Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Romney's Mistake   [Rich Lowry]

John McIntrye makes an excellent point here. With the perspective of a week (a long time in the current cycle), it seems foolish of Romney to have gotten tangled up in a fight with Rudy Giuliani. There is only so much time and energy a candidate can devote to attacks without tarnishing himself and Romney wasted his time and energy on Rudy. His campaign allowed itself to get seduced by Rudy's national numbers into taking him on, when the most important obstacle to Romney's early-state strategy was Huckabee. Romney took his eye off the ball. Now it's going to be even more ticklish for him to try to drag down Huck in Iowa.

UPDATE

E-mail:

Rich,

I disagree. RCP was using the ARG poll which had Romney at 21% nationally. His number have hovered in the lower teens for months. Making these numbers talk with speculation of negative campaigning is silly. I could see Giuliani's number changing nationally from a combination of less national exposure and more state focus, well, plus some of his troubles with tryst gate. I have trouble believing that drawing distinctions has caused Rudy's or Mitt's number to drop.

12/04 06:00 PMShare