the Romney bandwagon charges forward: Cramer follows others trying to distance themselves from a troubled Team Romney

October 28, 2007 in 2008, argument, campaign communications, campaign communiques, conservatism, election 2008, gaffs and pratfalls, GOP, incompetence, media, mitt romney, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: ability, acumen, cramer, endorsement, endorsement retraction, endorsements, evangelicals for mitt, race42008.com, rigor, team romney

The video of Cramer damning Romney with faint praise even as he backpedals furiously from his earlier “endorsement” of the man is available at race42008.com in a post titled More Cramer on Romney, courtesy of the estimable Jason Bonham.

MetroRepublican comments:

So, Cramer makes a special announcement to clarify he is NOT endorsing this man, and that he was an intimidating figure he didn’t want to be around.

Nobody doubts Mitt was a successful venture capitalist. Nobody doubts John Edwards was a successful plaintiff’s lawyer. They are essentially the same man: phony power lusters.

UA Razerback comments:

What is the deal with Romney and his “so-called” endorsements?? Does this make three now that say they are not supporting him?

The last Romney-endorsement-retraction that we detected was Dr. Don Wilton:

Dr. Don Wilton comes to his senses: retracts endorsement of Romney—this is the same Wilton that Justin Hart boasted of in his mymanmitt post titled The Ability to Execute

Aside: Cramer’s endorsement reversal is also available at the so-called Evangelicals for Mitt blog under the title Rigor, Acumen, Ability—do these people hear only what they want to hear?

Question: Did the Romneys jump the shark at the value voters summit?—We mean, what with all of these defections?—We would argue no. Or: we would argue that even if they did jump the shark, it really doesn’t matter. Follow our speculations:

1. Romney’s vast resources confer upon the candidate neither strength nor standing. Romney’s negatives are historically-unprecedentedly high. Hence: other campaigns can afford to laugh off or ignore Romney’s negative attacks. And they do.

Romney has the most negative image at this point of any of the major candidates for president, claims Newport of USA Today’s GallupGuru; the Romney campaign’s death-by-internal-memo part (ii)

2. But: Romney’s resources do render him resilient. Almost daily Team Romney suffers blows—self-inflicted and otherwise—that would be fatal to a campaign organized on a more rational, and less personal, basis; i.e. a campaign more closely coupled with—more intimately dependent upon—its donors, supporters, interest groups, clients etc. The primitive and steeply vertical character of Romney’s oft-touted organization renders it almost immune to moral challenge or collapse: the consultants, the professionals, the armies of sub-contracters and other hirelings who attend upon Romney—they all know that they will get paid whatever comes.

3. Romney’s campaign therefore assumes the character of a terror cell or a militia—an organization optimized for long-term, low-intensity conflict—it can never concentrate enough force at the right moment to seriously threaten any other campaign, but it still reserves a limited power to harass, delay, provoke, and distract. The limit upon its power to harass etc. is precisely its powerlessness, i.e. its over-reliance on relatively expensive instruments of direct influence. See:

positioned to fail: Team Romney’s over-reliance on instruments of direct influence and its consequences

4. Hence: the Romney’s plot from their posh, waterfront headquarters the political equivalent of asymmetrical strikes, single, highly targeted, highly planned blows that they pray will radically alter the balance of forces that confront them in their favor, whether through targeted strikes like the value voters summit, or through the so-called Early States Strategy, the notion that if they can win one or more of the early state primaries then many of the undecideds in later state primaries will decide for Romney.

The problem is this: asymmetrical strikes produce unintended consequences—the more successful the strike, the more difficult it is to contain or control. See:

out-of-touch Evangelical “leaders” stunned by Huckabee upset at the value voters summit—prepared to sigh, shrug, and coronate Romney as their Lord, G_d, and King—oh, the irony!

So, we would conclude that despite the insults and humiliations that the Romneys have endured and continue to endure, and despite even a thousand more defections, the Romneys will press their claims right up to the GOP convention. It is the same species of hope-against-the-despair that illuminates the fevered dreams of the fugitive Bin Laden—not Sen. Barack Obama, Mr. Romney—but Osama Bin Laden—please try to keep them straight.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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