Posts Tagged ‘NYT’
First, let us pass in review:
(1) As Romney-apologists tell the story, Romney wanted to run as a competent technocrat, an outsider with the business experience and native genius necessary to “fix Washington.” Only Romney could never stay on message. So what the campaign emitted was unintelligible noise.
- Luo: “Ever since Mr. Romney began his presidential bid, his campaign has oscillated between two distinct, some would say contradictory, themes—Mr. Romney as a conservative standard-bearer and him as a pragmatic problem-solving businessman”
- Bartlett: Romney miscalculated the primary field, hence his many flip-flops—OK., but what does this say about Romney’s character or competence?
In the opinion of observers Romney had tried early on to position himself as a social conservative, only this ridiculously revisionist line never withstood any encounter with the facts of Romney’s record. Romney responded by tacking ever further to the right.
(2) After Iowa returned its decision for Gov. Mike Huckabee, Romney suddenly transformed into the “change” candidate.
- Romney’s new theme of “change in Washington” developed by same super-genius advisors who delivered Romney’s Agony-in-Iowa US$10 million dollar rout
- Romney cross-dresses as Sen. Barack Obama in NH—Romney is a better Sen. Barack Obama than Barack Obama, Romney implies
- Martin and VandeHei: “[Romney] blame[s] reporters—not his advisers—for forcing him to focus intensely on his conservative views instead of the message of change”
(3) After New Hampshire returned its decision for Sen. John McCain, Romney transforms himself yet again. Romney abandons his social and economic conservative line altogether. Suddenly Romney wants to nationalize an ailing industry, only in the post-industrial, post-progressive era this assumes the form of a Washington-Detroit “partnership” combined with massive subsidies.
This is Romney himself from a Transcript of Romney’s Speech to the Detroit Economic Club
[…] “First of all, we have to be honest about the problems we have and tackle them head on. If I’m President of this country, I will roll up my sleeves in the first 100 days I’m in office, and I will personally bring together industry, labor, Congressional and state leaders and together we will develop a plan to rebuild America’s automotive leadership. It will be a plan that works for Michigan and that works for the American taxpayer.
“And as part of this, we will directly address and rectify the enormous product cost and capital cost disadvantages that currently burden the domestic automakers. From legacy costs, to health care costs, to increased CAFE standard costs, to the cost of embedded taxes, Detroit can only thrive if Washington is an engaged partner, not a disinterested observer. The plan is going to have to include increases in funding for automotive related research as well as new tax benefits including making the Research and Development Tax Credit permanent.
“I am not open to a bail out, but I am open to a work out. Washington should not be a benefactor, but it can and must be a partner […]
In an article titled Romney on the Ropes, Byron York of the National Review comments:
[…] [Romney’s] plan is to make the United States government a virtual partner of Ford, GM, and Chrysler. “If I’m president of this country, I will roll up my sleeves in the first 100 days I’m in office, and I will personally bring together industry, labor, Congressional and state leaders and together we will develop a plan to rebuild America’s automotive leadership,” Romney tells the Economic Club. “It will be a plan that works for Michigan and that works for the American taxpayer.”
The plan would involve easier-to-reach mileage standards, increased funding and extended tax breaks for research and development, worker health care reforms, and more. “Detroit can only thrive if Washington is an engaged partner, not a disinterested observer,” Romney says. “I am not open to a bail out, but I am open to a work out. Washington should not be a benefactor, but it can and must be a partner.”
Romney’s proposals might not be music to the ears of free-market conservatives who believe Detroit made its own problems and needs to fix itself. But it’s what a lot of people in Michigan want to hear […]
Might not be music to our ears? Here be the problem, and it has little to do with Romney’s tone deafness: Not only does Romney’s plan to nationalize the US automobile industry reflect yet another complete ideological reversal for the hapless candidate—Not only is Romney’s proposal impracticable and nearly impossible on its face, just the worst possible public policy imaginable—Not only will Romney’s proposal issue into in a furious race to the bottom as Romney himself and the other candidates are forced to out-bid each other promising to bail-out, subsidize, or protect from competition other ailing industries and entire economic sectors—but Romney’s plan for MI is also based on a risibly inaccurate and historically flawed assessment of an already globalized and post-industrial US automobile “industry”. Micheline Maynard of NYT’s The Caucus outlines the case against Romney’s proposals in an article titled Romney Address a Car Industry That Has Changed:
[…] Mr. Romney’s speech to the Economic Club of Detroit on Monday seemed more rooted in a time when Detroit companies dominated the automotive scene, rather than now, when Toyota is No. 2 behind General Motors.
