Romney Silent on Issues Because He Thinks it Will Help Him Win

David Streeter — June 25, 2012 – 3:03 pm | Domestic Policy | Election 2012 | Mitt Romney Comments (0) Add a comment

Politico reported that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is deliberately remaining vague and silent on a number of key policy issues because he thinks his answers “will undermine his chances to win.” According to Politico:

Vague, general or downright evasive policy prescriptions on some of the most important issues facing the country are becoming the rule for Romney. Hoping to make the campaign strictly a referendum on the incumbent, the hyper-cautious challenger is open about his determination to not give any fodder to Obama aides hungry to make the race as much about Romney as the president.

Romney is remarkably candid, almost as though he’s reading the stage directions, about why he won’t offer up details: he thinks it will undermine his chances to win.

‘The media kept saying to Chris, “Come on, give us the details, give us the details,”’ Romney has said about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s 2009 gubernatorial race. ‘We want to hang you with them.’

It’s a lesson the former Massachusetts governor said he took from his first, painful foray into electoral politics in 1994.

‘One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don’t care about education,’ Romney told the Weekly Standard this spring.

That’s not to say Romney doesn’t have plans: he suggested at an April fundraiser overheard by reporters that the departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development might be eliminated or merged with other agencies, and even said he’d pay for proposed tax cuts by eliminating the second home mortgage deduction.

But as he enters the heat of this year’s campaign, Romney is testing just how far he can go in not telling voters what policies he’d pursue in the White House.

Romney’s decision to stay silent may be justified: recent polling demonstrated that the more American Jews get to know the “severely conservative” Mitt Romney, the less they like him.

Click here to read Politico’s full article.

Click here to view Think Progress’ rundown of the top eight issues on which Romney refuses to take a position. 

 

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