It appears that David Axlerod and David Plouffe have out-gunned Romney's campaign team so far. Here's why I say this.
Just as Romney tied up the Republican nominee, the Obama team in Chicago went on the attack over hiss "Severe Conservative" declaration. Romney said this in the Primary campaign and he took positions that the TEA party would embrace (immigration, abortion, gay marriage, similar prescription as the Bush low-tax, minimal-regulation, etc.). For the general election campaign Romney tried to shift to a moderate stance and the Obama team kept up the "war-on-women" and medicare cuts issues and the balanced approach to deficits. The Romney team capitulated after this late Spring/early summer attack and now he's made a decision to not invite the likes of Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum.
The next phase of the attack, and especially in the Swing States (the 4 South-west heavily Hispanic States, the mid-west Iowa/Ohio and Pennsylvania, the North Carolina/Florida South), was to hammer Romney on his credentials as a CEO who knows how to create jobs. While Romney spends his millions and his Super PACs spend their hundreds of million on Obama as a lost cause, we have witnessed a barrage of Bain attacks that is reminiscent of the Kerry swift-boating and Dukakis's Willie Horton types attack. GOP strategists have already begun to see the wisdom of the dollar spent defining your opponent in the summer as a better return than a dollar spent in the fall. They've resigned themselves to the Bain stuff as being bigger than Obama's economic performance. They've even begun to think 2016. You have to hear it from the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Ann-Coulter and Laura Ingram, etc. and you see them giving up on 2012. Don't forget that the Bush folks saw what the Obama machinery did to McCain in 2008. That's a team that come to fight and will make Karl Rove look like a choir boy.
The Obama team is going to engage Romney in an area he wants to avoid - the Massachusetts Governorship record. Then they will execute the coup-de-grace, Obama's likability after the debates. Watch out how Obama pummels his fellow Harvard Alumni in the fall debates. A trump card taken away has been gas prices. Soon the economy trajectory may not look so bad for Obama in the Fall. The key to 2012 though is the ground game - the chase for the magical 270 Electoral votes. Obama looks in good shape.
