The Hill's Cameron Joseph reports on Mitt Romney's campaign stop in Northern Virginia earlier today.
Mitt Romney reframed his attacks on President Obama's foreign policy on Thursday, making a point to call the deaths of four diplomats in Libya a "tragedy" before pivoting to a critique of the defense spending cuts included in sequestration and on trade with China.
.... "Ever since FDR we've had the capacity to be engaged in two conflicts at once and he's said no, we're going to cut that back to only one conflict," the GOP presidential nominee said of his rival.
Meanwhile, Joseph reports that the campaign expected 5,000 to 10,000 to show up, but only about 2,700 came.
That's not a great sign for Romney, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad one.
Here's why.
Most GOP enthusiasm for Romney centers around distaste for Obama, and not anything about Romney himself. In fact, in the ABC News/Washington Post survey that came out earlier this week, 50% of Romney supporters said their vote was more about Obama than Romney, while 45% differed.
Thus, it's perfectly understandable that these voters would ignore a Romney rally, but still go vote for him. In fact, that's exactly the scenario polling suggests right now.
So I think it's a little risky to use rally turnout to estimate voter turnout. It's helpful in some respects, but particularly suspect this year and with these candidates.
