Is this Romney's big mistake?

Mitt Romney has gone totally negative in his campaign against Newt Gingrich. It may turn out to be the biggest mistake he has ever made in a campaign. Romney has gone out personally and called Gingrich an unsteady leader, but he did so by using words like "zany", "bomb thrower" etc. Romney actually told an audience today that Gingrich is a very wealthy man as if this was a problem, particularly when coming from a multimillionaire like Romney himself. There is no point to going through the various attacks; the key point is that Romney has made the topic sentence of his campaign a negative one and he has put his own face on the attacks.

The first question that the new negative Romney brings to mind is why the switch from steady Eddie to the new angry attack dog Mitt? Did Romney get desperate as he saw time passing and his numbers getting no better? Was it the polls from around the country that showed Mitt ahead in New Hampshire and Newt ahead everywhere else? Why would Romney risk alienating his supporters with an attack campaign before the first votes have even been cast? The truth is that there is no good answer for this high risk strategy.

I call the Romney negative onslaught a high risk move because it may well be the end of the road if it fails. Just imagine that Gingrich stays with his positive forward-looking general approach while Romney goes negative for the next three weeks. If Gingrich still wins, Romney will have nothing left to do. Oh sure, he may still eke out a win in New Hampshire, but that may be the last place he wins other than maybe Utah or Massachusetts.

The risk for Gingrich is that he gets sucked into the negativity. If he does get sucked in, he risks becoming just another of the many politicians jockeying for position. If he stays mostly positive, however, and focuses on solutions, Gingrich should be able to weather the storm. More important, all the negatives will then be out and Gingrich will be much stronger for the general election.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the new Romney strategy are Santorum and Bachmann. Santorum has been relatively positive throughout the campaign and he could pick up those who leave Newt due to attacks. Also, if Newt loses his way and joins the battle with Romney, Santorum could pick up droves of new support. Bachmann also may gain some people this way, but her strident rhetoric is not designed to draw in those who disdain negative attacks. Ron Paul is in the midst of his own negative attack fest, so he will not be helped. Paul has a maximum that he can reach, and he is already there in my opinion. That, of course, leaves Rick Perry. He may be helped, but too many folks in Iowa will remember Perry's performances in the debates. He cannot recover.