With time dwindling for him to gain an edge in the presidential race and with an outbreak of finger-pointing signaling trouble in his campaign, Mitt Romney plans to begin an offensive this week, his aides said, seeking to give voters a clearer picture of where he wants to take the country.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
JOURNEY'S START Susan Hepworth, a member of Mitt Romney's campaign staff, checked her messages on Sunday before Mr. Romney left Massachusetts to head to Los Angeles.
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Amid a clamor of calls from prominent Republicans for Mr. Romney to offer a major policy address to answer voters' continued questions about his plans, his aides said he would present a series of speeches, television commercials and events promoting his five-point economic policy, even as he concentrates on his next big chance to change the race: the debates.
In an interview, Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser, said that in the coming days the campaign would be "very future oriented" about "what a vote for Romney would result in."
But the discussion of the new tack came as Mr. Romney's campaign was contending with a report in Politico on Sunday night that his campaign was divided over the dominant role of his chief strategist, Stuart Stevens.
In interviews on Sunday night, others close to the campaign said Mr. Stevens's domineering style had at times rankled his colleagues. Campaign aides had also begun grumbling about Mr. Stevens's role in debate practice sessions; they said he frequently interrupted and offered rambling monologues.
But none questioned that Mr. Stevens remains very close to — and trusted by — Mr. Romney himself. And one senior adviser, who would discuss the internal workings of the campaign only on the condition of anonymity, dismissed the criticism of Mr. Stevens as coming from outsiders.
"In the inner circle of this campaign, the people who are on the phone calls and really making the decisions, there's not infighting, there just isn't," the adviser said.
Other aides expressed concern that the reports of internal discord would erroneously send the signal of a campaign in trouble when, in fact, Mr. Romney remains close to President Obama in polls.
But the Politico report and separate interviews suggested that Republicans were concerned that Mr. Romney has yet to provide voters with a clear rationale for why choosing him would be an improvement over Mr. Obama.
The new plan to re-emphasize policy proposals that Mr. Romney introduced last month — promising "energy independence" by 2020 and 12 million new jobs — is a tacit admission by his campaign that he has yet to flesh out the "hire Romney" part of his fire Obama/hire Romney argument. Some aides expressed relief that the campaign was moving to do so.
The offensive comes after a succession of polls showing Mr. Obama emerging from the party conventions with an edge over Mr. Romney and a modest rise in enthusiasm among registered voters about the direction of the country, despite continued economic uncertainty.
Those survey results — combined with complaints that Mr. Romney mishandled his initial criticism of the administration's response to the attacks on United States diplomatic outposts in Egypt and Libya last week — have caused anxiety among some of Mr. Romney's donors and helped fuel "Is Romney losing?" questions on the Sunday morning interview shows.
As Mr. Romney spent part of his Sunday preparing for the debates, his advisers dismissed concerns about his candidacy as misguided conventional wisdom confined to Washington.
While most post-convention polls have shown that Mr. Obama got a lift among all registered voters after his nomination in Charlotte, N.C., they also showed that his edge was not statistically significant among those most likely to vote in November, making the race effectively a tie.
Talk of infighting within the Romney headquarters in Boston has been percolating for months, but the report in Politico on Sunday drew new attention to the pressure facing the campaign. It also raised questions about Mr. Romney's management of the campaign, but Republicans close to the operation say it is not Mr. Romney's style to dismiss any of his advisers.
By MONICA DAVEY and STEVEN YACCINO 17 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/politics/mitt-romney-seeks-to-turn-campaign-focus-to-his-plans.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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