So what is Romney to do? Politico published a story Monday reporting on alleged confusion and poor organization in the Romney campaign. Typical was this quote:
"A growing number of conservatives are blaming Stevens for advocating a campaign of caution, one that puts all the emphasis not on how good Romney could be but how bad Obama is. “Credit for this fog goes to that inner circle of Romney advisers who never liked the Ryan pick and have reasserted their will over a candidate who is naturally cautious,” conservative columnist Kimberley Strassel wrote in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. “In the la-la land where adviser Stuart Stevens presides, Mr. Romney wins by never saying a single thing, ever, that might rock a single boat, ever.”’
Stevens was a big, early advocate of a bland vice presidential candidate, privately talking up former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and pushing the idea of an outsider, anti-Beltway ticket. But Stevens is hardly to blame for what many conservatives consider a campaign that is specifics-free and lame. That blame goes straight to the man running his own campaign: Romney himself, according to a number of people in and out of the campaign.
Some Romney loyalists think Stevens never fully appreciated what a good and unique candidate they had in Romney, and pleaded early on to showcase what they saw as a generous, wise and gifted leader. Still, for reasons not fully understood by those around Romney, the candidate not only went with Stevens but gave him tremendous authority.." Article
Then Peggy Noonan chimed in over at The Wall Street Journal Friday:
"It is true that a good debate, especially a good first one, can invigorate a candidate and lead to increased confidence, which can prompt good decisions and sensible statements. There is more than a month between the first debate and the voting: That's enough time for a healthy spiral to begin.
But: The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant "rolling calamity."
A lot of people weighed in, in I suppose expected ways: "Glad you said this," "Mad you said this." But, some surprises. No one that I know of defended the campaign or argued "you're missing some of its quiet excellence." Instead there was broad agreement with the gist of the critique—from some in the midlevel of the campaign itself, from outside backers and from various party activists and officials. There was a perhaps pessimistic assumption that no one in Boston would be open to advice. A veteran of a previous Romney campaign who supports the governor and admires him—"This is a good man"—said the candidate's problem isn't overconfidence, it's a tin ear...." Rest of essay
The WSJ then published this editorial with excerpts from a speech Mr. Romney never gave:
"One tragedy of the Obama Presidency is how many more Americans have become dependent on the government. I know it's not their fault. Most want to be self-sufficient, to provide for their families, but they can't because there aren't enough jobs....
"This is a national scandal. Not because those fellow Americans are free-loaders, but because they aren't able to get a good job that pays enough to be self-sufficient and lets them fulfill their human potential.
"I want Americans to be less dependent on government not because it costs too much. We will always help Americans who need our help. I want Americans to be independent so they can realize the pride of accomplishment and the dignity of work and contribute their God-given talents to build a better country.
"I think the success of a Presidency should be measured by how many fewer people need food stamps, how many fewer need disability, not how many more people are added to the rolls. I don't want to take food stamps away from Americans in need. I want fewer Americans to need food stamps.(I love that last line.)
"Sometimes I wonder if President Obama shares that view. He and his economists keep saying that food stamps and unemployment benefits are a form of 'stimulus.' Well, we've sure had a lot of that kind of stimulus, and all we have to show for it are more people on food stamps and more people on welfare and more people looking for work. I think a real stimulus is a job, and I intend to help Americans create more of them. .." Editorial
Where has this been all year?
Despite all that, Obama is having a bad week with the Libya and Egypt fiascoes. They are fairly even in the polls. Question today, and I'd like some comments. Should the Romney campaign make any changes? What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? I want some real comments. "Romney Sucks" or "Obama is the anti-Christ" comments won't get approved so don't waste your time writing those.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Presidential campaigns: Everyone's an expert.
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24 comments:
Since 1978, I've never worked on a "perfect" campaign....you get a movement in the polls and, oh my gosh, the campaign is falling apart! This one will ultimately come down to a small group of Americans in about 8 states having a personal referendum on Obama...this thing has a long way to go.
After the convention, I assumed that Romney would move to the center in order to appeal to the independents and conservative Democrats. The question is, if he has moved to the center, how do we know? At some point he may have nothing to lose by coming out and saying that polarization is doing irreperable harm, and he has a record of being able to work with Democrats; that is, a record of productive compromise. I regret that he doesn't have the courage to run on that record, to say that RomneyCare will work better than ObamaCare, for example. The real Mitt has been suppressed, and now he has to think too much before he speaks lest the real Mitt start showing through the mask that he has believed it necessary to wear. It is sad to watch him deny himself at every stop.