For example, Mr. Romney vowed that if elected, “in my first 100 days, I will roll up my sleeves, and I will personally bring together industry, labor, Congressional and state leaders to develop a plan to rebuild America’s automotive leadership.”
But America’s auto industry now is no longer exclusively American. It includes Toyota, Honda, Nissan, as well as the leaders of European and Asian automakers. All have built factories in the United States over the past 25 years, particularly in states across the South. Collectively, foreign companies held 48.9 percent of American sales last year, when Detroit’s market share slipped to 51.1 percent, its lowest ever.
Mr. Romney also referred to a series of areas where the industry ought to engage with Washington, ranging from its pension and health care expenses, known as legacy costs, to mileage standards, known as corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE.
“From legacy costs, to health care costs, to increased CAFE standards, to embedded taxes, Detroit can only thrive if Washington is an engaged partner, not a disinterested observer,” Mr. Romney said.
However, G.M., Ford Motor and Chrysler reached contracts with the United Automobile Workers union last fall that will shift their burden for retiree health care costs, the major portion of legacy costs, to an independent trust that will be administered by the U.A.W. Moreover, the companies and the union pledged to spend money creating a new think tank that will lobby for federal health care reform.
Speaking of fuel economy, Mr. Romey said, “Of course fleet mileage needs to rise, but discontinuous CAFE leaps, uncoordinated with the domestic manufacturers, and absent consideration of competitiveness, kills jobs and imperils an industry,”
Mr. Romney added: “Washington-dictated CAFE is not the right answer.”
But the auto companies just finished taking part in a spirited Congressional debate over CAFE during 2007. And while they fought increases in fuel economy standards early on, the automakers wound up supporting the new law that requires them to achieve 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
Mr. Romney also had a vintage perspective on his father’s former company, American Motors.
“I used to ask my dad, ‘How in the world can you compete as head of America Motors when you’ve got such huge competitors, GM, Ford, Chrysler, the Big Three — how do you possibly think you can succeed?’” Mr. Romney said. “And he’d say in a way that I have not forgotten: ‘Mitt, there’s nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success. There’s nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success.’”
Yet it was A.M.C. that was vulnerable in its final years. It first turned to Renault of France for a rescue, selling a 46 percent stake to the French auto company in 1980, earning it the nickname, “Franco-American Motors.” In 1987, Chrysler purchased A.M.C. from Renault, and the company vanished from the automotive scene […]
Back to Byron York:
[…] From the beginning of his campaign, Romney has argued that he is the only candidate who can unite the three main elements of the Republican party: economic conservatives, national-security conservatives, and social conservatives. But Romney is really mostly an economic conservative; his foreign-policy credentials aren’t much, and his social conservatism — highlighted by the famed flip-flop over abortion — has earned him as many critics as fans. That hurt him in Iowa and New Hampshire, but on the last day of the campaign in Michigan, it’s economy, economy, economy, and that is where Romney is strongest […]
Remarks:
(1) Contra York, the National Review itself argues that Romney “is the only candidate who can unite the three main elements of the Republican party: economic conservatives, national-security conservatives, and social conservatives.” See:
- Shocker: “In this most fluid and unpredictable Republican field,” the super-geniuses at National Review endorse the most fluid and unpredictable Republican, Willard Milton Romney
- NRO organizes conference call to defend questionable decision to endorse Romney—eyeon08.com reports that they received not one supportive question, and no one spoke in favor of the endorsement
So here you have York, a writer for the National Review, arguing that Romney really isn’t a conservative at all—correction: York argues that Romney is really only an “economic conservative,” even though Romney’s policies, as York admits with his “music” comment, are anything but conservative. What does this say about the goof-balls at the National Review!?
(2) Romney’s proposal for the US automobile industry is not economic in content or in character—this is not an economic proposal.
It is a political proposal.
It assumes in advance that the performance or non-performance of a US industry is a political question. It assumes in advance the priority of political agency over private activity. And it arrives at the conclusion that the US taxpayer should subsidize the wrongheaded and shortsighted decisions of US automobile executives, and that Washington should supervise—as a partner—and assume the costs of, an entire economic sector.
