Mitt on Offense: Rattles Axelrod in Boston

Today the Obama campaign, in obvious coordination with the Washington Post, expected to launch a new attack against presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney from the steps of the Massachusetts state capital. The Post wrote a story critical of Romney’s time as governor, Axelrod intended to ride that nifty wave into a broadside that, unlike all their others, might actually stick to Romney. But as you can see in the video below, the Romney camp out-maneuvered them big-time:

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I’ve never seen Axelrod so rattled, and my guess is that his being so shaken has little to do with the hecklers and more to do with the fact that Axelrod now knows that Mitt Romney is no Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

As we saw in this year’s Republican primary, Romney is a tough customer who doesn’t allow the media to set the rules. And if you remember, even though the media buried this story, last week, Romney had an event pretty much spoiled by Occupy-style hecklers organized by the Obama campaign.

Well, turnabout is fair play…

Though it never happened, you can practically imagine John McCain refusing to play by those rules, either because he was worried about the media’s reaction or due to some misguided principle that demands you lose a presidential election by disarming yourself.

But Romney wasn’t done out-maneuvering the vaunted Obama Community-Organizing Machine today. While Axelrod was wiping off the flop sweat, Romney added insult to injury with a surprise presser in front of … Solyndra!

Mitt Romney arrived at the shuttered headquarters of Solyndra Inc. this morning, a surprise visit that was shrouded in secrecy and part of the presumptive GOP presidential candidate’s attack on President Obama’s record on jobs creation.

“The reason for keeping it quiet is because we knew if word got out that Solyndra would do everything in their power and the Obama administration would do everything in their power to stop us from having this news conference,” an aide said in a briefing en route. “But taxpayers made a substantial investment in Solyndra, there are serious questions about what happened at Solyndra, why that investment was selected, what happened to that money.”

Solyndra is the failed California-based solar technology company that received more than $500 million in federal stimulus money before it went bankrupt last year. It has since become a mantle of Romney’s argument that Obama doesn’t know how to run the economy.

Other than fighting for every inch of ground and not ceding anything to Team Obama when it comes to messaging and winning the media day, the most important thing Romney is doing here is undermining the Obama team’s confidence and the phony sheen of competence the President wraps his failed self in.

Between Romney’s refusal to play the media’s corrupt reindeer games regarding Donald Trump and what just happened today, I think we can all relax in the knowledge that 2012 will not be a repeat of 2008.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC