Inside Team Romney's Plans To Win

Townhall ^ | September 18, 2012 | Guy Benson

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“It isn’t slipping away,” Romney’s Political Director Rich Beeson says emphatically – on the cusp of mild-mannered exasperation – when the media’s doomsday narrative is first broached. A Colorado native and a major player on the successful Bush/Cheney re-elect effort in 2004, Beeson is even-keeled and good natured, yet his disdain for the emerging conventional wisdom that Obama has the election in the bag is palpable. Asked about rumors that Ohio is in danger of falling off the map for Romney, he shakes his head. “I’m going to push back really hard on that Ohio stuff,” he says. “There is absolutely nothing we’ve seen that has showed Ohio is remotely out of reach.” The campaign’s polling guru, Neil Newhouse, isn’t as delicate. “I’ve seen every single poll out of Ohio. My firm is also [polling] the Senate race out there. It’s baloney. I’d use stronger language if [Townhall] weren’t a family publication.”

Quizzed on Karl Rove’s “3-2-1” 2012 victory formulation, the operatives flip through a binder of at least half-a-dozen alternative victory scenarios (they underscore the point that 3-2-1 isn’t Romney’s only route), but eventually settle on the page dedicated to Rove’s calculus. Under this model, Romney would have to flip six states from blue to red to win the presidency. Of the first three – Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia – the campaign is most concerned with the Old Dominion State. “Virginia is very competitive,” Newhouse says, “I’m not going to make any news there.” The next two states are Florida and Ohio. “I feel pretty bullish on Florida,” Beeson says. “Obama’s issue metrics are really weak there, on unemployment and on foreclosures.”

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