Mitt Romney struck a surprisingly moderate note in an otherwise “severely” conservative primary fight this week, lamenting that he had problems with the right-wing base because he won’t “light [his] hair on fire” with incendiary anti-Obama rhetoric like his competitors. But Romney’s self-diagnosis is slightly off: He’s tried to get tough with Obama plenty, just with little success.Democrats who talked to TPM smacked their forehead at the line. After all, Romney’s signature move for the first six months of the presidential race was to ignore his rivals in favor of going after the president. And he’s certainly been happy to allude to some of the darker anti-Obama themes on the right, if more carefully than others.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=100925