So why should Romney’s proposal not apply also to e.g. US agriculture, or the technology sector? This is the logical contradiction of Romney’s proposal: it admits of no conceptual limit or limit in principle. It is not enough to argue that the automotive industry is the “canary in the coal mine” for the US economy and therefore deserves special attention—every sector of the economy, it can be argued, is vitally important—that’s part of what it means to be an economy—every sector is interrelated, interdependent.
The empirical contradiction of Romney’s plan is this: it cannot be done. History has already returned its verdict on heavy industry as an economic driver. The cash value of manufactured goods has declined for the past 25 years. Industrial capacity is more generally distributed in the world. Information processing technology and technique drives up productivity so more can be made with less labor, and this drives down prices—etc., etc.—no longer can heavy industry be the material basis of the US middle class. It is simply impossible at this historical stage.
Romney’s plan is not merely government activism, it is government atavism. It is an attempt to reverse history.
Our conclusion: Romney is not a conservative. Not in any sense of the term. Also: Romney has successfully bought a primary contest by issuing a check he cannot possibly cash.
Michigan belongs to Romney now. He can have it.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
P.S. Credit goes to eyeon08.com for the Byron York article.
[…] “On the Republican side, my message is: Be not afraid. Some people are going to tell you that Mike Huckabee’s victory last night in Iowa represents a triumph for the creationist crusaders. Wrong,” writes David Brooks in a NYT editorial titled The Two Earthquakes
Consider Brooks’ editorial yet another rejoinder to Romney’s claim that Iowa decided against him because Iowans are religious bigots.
Back to Brooks:
Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He’s funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he’s not at war with modern culture.
Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.
Third, Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.
In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.
A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.
Will Huckabee move on and lead this new conservatism? Highly doubtful. The past few weeks have exposed his serious flaws as a presidential candidate. His foreign policy knowledge is minimal. His lapses into amateurishness simply won’t fly in a national campaign.
So the race will move on to New Hampshire. Mitt Romney is now grievously wounded. Romney represents what’s left of Republicanism 1.0. Huckabee and McCain represent half-formed iterations of Republicanism 2.0. My guess is Republicans will now swing behind McCain in order to stop Mike […]
Imagine a McCain-Huckabee GOP ticket. Dare we to dream? We still cherish in our hearts a profound affection for Hizzoner. But even so …
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
“MANCHESTER, N.H. — Having barely slept after landing at 3 a.m. on Friday, weary advisers for Mitt Romney gathered a few hours later in a conference room in the Courtyard Marriott in Portsmouth to regroup after the resounding defeat Mike Huckabee handed them in Iowa,” writes the estimable Michael Luo in a NYT article titled Romney Embraces Theme Used to Beat Him
Romney’s model is simple predict-and-control. For example, Romney and his same “advisors” developed Romney’s last plan over a year ago in a posh Boston suburb:
This was Romney’s ill-considered early state von Schlieffen plan. Romney clung to it for months in the very teeth of contrary data. And lots of contrary data developed all around the hapless candidate in Iowa and elsewhere—we harped on it in this blog almost constantly. Romney’s response? To try to control for whatever contrary stimuli developed around him, e.g., Romney’s hyper-massive out-of-control spending as an attempt to control for Gov. Huckabee’ s ascendency.
Only predict-and-control failed for the hapless candidate. Iowa decided against him.
Back to Luo:
Dominating the conversation was the idea that the central lesson from Iowa in both parties was that voters wanted change in Washington and a focus on how Mr. Romney might harness that sentiment to defeat his main rival in New Hampshire, Senator John McCain.
So far Mr. Romney has tried with varying degrees of fervor to portray himself as a change agent for Washington, often playing up his private-sector background and arguing that he has not been in politics long enough to be “infected.” In September, he even rolled out the slogan “change begins with us.”
Often, however, the point has gotten lost in Mr. Romney’s speeches as he has tried to hit a jumble of other notes establishing his conservative credentials. It is also a balancing act for any Republican presidential candidate to try to carry off, given how popular President Bush remains with the Republican base. […]
Yuh-huh. The larger question: Has the noisy and frantic candidate from Bain Capital learned how to stay on message? See:
Also: Romney has been reduced to a regional player after months of ridiculing the other campaigns for their regional stronghold strategies. Romney’s last redoubt (or firewall)? Michigan.
