Republicans fret about Mitt Romney's persistent negativity

Mitt's attacks making Republicans sad? This is one gem of a quote from today's New York Times article on Republicans who are worried Mitt Romney has been too negative and want him to go positive:

'Mitt Romney has to come up with a plan and policy and principles that people can rally around,' said Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a strong supporter of Mr. Romney who said it was 'fair game' to point out differences with the president. 'It can't just be negativity.'

If Republicans wanted a candidate who would run a positive campaign, they picked the wrong guy. Case in point: he spent more than $100 million winning the Republican nomination, and more than 95 percent of his ads were attacks on fellow Republicans.

But the issue here isn't just Romney's slash and burn style: it's that the conservative economic agenda really doesn't lend itself to a positive campaign. The whole conservative thesis is that Barack Obama's presidency is destroying America because he's a European-style communist dictator. (Never mind the fact that Europe is in recession because it's following the austerian policies the right wants America to embrace.)

To conservatives, the only way to save America is to reject Barack Obama. That's a negative message, to it's core. The only way to talk about it in semi-positive terms is for them to say that government must get out of the way. But even that isn't really a positive agenda. And even if it were, Romney's embraced it time and again. His basic plan is to cut taxes, slash regulations, and shrink government. Romney wants to effectively end Medicare, he wants to turn Social Security into a welfare program, and he supports austerian policies that would force us to stop investing public funds in our infrastructure.

It takes a special kind of politician to make all that sound like something positive, especially when you're also arguing that the Obama Armageddon is right around the corner'and Romney isn't that kind of a politician. Perhaps he'll decide to flip-flop and re-embrace the notion that government can actually have a positive impact on economic growth, but if he does that, he'll run into a different problem'namely, his credibility, and specifically his lack thereof. So he's in a bit of trap right now and aside from hoping the economy tanks, he probably isn't quite sure what he should do.