make a Presidential Candidate engage in a day to day scrimmage with a non Presidential candidate.

Number two rule for Presidential candidates; don't get dragged down in fights with people who aren't presidential in stature, it brings you down, down, down.


The Republicans have put forth a candidate who not only hasn't been vetted but who refuses to be vetted, and who pays a very small percentage on taxes on an extremely large income.

So while the President is hitting the Republicans and Romney every single day with the strategic move outlined above they have added another layer.

Senator Reid (who conveniently holds the same Religion as Romney) calls Romney out, basically calling him a liar on his taxes. Romney cannot not respond, and does.

So now Romney's time is going to be consumed by a day by day school yard fight with Reid. Romney says this and Reid says that.

The problem for Romney is that for whatever Reid's good points are he is not perceived as being a very macho alpha dog, he is not Presidential. So Romney is wasting his time having to answer charges and get into a fight with a politician that simply doesn't seem that strong.


The pundits will pundit, the comedians will roast, fellow Republican politicians will, not wanting to get dragged down with you, start to criticize and tell Romney to end this fight and release his taxes. Romney who has never had much affection with the rest of the Republican Party will be increasingly seen as the guy who is not only going to lose to the President but is going to drag the party down, down, down and so there will be more distancing and more criticism,


But Romney won't end it by releasing his taxes it will continue on and on and Romney, who cannot use surrogates on the issue, will end up in a bear hug fight with the pussycat Reid while the President remains Presidential.

So often we rest on principle and let the other side out strategies us and for once we are seeing a Democratic politician use principle to use the Republicans last remaining card, cutting taxes, to out flank Romney.

It is a beautiful thing to watch.

[Marymarg]

1. Fascinating explanation

Last edited Sat Aug 4, 2012, 02:38 PM - Edit history (1)

I have always thought that President Obama brilliantly beginning his re election strategy on the day he was elected and has patiently following a carefully planned timeline. He has known exactly what he is doing, patiently biding his time, then knowing when and how to strike.
Love and so admire our President.

[cilla4progress]

5. I think you hit it on the head:

patience. IF this pans out (as it truly appears it will!) Obama will have shown that his patience during the debt crisis paid off. He let Boner out there strutting his "I got 99% of what I wanted) bs and never showed his hand!

Great poker player indeed!

I'm with you: love and admire this amazing Pres.

ALSO: imagine years to come, what he will be able to share with future Dem /progressive contenders in terms of strategy. And, as has been said, to do it without compromising basic principles. Yes, we wish he would have come out in favor of single payer (let it be in the next admin! perhaps it is in the template...), AND decriminalizing MJ, but let's hold tight for his 2nd term!

[GoCubsGo]

2. Strategic Move Two

Made easier by the fact that the republicans can dish it out, but they can't take it. As someone in another thread said last night, Ralphie just beat the crap out of Scut Farkus.

[mopinko]

3. called 'chicago style politics'. if you thought that was a bad thing,

now you know.

[pnwmom]

4. Excellent analysis, thank you! n/t

[Historic NY]

6. By Jove I think your on to something....

I would call Strategy 2 brilliant in the face of all that money.

[Pirate Smile]

7. Plus - POTUS has now turned Romney into the guy that wants to raise taxes on the middle class to pay

for tax cuts for the rich. That's going to go over real well - especially playing into Romney's tax avoidance issues.

[Schema Thing]

10. To be fair, Rmoney built that himself.

[Pirate Smile]

17. True

Heh

[LiberalFighter]

13. We need more voters to understand that lowering taxes for the rich

means their taxes will go up.

[sofa king]

8. The President has pulled off a hat trick.

In the past two years, the President has:


* Killed Osama bin Laden and ended the war in Iraq, taking national security and foreign policy completely off the debate table.

* Cut defense spending in an election year without a single Democratic vote;

* Forced Republicans to effectively vote for raising taxes on 97% of voters in an election year;

* Given virtually all Democratic voters a monetary incentive to register and vote;

* Given virtually all Republican voters a monetary incentive to vote all-Democratic or not vote at all.

President Obama is already the finest American politician I have ever seen in my lifetime, and if he gets another four years, he will certainly prove to be one of the greatest of this century and the last one.

The secret of President Obama's greatness is his ability to identify the moral and ideological flaws in his opponents, and then use those against them to get what he wants. And he has done it all while remaining personally and professionally unassailable.

[Tumbulu]

49. excellent- you should make this an OP

as more people need to see it.

[midnight armadillo]

60. And he's even managed to execute Americans with impunity!

Truly, Obama's accomplishments in the national security and foreign policy realm are breathtaking. Imagine what he'll do next.

