Could Romney's handlers write a BETTER SCRIPT than for FR to "attack Romney from the right"?

[Faryn Balyncd]

7. That would be quite a stretch, as you say.....

And conspiracy theories are almost always a caricature of reality.

These candidates probably could not work together in an intentionally coordinated fashion if they wanted to.




But it does seen that the only way the 2012 Republican nominating charade makes any sense, from the Republican perspective, is as a process which repeatedly attempted to move the parameters of public debate further and further to the right, and falsely portraying Romney as a "moderate".

For many of the various challengers to Romney, there was the more personal reality that their actions raised their profile among their true believers, and also their financial prospects, whether by overtly paying themselves from campaign coffers (a la Newt) or by padding their resume for the professional right wing author/pundit/Fox "News" commentator.

The changes in campaign financing have created a toxic environment in which it can be profitable for politicians in this fashion (not just in the fashioned corruption of being in bed with lobbyists, then becoming one after office).

In this environment, the specific political goals of the deep pockets like Adelson may not totally translucent, but both the deep pockets and the candidates probably view that it is to their advantage to take ever more extreme positions, and that they may view that on the rhetorical wedge issues they are "pushing Romney to the right" (which, on the SUBSTANTIAL real issues he could not be more RW than he is). On some level all the players probably realize (even if Frank Luntz hasn't explicitly spelled it out in one of his periodic talking point briefings) that falsely "smearing" Romney as a "moderate" actually helps Romney in the general election.

The result is that these folks function as a grand choir. (but to view it as a conscious "conspiracy" I would agree would be a stretch.)