Tagg Gets Credit for Revealing the 'Real' Romney
How to push back against the Obama campaign's claim that the moderate Mitt Romney of the first presidential debate was a new, inauthentic Mitt Romney? Suggest that Moderate Mitt is really the old, authentic Mitt -- and that he was only revealed after his eldest son and wife fought back against the political consultants who constrained him. Many conservatives demanded Romney's top strategist, Stuart Stevens, be fired after the campaign struggled in September, and how Stevens has been "fenced in," Politico's Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report. "Tagg Romney, channeling his mother's wishes, is taking a much more active role in how the campaign is run." Ann has demanded her husband be humanized, and her son is cutting through all the bad consultant advice, Politico says:
"Romney gets buffeted by all this advice because Romney takes everybody seriously," the family friend said. "He thinks, 'Well, gee, I'm talking to businessman X or C or Y. They're really smart. That's something I need to factor into my thinking.' Tagg has been aggressive in saying: 'There's no more factoring stuff in. Your thinking is yours. Be who you are! And you've got to communicate that to people, and don’t be embarrassed by it.'"
Tagg has been making the case for his dad's authenticity in local news since the debates. "I had one hope for that debate and that was that my dad would be himself and have people see, one, how confident he is, and, two, how caring he is," Tagg told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Bill Glauber last week. In the debates, "people will get to hear the real Mitt Romney—to hear what he stands for and what he believes in," Tagg told local reporters in Janesville, Wisconsin. The more moderate Mitt is not the result of focus groups or consultants' advice, but a son's simple wish to see his real dad shine through.
