It’s never too early to begin preparing for a presidential debate.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has already begun prepping for his inaugural debate with Barack Obama, the
New York Daily News reports.
That first of three debates is on Oct. 3 in Denver – 13 weeks away.
Romney sources told the News that the former Massachusetts governor had two rounds of “debate prep” last month during a three-day retreat for Republican donors and party supporters in Park City, Utah.
It involved as many as eight campaign aides and entailed working through topics most likely to come up in the debates, including the economy and the Afghanistan war, The News reports. They also posed “test responses” to possible questions that moderators or the president himself might ask Romney.
Similar trials are expected throughout the summer, but “podium practices” with an Obama surrogate will not happen until later. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who played John Kerry for George W. Bush and Brack Obama for John McCain could once again play stand-in for the Repblican candidate's debate opponent, the Daily News says.
“There will be some role-playing but not as much as other presidential candidates,” a Romney adviser told the newspaper. “The traditional model doesn’t fit his style.”
That style, insiders say, is what one calls “iterative” — absorbing much information, assembling and parsing the facts, then debating the most persuasive lines of attack or defense with staffers and confidants, he Daily News reports.
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.