[…] A loss in New Hampshire would be devastating for the Romney campaign, his aides privately conceded, given their stated strategy of winning “early and often.” They argue that they will be able to fight on, with Michigan’s primary on Jan. 15 acting as a fire wall. The campaign has recently stepped up efforts in Michigan, where Mr. Romney has deep roots, releasing an advertisement focused on the economy and starting a direct-mail campaign on economic issues. […]
Yeahright. This is meaningless noise of course. Romney has no base, no region, no natural constituency. He cannot carry his home state. He is running against his own record of governance and policy. He will fight on because he is flush with funds, his own funds in the form of the patrimony of his beloved sons, whether NH or MI decide for him or not.
For months the chattering classes insisted that Romney’s national strategy indicated the candidate’s strength. They claimed Romney was the only GOP candidate in control of his destiny. They also argued that the regional stronghold strategy of the other candidates was an artifact of their various weakness etc. We argued here on this blog that precisely the opposite is the case. It is precisely because Romney has no natural constituency, and no base, that the hapless candidate is constrained to try to “win early and often” to compensate. This is why we refer to Romney’s desperate early state plan as his von Schlieffen plan, another shock-and-awe plan that depended for its success on lightening and nearly simultaneous victories on multiple fronts, and another plan that failed to survive its first encounter with grim reality.
Our surmise: Romney knows by now that he cannot win the GOP nomination through the primary process. His only chance is a brokered convention. And his only chance of prevailing at a brokered convention is to so slime his rivals that none can any longer rise to national standing.
Does this sound preposterous? Of course it does. But the one premise we use to ground all our analyses posted to this blog is that whatever Romney says is the case is either
(a) flat wrong
or
(b) the precise opposite of what is actually the case
To satisfy yourself that our method returns fairly predictive and explanatory results, peruse our blog going back to last summer.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
[…] “In response to Mr. Romney’s new theme, the McCain campaign circulated an e-mail message to reporters, highlighting a statement from Mr. Romney in 2002, when Mr. McCain campaigned for him. At the time, Mr. Romney said that Mr. McCain ‘has always stood for reform and change,‘” writes the estimable Michael Luo in a NYT article titled Romney Embraces Theme Used to Beat Him
Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said: “It is laughable that Mitt Romney would think anyone buys his latest act as an agent of change, when the only thing he’s ever changed are his positions on every issue of importance in this election” […]
The struggle for Iowa has entered its archival phase. This is when the political community and various media dispute, interpret, or redact he results. An emerging “fixed point” now conditioning and organizing the discussion is the notion that voters want “change.” (By “fixed point” we mean a point of convergence or common assumption emerging in the popular account.)
What is meant by “change” now becomes the question.
But there are grounds to dispute this fixed point:
[…] The relatively stronger showing of Thompson and weaker showing of McCain (I don’t think he met expectations), along with Huckabee’s win over Romney, also demonstrates that conservative ideology was more important to Republican Iowans than pragmatism per se […], writes WonkoKevin in a wonkoblog blog burst titled ObaMo and HuckMo.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
… “Romney was […] was queried about why he gave a sunny assessment of the war in Iraq after a visit in 2006, even though he now often says the aftermath of the invasion was not managed well,” writes Marc Santora in a NYT The Caucus blog post titled McCain on Experience
[Credit goes to eyeon08.com in a post titled Romney: Check with Lawyers and Notes ]
[Romney:] You could look at what I said at that time. I was encouraged at that time that there was a creation of a coalition government and believed that was a positive step and I continue to believe that that was a positive step. Let me make it very clear. Not everything that happened over the period of time following Saddam Hussein’s collapse was bad.
The establishment of a constitution, the election of a coalition and the creation of a coalition government. Those were positive developments but nonehtheless I felt in some respects the management of the post-Saddam Hussein conflict there was not as well managed as we would have hoped it would have been, and I think that was in part because we frankly did not have sufficient preparation and planning for what occurred.
Q: If you felt at that time, why didn’t you say something then?
Mr. Romney: I don’t recall all the things that I said at that time, so I’d just have to go back and look at my notes at that time.
Q: Wasn’t it important to take a stand?
Mr. Romney: I said what I knew at that time … etc.
Another profile in courage.
Conclusion: It is impossible to hold this man—his imperious holiness, Willard Milton Romney—to anything he has ever said, to any commitment he has ever made, to any position he has ever held, to any policy he has ever pursued. Romney—apparently—is, or believes that he is, a creature of pure will and imagination, a demigod-like figure who stands apart from the causal nexus, a creature unlimited by even his personal history, a story he feels himself free to revise on the fly: He is what he says he is, and his words mean only what he says that they mean, and he takes grim offense should a miserable quaking mortal stand and suggest otherwise.
Moral: There are no messages in the abstract. There are only the men and the women who emit them, who carry them, who must defend them, creatures of flesh and blood, historical entities who pass into this world, live, love and labor for a short time, construe their experiences of this world as stories, and then pass away again. All politics is therefore identity politics, because a message has meaning only to the degree that we can identify with a flesh-and-blood messenger, and that messenger’s motives, intentions, perceptions, reflections, history of good or bad fortune, hard sufferings, and costly successes.
Our question: Who identifies with Romney?
Who is Romney’s natural constituency? Just how many super-rich, super-privileged shape-shifters exist among us?
Who gapes upon the expertly groomed face or form of Romney and believes that he sees in it himself, or believes that she sees in it herself, or even detects in it something remotely human and familiar?
Who?
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
“The most impressive thing about Mitt Romney is his clarity of mind,” writes David Brooks in a NYT editorial aptly titled Road to Nowhere
When he set out to pursue his party’s nomination, he studied the contours of the Republican coalition and molded himself to its forms.Earnestly and methodically, he has appealed to each of the major constituency groups. For national security conservatives, he vowed to double the size of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. For social conservatives, he embraced a culture war against the faithless. For immigration skeptics, he swung so far right he earned the endorsement of Tom Tancredo.
He has spent roughly $80 million, including an estimated $17 million of his own money, hiring consultants, blanketing the airwaves and building an organization that is unmatched on the Republican side.
And he has turned himself into the party’s fusion candidate. Some of his rivals are stronger among social conservatives. Others are stronger among security conservatives, but no candidate has a foot in all camps the way Romney does. No candidate offends so few, or is the acceptable choice of so many.
And that is why Romney is at the fulcrum of the Republican race. He’s looking strong in Iowa and is the only candidate who can afford to lose an important state and still win the nomination.
And yet as any true conservative can tell you, the sort of rational planning Mitt Romney embodies never works. The world is too complicated and human reason too limited. The PowerPoint mentality always fails to anticipate something. It always yields unintended consequences.
This message should be spray painted on the walls of Team Romney’s posh, waterfront headquarters.
And what Romney failed to anticipate is this: In turning himself into an old-fashioned, orthodox Republican, he has made himself unelectable in the fall. When you look inside his numbers, you see tremendous weaknesses.
For example, Romney is astoundingly unpopular among young voters. Last month, the Harris Poll asked Republicans under 30 whom they supported. Romney came in fifth, behind Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Ron Paul. Romney had 7 percent support, a virtual tie with Tancredo. He does only a bit better among those aged 30 to 42.
Romney is also quite unpopular among middle- and lower-middle class voters. In poll after poll, he leads among Republicans making more than $75,000 a year. He does poorly among those who make less.
If Romney is the general election candidate, he will face hostility from independent voters, who value authenticity. He will face hostility from Hispanic voters, who detest his new immigration positions. He will face great hostility in the media. Even conservative editorialists at places like The Union Leader in New Hampshire and The Boston Herald find his flip-flopping offensive.
But his biggest problem is a failure of imagination. Market research is a snapshot of the past. With his data-set mentality, Romney has chosen to model himself on a version of Republicanism that is receding into memory. As Walter Mondale was the last gasp of the fading New Deal coalition, Romney has turned himself into the last gasp of the Reagan coalition.
Sampo of This Aggression will not stand concurs, and cites this same editorial in response to Romney’s newest, and possibly strangest ad, Vote for Tomorrow, which reads like an hallucinatory rejoinder to Brooks. (We’re a little irritated that we weren’t the first to pose Brooks against the Vote for Tomorrow, but whatever.)
Back to Brooks:
That coalition had its day, but it is shrinking now. The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. Democrats have a 50 to 36 party identification advantage, the widest in a generation. The general public prefers Democratic approaches on health care, corruption, the economy and Iraq by double-digit margins. Republicans’ losses have come across the board, but the G.O.P. has been hemorrhaging support among independent voters. Surveys from the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, Kaiser Foundation and Harvard University show that independents are moving away from the G.O.P. on social issues, globalization and the roles of religion and government.
If any Republican candidate is going to win this year, he will have to offer a new brand of Republicanism. But Romney has tied himself to the old brand. He is unresponsive to the middle-class anxiety that Huckabee is tapping into. He has forsaken the trans-partisan candor that McCain represents. Romney, the cautious consultant, is pivoting to stress his corporate competence, and is rebranding himself as an Obama-esque change agent, but he will never make the sort of daring break that independent voters will demand if they are going to give the G.O.P. another look.
