The stenographers at the Politico have a look at what they claim is the Romney general election strategy:
Mitt Romney and his top aides are building a strategy, partly by design and partly because of circumstance, around what they consider John McCain’s disastrously run campaign in 2008.
The strategy: Whatever McCain did, do the opposite.
Many of the current strategy discussions are centered on not falling into the traps McCain did: looking wobbly as a leader and weak on the economy in the final weeks of the campaign. The private discussions include ruling out any vice presidential possibilities who could be seen as even remotely risky or unprepared; wrapping the entire campaign around economic issues, knowing this topic alone will swing undecided voters in the final days; and, slowly but steadily, building up Romney as a safe and competent alternative to President Barack Obama.
McCain, according to Romney advisers, blew it on all three scores. And of the three, the most conscious effort by Romney’s team to do things differently will be in the vice presidential selection process. One Republican official familiar with the campaign’s thinking said it will be designed to produce a pick who is safe and, by design, unexciting — a deliberate anti-Palin. The prized pick, said this official: an “incredibly boring white guy.”
Two things- one of the firm beliefs in wingnut circles is that McCain lost in part because he didn’t take the gloves off. You all remember smug shitbird Michael Goldfarb babbling on CNN about Rev. Wright, and it is just the received view in the GOP ranks that they ran too clean of a campaign. Stop lauging. So expect this to become a very, very ugly campaign.
Second, they already have a boring white guy on the ticket. Do they really want another?