Romney's strategy a little too cute??

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

High-risk, high-reward hail marry pass strategy. Hope that GOTV/momentum/magic can keep FL, CO, VA, NC in line and that a huge final effort can flip PA, MN, and/or MI to make up for OH, which isn't budging.

I don't know why the Democrats on this board insist that Ohio is anything other than completely and entirely in play. The state polling data suggests a slight Obama lead, but obviously that lead is fluid.

If Ohio were "in the bag" for Obama, the President wouldn't basically be camping there over the weekend. The Obama internals in Wisconsin must also be soft, because Obama is making a pair of trips there over the last five days.

Yes, PA, MN and MI are reach states for Romney. But the Romney camp and the Romney aligned PACs have plenty of money to reach these states. The strategy was to hold onto this money for a last minute assault, which will go largely unanswered by the Obama camp.

The foray by Ryan into MN is a two-fer, it's also covers the NW Wisconsin media market.

The PA stop by Romney is a bit of a head scratcher, because Pittsburgh would seemingly be the better suited stop that could leak a bit into Eastern OH. So a stop in the Philly suburbs surprised me a bit.

Under the Romney strategy, the election in PA will be won (if it can be won) with coal votes in Western PA, those bitter gun and bible clingers in the center of the state and middle and upper class suburban voters in both the Pittsburgh and Philly markets

At the end of the day, this campaign stop is designed to set a narrative in the vapid lamestream press that Romney is on the offensive while Obama is defending some crucial battelground states. Who knows if it will have the intended affect. But I can't fault the strategy.

I expect democrats are counting Ohio as "in the bag" for Obama because the Romney campaign seems to be acting as if it is. I don't think it is, and as you pointed out, Team Obama obviously doesn't think it is, but Romney is spending much of the final week elsewhere.  Imo, we're past the time for narrative and clever strategies, and down to brute force: get your voters to the polls.  I don't think the scattershot approach is going to generate usefully positive results for Romney.

At this point, even if Romney wins, I'm going to credit a last-minute reluctance by voters to re-elect Obama rather than anything Romney's done since the end of the debates.