Breaking News: The Romney Campaign Really Wants to Win

                                              [photo credit: Gage Skidmore]

Unlike the lackluster 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain who inexplicably left so many issues on the table, Mitt Romney's aggressive and rapid response media team shows that the GOP candidate really wants to capture the White House in November.

Using the term "bomb thrower" is gross exaggeration, but otherwise this BuzzFeed piece seems to be generally on the mark, except it that Romney is implementing a strategy for winning the general election:

In the eyes of many on the right, John McCain's 2008 presidential bid was a disaster not because he lost, but because he refused to fight. Conservatives believe McCain bought into a liberal media narrative that personal attacks on Barack Obama were unseemly and even racist. The conservative caricature of Candidate McCain that emerged in the wake of the Republicans' defeat wasn't of an unreliable moderate — rather, it was one of an Establishment figure paralyzed by political correctness, and unwilling to go blow for blow with Obama.

But if the Vietnam veteran disappointed conservatives with his gun-shy campaign in 2008, Romney is uniting the right by playing the role of the bomb-thrower.

The unapologetically aggressive tone of Romney's campaign is manifest at every turn — from his aides' fierce Twitter wars, to the candidate's surprise press conference at failed green solar company Solyndra, and the campaign's continued refusal to apologize for Donald Trump's outlandish conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate. It's all part of a deliberate — and, so far, successful — strategy aimed less at convincing undecided voters, and more at rallying the Republican Party around its candidate.

Similarly, Byron York of the Washington Examiner writes that Team Obama misses John McCain and said so publicly:

Faced with deteriorating economic conditions and an unexpectedly aggressive Republican opponent, President Obama and his aides are expressing nostalgia for Sen. John McCain, the Republican opponent Obama defeated handily in the 2008 election...

The last week, more than any in the campaign so far, has shown Team Obama that Romney and his aides are prepared to fight as hard as needed to win in November.  The Romney-organized shouting-down [see below] of top Obama aide David Axelrod in Boston; the Romney sneak event at the old Solyndra headquarters in California; Romney's refusal to give in to Democratic demands to repudiate Trump; and Romney's determination to avoid side controversies while remaining singularly focused on the economy all revealed a candidate who has resolved to battle Obama on his own, and not Obama's, terms.  It's no wonder Obama has become nostalgic for the relatively comfortable days of 2008.

Taking a page out of the left's playbook, Romney supporters disrupt Obama campaign honcho David Axelrod's Boston press conference: