Romney for reasons known only to him believes obama is a nice guy who is in over his head.
Now, if obama were a conservative Romney would eviscerate him.
>>Romney for reasons known only to him believes obama is a nice guy who is in over his head. Now, if obama were a conservative Romney would eviscerate him.<<
No, if people didn’t already know Obama, and hadn’t already voted for or against him in the past, then Romney should go negative and “eviscerate him.”
However, people who will never vote for Obama know exactly why they will never do so. What “he’s a nice guy, but...” ads are going after are the voters who has already voted once for Obama (and remember, that’s a majority of voters in most of the swing states) and have to be convinced that while their previous vote was understandable, they now need to reassess the situation and vote against Obama.
You don’t accomplish this by trying to convince them that they were idiots the first time they voted, regardless whether that’s your personal opinion of them. You accomplish it by pointing out how the policies he’s advocated are not working, and it’s time to vote in someone who will try a different policy tack. The swing voters they’re going for don’t have a clue whether Romney’s preferred policies will work, just like they didn’t have a clue whether Obama’s would. Not everyone is an economist, after all.
They’re just looking for someone they can trust to put in charge of the country, and you would be surprised at how many of those people in the middle are completely turned off by someone going negative. They don’t understand, or care about, the policy details; they just don’t want someone who’s always tearing people down to be their candidate, and too much negative campaigning will lose their votes.