I think it’s funny that Mitt Romney’s cynicism bit him in the ass last night. For the first time, I watched a debate on CNN so I could watch the moment-to-moment reaction of their survey group. Every time that Romney said something bellicose the audience reacted negatively, which seemed to vindicate his overall strategy of backtracking on all his tough talk on foreign policy. But that was an effort to win a bunch of small skirmishes that caused him to lose the war.
The segment of the population who actually knows what Romney has been saying about Iran and Pakistan and Israel and Iraq and Egypt and Libya noticed that Romney was flip-flopping and changing his positions. Those who didn’t know his record noticed that he was basically endorsing and approving of Obama’s policies.
I’ve seen analysis that Romney was debating like he had a lead. It may have seemed that way, but he doesn’t have a lead and he never has had a lead. And that’s not what he was thinking. He was thinking that the foreign policies he has been espousing poll very badly and that Joe Biden exposed that in his debate with Paul Ryan. It’s not that Romney thought he could coast to victory. It’s that he had nothing to say that could possibly help his cause.
But, here’s the thing. Romney would have been better off espousing unpopular opinions in a confident manner than he was in jettisoning his whole foreign policy critique and looking weak as a result. He should have learned that from his success in the first debate in which he lost on substance but won by being the more dominant personality.