Obama flashes his debate strategy

Early this year, when the media aired a strategic debate as to whether the Obama team should paint Romney as a flip-flopper or as a conservative extremist, I suggested that the two charges are complementary -- he is a flip-flopper who's flipped his last flop:

There is opportunist Romney, who will say anything and adopt any position to get elected, and there is committed Romney, whose current policy positions have been set in concrete by his extremist party. He is not an Etch-A-Sketch, who can shake himself at will, but a Ouija Board, to be played by the GOP base. itself.  He has no core, but he's been cast in a mold that won't be broken until the GOP transforms itself.. That is, until hell freezes over.

That's pretty much the approach that Obama takes in a lengthy interview with the AP:

Paint Romney as flip-flopper or right-winger? Both/and!

Methinks New York Times reporter Helene Cooper has posed a false choice for the Obama campaign.  But then, John Sides and Kevin Drum both accept the terms, so maybe I'm missing something.

As a plan of attack against Romney, Cooper asks:

Do they go the flip-flopper route? Or do they go the out-of-touch, protector-of-Wall-Street route?

Cooper acknowledges that the two paths may not be mutually exclusive. But then, recounting the campaign's pursuit of the flip-flopper meme, she undercuts that caveat: