On this weekend’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week,” Washington Post columnist George Will explained what he foresees the Obama campaign doing at its convention this weekend in Charlotte, N.C.
“I think he runs at his opponents now,” Will said. “He’s got the opponents he says he wants. He has presented himself as the first president in history to ever inherit from his predecessor an imperfect world, so he has this kind of comprehensive alibi. Judging from his campaign to date and his list of convention speakers, I think he’s going to make six arguments for a second term.”
According to Will, the president will present a list of six arguments for his re-election, ranging from class warfare arguments to social issue arguments.
“They’re very quick,” Will said. “First is ‘Mitt Romney is rich.’ Second, ‘We need a serious vice president’ — Joe Biden instead of Paul Ryan. Third, ‘Republicans hate women.’ Fourth, the only woman they don’t hate is Ayn Rand and she’s dead and she wrote bad novels. [Fifth], something must be done to prevent Sandra Fluke from paying for her own contraception and all will be well. Sixth — and finally — ‘All will be well if I can raise by 4.64 points the top income rate on fewer than 3 percent of American people.'”
“That’s it so far as I can tell.”
Will called those messages “backward looking,” saying that Romney should counter that by reminding Americans that Obama presides over a fundamentally liberal party.
“The Democrats’ idea is that programs 77 and 47 years old — Social Security and Medicare — don’t need to change at all, ever. The world has changed. Our demography has changed [but] we can’t end any of them ‘as we know it.’ I think what Mr. Romney has do is say that they have a fundamentally reactionary liberalism party, and we will change to suit a changed country.”
