Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Foreign policy, polls and winning elections

Wall Street Journal

So conventional wisdom is Obama's winning (barely), and Romney is losing (he sucks as a candidate). Let's talk about why.

^{Visual source: Newseum}

Markos Moulitsas:

Indeed, the Republican Party has gone so far off the rails, voters are having a hard time fully grasping just how crazy they are. When the pro-Barack Obama super-PAC Priorities USA told a focus group that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney supported Paul Ryan's budget that ended Medicare as we know it while also pushing for more tax cuts for the rich, they refused to believe it. Those respondents simply couldn't fathom that the GOP nominee would champion something so patently ridiculous ' but Romney, like virtually every congressional Republican, has done just that. The truth is just too weird for many Americans to believe.

Trudy Rubin:

Foreign policy hasn't figured much in the presidential campaign, which is lucky for Mitt Romney.

With scant foreign policy experience, Romney has had trouble projecting himself as a statesman. His foreign policy statements have veered from vague to disturbingly hawkish.
So this week, he's off to Europe and Israel in hopes of burnishing his image as the future leader of the "free world." Unfortunately, the world Romney seeks to lead no longer exists.

Romney's foreign affairs statements have a Rip Van Winkle quality, as if he had just emerged from a sleep of two decades. His Cold War language suits the bipolar world of the 20th century, not the current era.

Ian Reifowitz:

Mitt Romney has also sought to "other" President Obama, to present him as "not American" on a number of other occasions throughout this campaign. He did it on Dec. 7, 2011, and on Jan. 2, 2012.

Once could be a mistake. Twice (or more) is a pattern. The Romney campaign has clearly made a strategic decision to characterize Obama as "foreign." Yes, they can say they are talking about his "ideas," but that's a distinction without a difference. The decisions he makes as president flow from his ideas. Romney is saying that Obama's presidency would be "foreign." There can be no question about that.

WSJ:

American voters are growing more polarized and locked in their views as they witness a presidential campaign that is boosting negative feelings about both candidates, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday shows.

The poll also finds a resurgence of anxiety about the economy as job growth has slowed, though President Barack Obama maintains his edge on several fronts despite that. Half of registered voters feel less optimistic about the direction of the economy, with just 27% predicting the economy would improve over the next year'a sharp drop in optimism from recent months.

Still, coming in the wake of several weeks of intense TV campaign advertising, much of it negative, the poll of 1,000 registered voters found Mr. Obama leading his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, 49% to 43%, a gap mirrored precisely in four other Journal/NBC polls over the last year. The poll, conducted July 18-22, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Negative ads are hurting both, but hurting Romney more. All that crap about Bain not hurting Romney? Nonsense.  Obama has defined him before he could define himself. OTOH, only 8% of the voters are in play in this poll, everyone else is already locked in. That doesn't leave Romney with a lot of room to grow.

Gallup:

Obama's Character Edge Offsets Romney's Economic Advantage

Americans tend to see Mitt Romney as better able to handle key issues than President Obama is, particularly those relating to the economy. However, Americans give Obama the edge on most character dimensions, especially basic likability.

Maureen Dowd:

So far, Mitt's casting a shadowy silhouette, hiding his fortune in foreign tax havens, hiding tax returns, destroying and hiding records as head of the Olympics and as governor, hiding a specific sense of where he would take the country.

Americans don't want to play hide-and-seek with their presidential candidates. Romney should listen to himself: The time for stonewalling is over.