By David Helfenbein
Well, it's official: Mitt Romney has officially announced his candidacy for President of the United States in New Hampshire. At the same time, Sarah Palin is on her "One Nation" tour in the same state in a bus celebrating "the meaning of our nation's blueprints."
Romney has strong words about President Obama, saying that he has "failed America" in his announcement speech today.
He also discussed Obama's inexperience at the time of his election.
Romney said:
"A few years ago, Americans did something that was, actually, very much the sort of thing Americans like to do: We gave someone new a chance to lead, someone we hadn't known for very long, who didn't have much of a record but promised to lead us to a better place."
Rhetoric like this isn't new to the political arena, as we already heard this before from Obama's political competitors in 2008. But in terms of effective messaging, it is hard to campaign on inexperience after Obama has already had one term in office.
He didn't just use the platform to dismiss the president. "From my first day in office my No. 1 job will be to see that America once again is No. 1 in job creation," Romney said.
Richard Adams did a good job of live-blogging the speech.
Palin, on the contrary, has made no formal announcement as of yet, but is garnering much media attention from her bus tour. During the tour yesterday she met with Fox News President Roger Ailes, where she has an existing contract as a contributor. What did she likely tell them? You tell me.
In addition, Palin criticized Romney's health care plan today. In presidential politics, the general rule is to tread lightly this early in the game before Iowa, in hope of gaining some of your opponent's followers if their candidacy should not succeed as well as planned in the caucus process. A direct hit on Romney sounds more like a media commentator than a candidate. This may be another sign that she is running for media star-in-chief as opposed to commander-in-chief. Yet only time will tell.