Gov. Romney should continue exactly what he is doing, limiting his public appearances and raising more money so that he can carpet bomb Pres. Obama in the swing states still arguably in play for him with negative advertising focusing on the President's poor performance on the economy, "Obamacare's" vast increase in taxes, the President's fondness for Muslims(accomplished through innuendo). Of course, none of those attacks are true, but we know Gov. Romney's carpet bombing advertising campaigns work; see Sen. Santorum and Speaker Gingrich.
The Governor's campaign should not focus on him as he is the worst Republican nominee for President I have seen in my lifetime. That's why his unfavorables have always been so high. He has a complete lack of core values and no ability to connect with average folks.
Having said all that, Gov. Romney can definitely win, and the people running his campaign know exactly what they are doing. Hayes got it right.
One who thinks Romney a worse nominee than McCain or Dole cannot be taken seriously.
Obama is up by 3 touchdowns halfway through the third quarter. Hayes is right about 8 states deciding it. The problem is that Obama is ahead in most of them by margins that no one would have thought either one could get to a few months ago.
The other problem for Romney is that what he is doing now-what he planned to do--isn't working. He has been trying to pivot off of that just to get back in it, but his pivots aren't working either.
People are now laughing at Romney's people on TV who when asked for specifics, say here are our specifics and don't give any specifics. The American people want a solution. I'm not Obama is not a solution that will win the election.
The interesting question is whether Romney had to paint himself into a box to get the nomination and now can't give any winning solutions without contradicting himself on major substantive issues. If he loses, Republicans will have to think long and hard about how far right they make their candidates go to get the nomination.
I'm liking how Ryan energized the campaign and the troops then they shut him up. Scott Walker can't believe it.
That speech that wasn't made made me want to scream. Remember the movie Easy Money where the horse was leading the race and then the jockey started slowing him down when he realize he was leading?
The Republican obsession with food stamps sounds racist to a lot of people. Medicare and social security are the biggest entitlements by far. The Republicans should be the party explaining why Medicare and social security must be changed and giving a plan for fixing it. But they are afraid to.
So we the country waits for the deficit problem to blow up before it will be fixed. Both parties are cowards.
Shadowfax, Sen. McCain and Sen. Dole are fine men with core values based on moral principles. Gov. Romney is a shell of a man who changes his alleged core values depending on who he's talking to and what he's running for.
See abortion: He was strongly pro-choice when he ran for Governor of Mass. because he had to be in that progressive state. Then in the recent Repub. Primary, he pushed legally giving human rights to fertilized eggs and was against abortion under any circumstances, rape and incest included. Now in the general election, he's for excepting rape and incest in the criminalization of abortion.
I wasn't saying his odds of winning are less than those that Sen. McCain and Sen. Dole had; they're actually much better. What I was saying is that I haven't seen such lack of humanity in a Repub. Presidential candidate in my lifetime.
And just how many millions of dollars did this guy with a "lack of humanity" donate to charity in 2011?
Anonymous Obama crickets chirping in the dark.
5:30 said, "If he loses, Republicans will have to think long and hard about how far right they make their candidates go to get the nomination."
I guess the Repubs need a real liberal like Reagan if they expect to win.
The biggest issue Romney faces -- really, ANY candidate challenging an incumbent on the national level faces -- is that he is required to adopt a form of multiple personality disorder to succeed. Primary voters overwhelmingly want ideological purity, whatever they see that purity as. But conventional wisdom is that one must dial that back in a general election.
Now, I don't know that "conventional wisdom" can be supported with any actual voting behavior research, but most studies done by politicos and academics alike show that as much as 20% of the electorate are late-deciders, and that crew tends to make emotional decisions on candidates. The question becomes, does the "dialing back" that a challenger feels compelled to do create an atmosphere of dissatisfaction among early-supporters that ends up magnifying whatever internal campaign organization problems exist? And how does that kind of finger-pointing within a previously-thought-to-be monolithic group impact late-deciders' "feelings" about that candidate?
Late-deciders don't want to vote for a loser, and the more leaks of infighting that come from the Romney campaign, the worse he appears as a leader, and the less like a winner he seems. These kinds of "process" stories that appear in the media are like "pre-emptive post-mortems," telling tales of failure weeks before the election. The fact that many of these process stories are being fed by insider leaks and Republican talking-heads intensifies the smell of death. Late-deciders have sensitive noses.
As far as a VP pick, all it does is satisfy some sub-group of primary supporters who the nominee is worried about losing in the general. It's been so long since we needed a VP to succeed a President during a term, I don't think many unaffiliated voters are thinking about presidential fitness with those choices.
