Two fresh, brief videos released by the Romney camp are united in their simplicity. The first Simple Simon video states that jobless rate goes to 8.3% in midyear of the third year of putative recovery. This is a fact. Also, jobless rates are higher now in most all of the US cities than a year ago. Another grim fact. OFA spends its cash on painting Mitt Romney as a villainous tax-dodger who once upon a time sold American jobs to the Chinese – a charge that does nothing to answer why the jobless rate is climbing again under the Obama administration.
Mitt Romney greets the crowd after he visited the Western Wall, rear, in Jerusalem. (Photo: AP Photo | Date: Jul. 29, 2012)
Romney in Jerusalem
The second simple video illustrates the matter of fact statement by Candidate Romney during his recent stop that “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.” OFA cannot counter, because OFA knows that Candidate Obama chooses to hedge on Jerusalem as he chooses to hedge about Israel. Also there is the peculiar detail for an American president that Candidate Obama has not visited Israel since his election – another simple fact that OFA cannot counter.
What Use Simple Simon?
The audience for these two videos is the undecided who voted for Candidate Obama in 2008 on the basis of give-the-guy-a-chance. The July jobless rate is a cloud that Candidate Obama cannot lift, explain, ignore, rationalize in October during the debates. Mitt Romney’s Jerusalem visit is also a fact that Candidate Obama cannot address during the debates, and it will oblige the candidate to repeat clunky nuances of the past three years such as the candidate’s clichéd “as I’ve said…” What Simple Simon campaigning achieves is punctuation on a long-running debate. The statement ends in a period, not a colon, question mark or exclamation mark. Period. In the closing arguments of the Romney campaign, these two themes will stand like harbingers.