The leaders of the Republican coalition know Romney will lose. But some would rather remain in control of a party that loses than lose control of a party that wins. Others haven’t yet suffered the agony of defeat, and so are not yet emotionally ready for the trauma of transformation. Others still simply don’t know which way to turn.
We concur. And the emphases are ours, all ours. Consonant with Brooks:
It’s true that the current conservative intelligentsia, forged in the crucible of Ronald Reagan’s successes, is heavily invested in keeping the triple alliance intact – hence the Thompson bubble, the anti-Huckabee crusade, and the “rally round Romney” effect, writes Ross Douthant in a post titled The Coming Conservative Civil War, a rejoinder to Tomasky’s New York Review of Books essay, They’d Rather be Right
And it’s true, as well, that if the Republican Party recovers its majority in the next election the alliance will be considerably strengthened. But such a recovery is unlikely, and already, in the wake of just a single midterm-election debacle, it’s obvious that the Norquistians and neocons and social conservatives aren’t inevitable allies – that many tax-cutters and foreign-policy hawks, for instance, would happily screw over their Christian-Right allies to nominate Rudy Giuliani; or that many social conservatives don’t give a tinker’s dam what the Club for Growth thinks about Mike Huckabee’s record. (So too with the neocon yearning for a McCain-Lieberman ticket, which would arguably represent a far more radical remaking of the GOP coalition than anything Chuck Hagel has to offer.)
The “movement” institutions, from the think tanks to talk radio, have resisted these fissiparous tendencies, and if Mitt Romney wins the nomination they’ll be able to claim a temporary victory. But if the GOP continues to suffer at the polls, in ’08 and beyond, the (right-of) center can’t be expected to hold, and the result will be a struggle for power that’s likely to leave the conservative movement changed, considerably, from the way that Tomasky finds it today … etc.
Back to Brooks:
And so the burden of change will be thrust on primary voters over the next few weeks. Romney is a decent man with some good fiscal and economic policies. But in this race, he has run like a manager, not an entrepreneur. His triumph this month would mean a Democratic victory in November … etc.
Others concur:
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
“Huckabee said that Romney is getting desperate, because he finds himself behind in Iowa despite outspending Huckabee 20 to 1,” writes Philip Klein in an AmSpec Blog post titled Huckabee Rips Romney Back
“When people get that far behind after spending that much money, they get desperate,” he said. “Desperate is one thing, dishonest is something else. When you get desperate and dishonest, it’s not a pretty site.”
In another example of the emerging everybody vs. Romney dynamic of the race, Huckabee came to the defense of John McCain, who has been trading barbs with Romney in New Hampshire over an attack ad. “John McCain is a true, honest to god, American hero,” Huckabee said … etc.
We have harped on the string of the Huckabee-McCain axis for weeks. And: we predicted that Romney’s absurd behavior would provoke his rivals to concert their efforts against him.
Romney bravely—or unwittingly—faces the gathering storm, er, we mean swarm
Here is the problem for Romney. Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee can hone their message contra Romney to a razor’s edge while each depicts himself as defending the honor of a friend, and each concentrates on their respective state.
Romney, OTOH, alone, alienated, and estranged, is reduced to dispersing his energies and giving the impression of frantic and random attacks in all directions and across 2 states. Hence: Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee’s strategy returns more for a minimal investment, and this is why people often cooperate, collaborate, or otherwise combine their labor, because it is efficient and cost effective.
Also: the high drama of 2 under-organized, under-funded, and rogue-candidate underdogs protecting each other’s backs against the superbly well funded slime machine of Team Romney, the establishment favorite, has captured the imaginations of the press corps, which will generate lots of earned media. Note how the NYT carefully reprises Gov. Huckabee’s rationale for his remarks on Romney:
“But it was the new rhetoric on the Republican side of the ticket that drew the fiercest spark, as former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas hurled a barrage of attacks at the credibility of his chief rival here, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts,” writes JEFF ZELENY and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK for the NYT in an article titled Courting Iowa’s Undecided Voters With a Late Push
“If a person is dishonest in his approach to get the job, do you believe he will be honest in telling you the truth when he does get the job?” Mr. Huckabee asked voters in Osceola, Iowa.
Mr. Huckabee said he was escalating his criticism in part because of Mr. Romney’s recent disparagements of a third Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, whom Mr. Huckabee called “an American hero.”