The thing that will help Romney the most would be a BLISTERING debate performance. That would accomplish two things. First, the process stories would become positive, with the same stories asking why the Obama campaign couldn't do better. The smell of death could move the other way. Second, a great debate would give Romney the chance to dictate the issues in a much more controlled fashion. If people respond positively to themes he establishes in the debates, he can choose to stay with those themes and not have to continually respond to themes set by Obama or the media.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of confidence in Romney as a debater. The one thing Obama has been right about is Romney's tendency to "shoot first, aim later." I expect the sound bites to come from him in the debates will make Republicans do a collective face palm.
Uh, Reagan wasn't THAT conservative. He was a force of personality more than an idealogue.
- He raised taxes 11 times (Alan Simpson and Douglas Brinkley). He did cut taxes his first year in office, but he raised them back the next year because of the drop in federal revenue.
- Under Reagan, the national debt increased to nearly $3 trillion dollars, and he never was able to get it under control (NY Times Caucus blog)
- He wasn't very interested in social issues like abortion. It was never a legislative priority for him while president.
- He actually increased the size of government -- for example, the VA became a Cabinet-level organization under Reagan, and ballooned in size. While he campaigned on getting rid of the Depts. of Education and Energy, he didn't make it a legislative priority.
- Reagan signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act that actually gave amnesty to about 3 million illegal immigrants, plus their families.
I'm not passing judgement on any of that -- not saying if any of it was good or bad. But it WAS. Conservatives have made an idol out of this IDEA of Reagan that just isn't supported by the reality of his presidency.
Now, if conservatives want to make an idol of who he was as a communicator, a debater, or just a charismatic individual, OK. It would be great if Romney posessed that kind of personality. But Reagan's brand of conservatism was very different that what people want to remember, as it was a different time.
So, no cold blooded analysis here...nothing about demographics or key states and what is needed to win in those states.
No discussion of whether relying too heavily on the opponents record is or isn't a good strategy when the opponent's likeability numbers are higher than yours.
No discussion of whether or not someone with foreign policy experience might have been a better choice for VP.
No discussion of ways the candidate could have been better packaged sooner.
No discussion of whether a lack of specificity works well when, for so many voters, the economics are real and personal..their ox is being gored...and personal insecurity levels are high.
Ryan might be a good pick given his budget background but wouldn't a foreign policy background have looked better this last week?
It's no surprise that for most of you,your complaint is that he isn't far enough to the right. But, he doesn't need to be concerned about winning HERE. Your votes are in the bag.
But, GEEZ, people, what campaign manager or candidate is so clueless that he believes even a private fund raiser is secure? Are the wait staff required to give their voting history? Did they imagine none has a cell phones or just that they were too dumb to know how to use it? Are all the married couples in the room on the same political page? Do they think spouses always vote the same...the little woman will always do what hubby tells her?
Why does anyone pick a coast for a convention site during hurricane season.
Why let ANY speaker go on the Convention stage without knowing what they are going to say?
This looks like a campaign that can't make up it's mind what it likes best and goes from one thing to another...much like the campaign manager's history but let's certainly not discuss that choice at all.
"He raised taxes 11 times (Alan Simpson and Douglas Brinkley). He did cut taxes his first year in office, but he raised them back the next year because of the drop in federal revenue."
Uh, revenues went up after tax rates dropped, due to increased economic activity, just as happened after JFK dropped income tax rates, and as happend again when GWB cut income tax rates.
Reagan and Bush both refused to veto the increased spending that Congress wanted when the revenue started going up, and the increased spending outpaced the increased revenue, leading to higher deficits.
Sorry about not approving the comments but I told you what would not make it up on the board.
From Joseph J. Thorndike on Bloomberg.com, 4/16/2011:
"But in the face of large and growing deficits, Reagan eventually did come around on the need for additional revenue. Even before the 1981 tax cut was on the books, many White House advisers had begun to worry about projected deficits, which were on a steady upward march from 2.6 percent of gross domestic product in 1981 to 4 percent in 1982. They would reach 6 percent in 1983.
So, just weeks after his Santa Barbara signing ceremony, Reagan floated the possibility of -- wait for it -- closing loopholes. He was careful to avoid any suggestion that he wanted a tax increase. Instead, he and his advisers asked Congress for "revenue enhancements."
Euphemisms can obscure a variety of sins. And Reagan's euphemist, Larry Kudlow -- then an official in the Office of Management and Budget -- was unrepentant. "There's no better way to sell economic theory than by the euphemistic route," he told the New York Times.