[cheezmaka]

61. Very well said...

couldn't have said it better myself!

[vinny9698]

9. Team Obama started running for reelection day one.

They have been preparing for Romney since then and have all the research to do an excellent job in derailing the GOP tea party

[Denninmi]

11. I hope your theory is right.

I'd like it to be right. And Obama seems to be a quiet, low key, but brilliant player when it comes to the three dimensional chess of politics.

I have heard the alternate theory floated that the tax return release issue is a Karl Rove style Trojan horse a la what they did to Dan Rather with the Bush II National Guard records. I don't think that this is likely, but I guess it's plausable. I like you theory better, that Rmoney is buried in shit over his tax returns up to his eyebrows.

[coalition_unwilling]

27. I might have bought the Rove trap, were it only Reid saying his source had high credibility. But

when Dana Bash also vouches for that source's high credibility, it seems less like a trap and more like Romney's arrogance did him in with someone who knows and who is seriously pissed off.

[dballance]

34. Wonder if it's John Huntsman?

He seems to detest Romney as much as I do.

[coalition_unwilling]

40. I don't know how Huntsman would be in a position to know, though. But I agree that

he is no big fan of the living, breathing Gospel of Mammon.

[jerseyjack]

12. The better strategy would have been to hold off on the income tax return strategy until Oct.

If Mitt does release the returns now, the whole thing will blow over as soon as Dancin' With The Stars and NFL gets on the tube.

Their eyes will glaze over and the response will be, "What about the taxes? He filed them didn't he?"

If this issue had been brought out in early Oct., it would still be fresh in their heads in November. Now, it will be a boring topic and soon forgotten by those who understood it in the first place.

[speedoo]

14. That is just nonsense.

You incorrectly assume that Obama and his people don't know what is in Romney's tax returns.

They do, and they know that should Romney release those returns, they will be able to attack Romney on them, non-stop.

So Romney is screwed, whether or not he releases the returns.

[Amonester]

15. Yeah, but there is definitely 'some thing($)' in there that's not going to go well for willaRd...

if he releases them (which he won't).

He's hidding some thing($).

[JDPriestly]

16. Mitt has consistently refused to release his tax returns.

He has done this in election after election. Watch the Rachel Maddow video. I think that the Ed Schultz show also has a segment on this.

There is something he is hiding and has hidden. It may have to do with something as simple as lying about his residence when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. It may be as complex as his off-shore investments and tax shelters or as mundane as an embarrassingly excessive use of tax loopholes.

Perhaps he has sustained some losses in certain years.

Less likely -- he deducts gambling losses or owns an interest in some unsavory or questionable businesses that he would not like the religious right to know about.

But he is not just suddenly hiding something. Whatever it is, he has been hiding it for years. I don't think they will stop with Mitt's returns. There will also be demands for Ann's returns -- because Romney demanded that his female opponent show her husband's returns. There is a precedent for this. Geraldine Ferraro was terribly embarrassed when financial information about her husband's connections came out.

[left on green only]

52. I wonder all of the time how many of the people who work in the IRS have seen his taxes?

Has that possibility ever occurred to you? Doesn't that branch of the government ever have "leaks" to the press, or wherever?

The other thing that I wonder about is unless Preibus has seen the Rit's tax filings (slim chance to none), how can he pretend to know that Harry R. is lying? I would have thought that any news journalist who ever made it past junior college would have figured that one out. Why is anybody even listening to what he has to say?

[JDPriestly]

58. Also, there is no upside to Reid of saying something untrue about this.

No gain whatsoever should it be discovered that Romney did pay his income taxes.

It's really up to Romney to prove up or shut up. I would not be surprised if Romney dropped out of the race over this.

Why he thought he could run in the first place is beyond me.

[left on green only]

59. Interesting is your thinking that Romney would drop out over this....

....because it closely parallels a thought of my own concerning the possibility that his own party might disown him at their convention. In either case, do you suppose that any other candidate that they could come up with this late in the game could stand a chance of coming even close to Romney's (thus far) success against President Obama?

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, can you imagine Wall St. joining forces with the tea party at the convention and coming up with a Ross Perot/Sarah Palin ticket?

I think I'm going to try and sell that one to Jon Stewart.

[cheezmaka]

62. Several including his Accountant

but I'm sure Romney has already PAID them off already...

[mwb970]

57. Someone suggested that he "under-tithed" to the Mormons.

Kind of like the way he stiffed the country that allowed him to get filthy rich by avoiding every imaginable tax that would allow him to "pay us back".