“It is enough to attack me,” Mr. Huckabee said. “But now to attack John McCain, it is like Mitt doesn’t have anything to stand on except to stand against. And I am saying enough is enough” …
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
“GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — Mitt Romney was recounting to his audience here a political fable of sorts, about how he had never expected to get into politics after spending his life in business. The moral is one he has been telling again and again in his final sprint before the first votes of the 2008 presidential campaign are cast,” writes the estimable Michael Luo in an NYT release titled As Voting Nears, Romney Shifts Political Narrative
“The skills you have and that you develop in the private sector, whether it be small business or big business, they’re desperately needed in government,” Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor seeking the Republican presidential nomination, told a crowd here Monday.
The theme has essentially become Mr. Romney’s closing argument to voters before the nominating contests, marking a subtle but significant shift from the far more ideological frame that has often been at the forefront of the campaign. The change speaks to the campaign’s broader strategy in its final push to slice away supporters from Mike Huckabee in Iowa and bolster Mr. Romney’s lead in New Hampshire.
Remarks:
(1) Romney has retailed his private sector business experience theme for months. Only it never won him an inch of ground. So he would abandon it only to take it up again later. A few examples from our archives:
- Romney abandons conservative line; reverts to previous line
- Brooks of the NYT suggests that Romney’s alledged conservatism is a facade to win the primaries
- Romney would organize his administration on the model of an Abbasid Caliph according to Fred Barnes
- Romney would organize his administration on the model of an Abbasid Caliph (ii)—OR: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
(2) What Luo describes as Romney’s “ideological frame” is—or was—Romney’s attempt to outflank his rivals on the right. Again, from our archives:
- Romney outflanks himself (iii): the Romney mix of issues
- Romney outflanks himself yet again!–poll indicates Romney’s pull to the right alienates independents, centrists, and moderates
- analysis: Romney outflanks Romney
(3) Here is the problem for Romney. The oft-touted Romney von Schlieffen plan (a lightening strike on 2 fronts to secure the center) consisted in
(a) securing the social conservative, Evangelical base
-and-
(b) developing commanding leads in the early state primaries to create a bandwagoning effect
Only Team Romney never accomplished (a). The social conservative, Evangelical base remains divided and dispersed. The Huckabee surge and Romney’s failed “speech” is evidence of that.
And Team Romney pursued (b) so primitively and naively—activity that reduced to spending enormous sums of money—that it has set up expectations such that even the most positive outcome for Romney in the early state primary contests is prejudiced in advance. Now no one but the political primitives of Team Romney argues that Iowa or New Hampshire will decide the nomination. Instead the speculation rests on either a contested convention, Michigan, or Super-Duper Apocalypse Tuesday.
(4) Every campaign attempts to develop a base, an issues coalition, and then pivot back toward the broad center. This is how you win elections. Romney’s von Schlieffen plan was Romney’s attempt to develop a base.
Because Team Romney failed at every task it set for itself—because it could never develop, consolidate, and mobilize a base of support—because its claims of conservative commitment were consistently greeted with incredulity and disbelief—it could never move toward the center.
So the Romney address to the center—the business experience, business methodology line—never got brought to the center. Oh, the Romneys tried to retail it, however sporadically, however inconsistently, and however much it undermined their larger, more ideological claims. But they would always get distracted or someone would scare them off.
(5) The Romneys tested and abandoned lots of other lines too. Does anyone remember their risibly inconsistent “change” line?
Romney’s inflection point—the strange rhetoric of a troubled campaign
Back to Luo:
“I do believe that by virtue of my work in the private sector and at the Olympics and as a governor that I’m able to tackle the big problems that America faces,” Mr. Romney said in a recent interview. “I think in the final analysis when people go to the voting booths, they’re going to ask themselves, given the scale of challenges we have, ‘Who can solve the problems in America today?’”
The focus on Mr. Romney’s business acumen — he is the founder of Bain Capital, a prominent private equity firm — is in keeping with how almost all the leading Republican candidates have been running to varying degrees on their competence as a way to distinguish themselves from the Bush administration, without distancing themselves from President Bush ideologically.
Nevertheless, Mr. Romney spent much of the spring and summer focusing more on bolstering his credentials as a conservative champion as he fended off vigorous criticism for his more moderate past. Romney advisers believe they have succeeded in establishing his conservative bona fides, even though lingering questions about his authenticity persist, and are able now to move on to focusing on the next layer of voters.
“If you look now and you ask, ‘Is Mitt Romney a conservative?’ People would say, ‘Yes,’” said Russ Schriefer, one of the campaign’s media strategists.