This allowed for a major tax increase, the largest in four decades, in 1982. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act raised an average of $47 billion in each of the four years after it was enacted.
Over the remainder of his presidency, Reagan would go on to sign a series of such increases, ultimately taking back about half of his 1981 tax cut, according to economist and historian Bruce Bartlett. The 1981 legislation marked a watershed in federal taxation, capping an era of tax cuts and starting a new one of increases. As economist Jerry Tempalski has noted, of the nine major tax laws enacted from 1968 to 1981, six reduced federal revenue. By contrast, nine of the 11 major tax laws introduced from 1982 to 1993 increased revenue.
The dramatic reduction in federal revenue resulting from the 1981 act made future cuts increasingly difficult. And one of its provisions would prove especially expensive in the years to come. The law had indexed tax brackets, adjusting them for inflation. This change almost eliminated "bracket creep," in which taxpayers were pushed into higher brackets by inflation, rather than changes in real income. For decades, bracket creep had produced steady -- but hidden -- tax increases on Americans. No longer would these automatic tax hikes give lawmakers money to burn. Or to return through tax cuts. Indexing was key to ending what C. Eugene Steuerle, an economist and senior fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, has called the "era of easy finance.""
Conservatives has turned Reagan into a mythological blank slate -- if today's Republicans like it, then Ronnie must have done it. Many times, that just isn't true.
Reagan-worship makes as much sense as Kennedy-worship. Each is designed to promote the falsehood that America had these magnificant, faultless leaders in the past and that our current situation is because today's leaders just don't try hard enough to emulate those from the past. Neither "religion" is based on accurate examinations of either presidency, and both are easy excuses to NOT deal with the political realities of the present.
If I had to bet a nickel, I would guess that the Obama will carry all the states he won in 2008, plus pick up Missouri. McCain won Missouri by fewer than 4,000 and this go-round, Romney has to overcome the Akin controversy there.
12:23 PM thanks for the reality check.
Aside from being a reasonable man who communicated well , Reagan also kept the GOP focused and in line.
The GOP has too many Chiefs and not enough Indians these days and many of the would be Chiefs are "all headress and no arrows".
The saddest thing, of course, is that in this age of relentless, ubiquitous media, running a "campaign" in the true sense is flatly impossible. What a candidate has to do now is sell himself like a box of new-and-improved laundry detergent, and run a commercial. Reagan (perhaps because of his show business background) knew this better than anyone, and did it like a master. It's probably too late for Gov. Romney to enroll in charm school---bless his heart, I think he *wants* to be affable and genial (Reagan's leading attributes) but 'tis "far from him." A bubbly, down-home gal of a wife would help immensely, but Mrs. R is probably too stove up with her MS to put on that show.
I forget where, but I read an interesting essay by a developmental psychologist (and Republican, incidentally) who proffered the theory that Gov. R has Asperger's syndrome. And went on to opine that this could actually be a *good* thing---"Aspies" have poor social skills, are not terribly warm-and-fuzzy types, and simply say what they think, cutting through the BS---but are geniuses (genii?) at focusing on an issue and solving the problem at hand with as little time-wasting as possible.
Aw, vote for Stern Mitt, and getcher cuddlin' somewhere else!
Mitt Romney isn't going to win this election, period. But he's certainly not going to win it without winning Ohio, and he's down by around 8 points there now. He should be camping out in Ohio.
Are there any regulars on this blog that really think Romney is going to win? I'm curious.
And would it matter if any, or all, regulars on this blog thought that Gov. R would win? I hope he will, I pray he will, but election clairvoyance is not one of my many talents. If that strange, unknowable creature we currently have in the White House manages to fool most of the people a second time, the only good thing to come out of it will be the delightful stuff that comes out of his vice president's mouth. I think the only "hard wood" old Biden has these days is between his ears. I'd miss his rare sound bite...
I think many , if not most of the regulars on this blog wouldn't recognize or acknowledge a GOP mistake...which is WHY the Romney campaign is in such a mess.
St. James must have let out early to have so many progressive pundits talking about how Romney has no chance. I think that all of you are scared to death that the average guy who isn't over educated and underemployed like yourself is gonna vote the other way this year cause the obvious mess the BHO has put us in both domestically and internationally looks just awful. Rest assured, Cups and Babaloo will continue on no matter who wins, and the Hallowed Halls of Fondren will continue to be a hotbed for liberal ideology. Maybe one day soon, you will be mugged by the very person you hope to lift out of poverty when walking out to your car after working on a habitat house or out of Sal and Mookies on the very night that the one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel rent a cop is late to work.
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