By keeping his financial past a secret, while running on it, Romney ensures that the speculation on "what's in there" will never end.

Ironically, Romney could end the controversy in a flash by simply releasing his tax returns!

[magical thyme]

20. Romney has a long history of refusing to release tax returns

even while demanding them of his opponent. Check the Mass governor race back in '02.

Ann wasn't joking when she said that "you people" have seen all you need. They have no intention of releasing taxes. Not his and not hers. Not ever.

[coalition_unwilling]

28. Nah, I disagree. The time to brand your opponent - in this case, as a shifty-eyed crook - is

before the Conventions. October doesn't give the branding time to 'set.'

Every day that goes by with Romney not releasing his returns sets that brand - shifty-eyed crook - even more firmly.

[CTyankee]

31. I agree. Get the branding done and repeat it over and over again so it is really, really

set in the voters minds before Election Day. Impressions made in late spring or early summer and reinforced again and again have a wearing effect. Besides, this is a branding that cannot be defended against. Mitt looks worse and worse as time goes on...

[dougolat]

51. It's working: saw a sign "Romney for Cayman Islands President"

(but certainly not the USA)
It makes the Palin self sabotage look like a warm-up.

[grantcart]

33. Besides the other points brought up is that end of the campaign ad space in swing areas is basically

all sold out so you might not be able to place the ads when you want to.


But there is a mcuh more basic political principle at stake and that is the sooner a person is defined in basic negative terms the more the cascade builds on him. Late night comedians, pundits, media all start to reinforce each other, part of Gore's problem, he didn't get on top of a bunch of stupid negative shit soon enough.

[NYC Liberal]

41. If he does release them, it will be FAR more damaging.

That much is clear.

If releasing them were less damaging than not, he would have done it a long time ago. He and his advisors did the calculations. They did the math.

[Herlong]

18. October Surprise

Romney sees all the cards on the table. What does he know that you don't know?

[magical thyme]

21. He knows what's in his tax returns

and he knows that it may be legal (now, post-09 amnesty) but it is not pretty.

He knows that he pulled off the refusal to show his taxes in the Mass governor race even when his opponent did, even while demanding that her *husband* also release his taxes. And, like most people, he expected the same tactics to work a second time around. People don't learn from successes nearly so much as failures.

He knows that "you people" have seen all you need to see.

He knows that Dems traditionally roll over and die in front of GOP bluster.

He knows that the GOP traditionally gets out in front with painting their opponent and deciding the narrative.

Unfortunately, everything that he "knows," has changed.

[rocktivity]

19. DING DING DING! Grantcart, you're our grand prize winner!

Senator Reid...calls Romney out, basically calling him a liar on his taxes...(N)ow Romney's time is going to be consumed by a day-by-day school yard fight...

The problem for Romney is that...Reid...is not perceived as being a very macho alpha dog, he is not Presidential. So Romney is wasting his time having to answer charges and get into a fight with a politician that simply doesn't seem that strong...

But "not seeming that strong" has always been Reid's stock-in-trade.

Reid has never had me fooled -- I "called him out" six years ago, and right here on DU:

There seems to be much more to Reid than meets the eye. And I'm seeing that his nerdy, unimposing, milquetoast demeanor is a velvet glove disguising an iron first...(H)e's as mousy as a tiger!

Now I'm supposed to believe that Reid's accusation is a well-intentioned but poorly-strategized partisan attack at best, and a potentially self-destructive "senior moment" at worst? Of course he has an ulterior motive, and of course he isn't doing this without Obama's blessing. But WHY Reid -- why was HE tasked with this mission?

What you said.


rocktivity

[magical thyme]

22. plus Reid is a fellow Mormon. nt

[grantcart]

35. icing meet cake

[pkdu]

46. I have a hunch re using Reid as the messenger....

It's an open hint that the big gotcha in the tax returns is he didn't give full tithe to the Mormon Church during those years. In his position , that's untenable within LDS. Yes , all the loopholes and offshore accounts wil be embarrassing , but the lack of full tithe will get him "defrocked" (so to speak)

[dougolat]

53. As for Church doctrine,

both the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price are quite adamant about wealth and selfishness.

[bemildred]

23. +1

The Reid move in particular is scintillating.

[Herlong]

24. Thinking of an October Surprise

Keeping the Reid media meme going until October and then using all their millions or billions in resources to win this election, by releasing enough financial background to damn Harry Reid thus making Harry Reid the Dan Rather AFTER OCTOBER, because after all, real world voters are only on point after labor day, even Harry Reid, Dan Rather and Willard Romney know this much.