“Now as we get closer to the election,” Mr. Schriefer said, “I think we need to be focusing more on his experience. What is it about Mitt Romney that makes him unique? What is it that makes him uniquely qualified? He has the experience. He has the experience to manage big things. He’s done it before.”
Remarks:
Note Schriefer’s precise language. To the question whether is Romney a conservative, most would answer yes. Well, Romney is now, anyway. (Or, wait—is he a pragmatic business person?) But will Romney be a conservative tomorrow?
All that Schriefer and Romney’s other hirelings have accomplished is a degree of ideological recognition. They failed to develop an issues coalition that could serve as a base. Yet with time having run out—and after months and months of arguing that Romney is the same as the other candidates on ideological grounds with only limited success—Romney’s flaks face the urgent problem of how to differentiate their candidate. (Or so they think.)
Memo to Schriefer: Keep up the good work, dude!
Back to Luo:
Ever since Mr. Romney began his presidential bid, his campaign has oscillated between two distinct, some would say contradictory, themes: Mr. Romney as a conservative standard-bearer and him as a pragmatic problem-solving businessman.
Precisely.
His campaign advisers argue that the themes are complementary, but Mr. Romney’s critics say that the businessman theme comes much more naturally to him and that he seized on the staunch conservative message only for political purposes.
We concur with the critics.
“These two messages don’t necessarily fit under the same strategic umbrella,” said John Weaver, who ran Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign until the summer. “They’re completely different. I think the governor has struggled to carry those two messages” …
… In Iowa, Mr. Romney’s advisers said it would be difficult for him, at this late stage, to peel off staunch Christian conservatives from Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, but they said they thought Mr. Romney could win over others who placed more importance on fiscal issues, the economy and immigration. It is one reason Mr. Romney last week unveiled a spiffy new PowerPoint presentation designed more to showcase his corporate competence than to help anyone in the audience follow his points.
Translation: Romney failed—despite tremendous effort—to reach out to Christian conservatives. A few examples: Gov. Huckabee’s breakout rise, “the speech,” and the Value Voters Summmit:
But Mr. Weaver argued that the dual images the Romney campaign had tried to establish were one reason it had struggled to produce a consistent message. In contrast, Mr. McCain’s candidacy immediately evokes the Iraq war and his foreign policy credentials; Rudolph W. Giuliani’s, his handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and his theme of staying on offense against Islamic terrorism.
“They’re having a hard time having both feet planted on either side of the seesaw,” Mr. Weaver said of the Romney campaign.
Mr. Romney’s aides conceded they had struggled at times to inculcate their broader message in voters, in part because they were so busy parrying attacks early on from their opponents, including Mr. McCain’s campaign and, later, Senator Sam Brownback’s campaign in Iowa.
“It took us a while to get other things put to bed so we could stick to a theme,” said Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general and senior adviser.
To combat attacks from the right, Mr. Romney introduced a message in May centered on what he called the “three legs of the conservative stool” — meant to unite social, fiscal and foreign policy conservatives behind him — and spent much of the summer leading into the Iowa Straw Poll expounding on the idea, bringing up his private sector experience only in passing. He also presented a much harder line on immigration as the issue leapt to the forefront of the Republican race and swooped on the issue of same-sex marriage in August when a judge in Iowa ruled unconstitutional the state’s ban on the practice.
The question at this point is whether Mr. Romney jerked the wheel too hard to the right as he now tries to pick up a broader cross-section of voters. In September, the Romney campaign rolled out a new theme of Mr. Romney as a leader capable of bringing change to Washington. But it is a message that the Romney camp has found difficult to stick to amid the daily fluctuations of the campaign.
“It has been hard to get to the essential, the core,” said Alex Gage, the campaign’s strategy director.
Now Mr. Romney is trying to get down to it before he runs out of time.
The emphases are ours, all ours.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
“Just in time for Christmas, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has begun mailing out one of the more overtly negative attacks in New Hampshire, attacking rivals on immigration and looking to give them a black eye — literally,” writes Marc Santora in a NYT The Caucus blog entry titled Romney Goes Negative
… On the same day voters were receiving the pamphlet, the New Hampshire Union Leader was criticizing Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, in a front-page editorial for employing illegal immigrants to care for his yard. The newspaper, which has endorsed Mr. McCain, asked how Mr. Romney could manage the country if he could not manage his own backyard … etc.
yours &c.
dr. g.d.
willard milton romney
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