[underpants]

25. Great post! Why the devotion to military spending? 1. image 2. money

Image
"God, Guns, and Gays" Lee Atwter infamiously put it back in the 80's. Along with that Reagan supposedly brought the pride in and of the military post-Vietnam.
They have branded themselves THE party of the military.

Money
Look at where all the major military bases are - the South.

[patrice]

32. "Why the devotion?" In non-combat positions at the Pentagon, it's BRIBERY that runs the revolving

revolving door between MIC and the Military and, now, including also war profiteers, private armies, and security corps.

[dougolat]

54. Absolutely

Truman was the last one to rein them in, back when he was in Congress.

[madrchsod]

26. the republicans rejected jon huntsman

he`s the only guy who would have given obama a run for his money.

who knows? huntsman may run in 4 years

[coalition_unwilling]

29. Huckabee might also have given Obama a serious run for his money. He has

a good sense of humor and knows his Bible (all of it, not just Leviticus) and can thus make a plausible case for 'compassionate conservatism'.

He was the one I was most afraid of in 2008.

Agree with you that Huntsman would have been a serious contender.

[rocktivity]

36. Why do you think one of the first things Obama did as President

was outsource Huntsman to China?


rocktivity

[patrice]

30. Meanwhile, more & more people are thinking, "FOREIGN accounts? WTF??? W - H - Y????"

[lillypaddle]

37. Brilliant OP

[grantcart]

38. Thank you

[intersectionality]

39. If move one works out

it'll be one of the best long-game strategies ever played by a pres against a lame ass congress. Lots of things had to fall into place (mainly, the Reps not growing a brain cell for an entire year), and so I really had my doubts about employing the strategy. I am interested to see how this will play out, or if it gets shuffled under the table using some other short-term strategy. Maybe they're counting on the courts?

[ThisThreadIsSatire]

42. Insightful analysis...

... as always.

I also like that the President is tying the tax issue more personally to Romney -- pointing out that while he proposes cutting all 'tax rates', he would also eliminate deductions disproportionately favoring the wealthy over the middle class.

"He wants you to pay more so that people like him get a $250,000 tax cut..."

[bucolic_frolic]

43. Reince has called Harry Reid a Dirty Liar

Trying box his way out of the corner

But even that begs THE THE THE THE question:

Why won't rMoney release his tax returns.

If Harry is Lying, that would end the issue right there.

Or make Harry Reid into an Outstanding Truth Teller.

Which is why Mitt will never release his taxes.

[maindawg]

44. The president gives them just enough rope

with which to hang themselves, every time.but we are so screwed anyway, I have little hope.
Watching them tear Romney apart is amusing. The R are out of tricks for the moment. They have nothing but rediculess social issues that have been long well worn foibles.They have the rubes and the tea people. It almost like shooting fiish in a barrel. So what is their endgame ? Just what are they standing upon? I know they punted in 2008 after W they had too. Are they punting again? Or are they actually scraping the bottom of the barrel?
Could it be, that they cant allow a John Huntsman to become the president because he wont be a puppet? I do not believe mike Huckabee could win anything. His game is full of holes. Its getting dam near impossible to run on fear nowadays.Its getting dam near impossible to find any dirt for Karl to weave his evil magic. No one is listening to the hate radio guys save their clones.So what is left?

[grantcart]

45. Speaking of Rope, the Limbaugh 9000 is almost worn out.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/grantcart/176

[nradisic]

47. very well put...

Obama is playing a 3 level game of chess and the Republicans still think its a game of checkers...

[Kteachums]

48. Brilliant is our Prez.!

The first day I saw him give a speech I knew that man would someday be our President. In the last four years I have never doubted the brilliant mind of this man. We just need to keep him safe and away from those wishing to do him harm in so many ways. The recent killings both in the theater and in the churches are sad. I remember a time in the 60's when this stuff was playing itself out on our beloved leaders. It seems like the opponents want to stop at nothing to bring him down. When they see they cannot defeat him one way they may try another. God protect our President!

[Paka]

55. Amen to that!

I too, stood up and took notice when I first heard him speak at the convention in 2004. I said to myself, I want that man to be my President, and I want him to keep on being my President for another FOUR years.

Welcome to DU.

[cheezmaka]

63. Amen!

I agree...

[cliffordu]

50. Great analysis. K&R.

[mwb970]

56. Romney's lucky the Olympics are still going on.

Once they are finally over the news media will return to reporting political news and Romney will have another in a series of Bad Months.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

64. Round 2