Posts Tagged ‘erick erickson’

are the Romneys learning from their reversals in IA and NH?—if reports are true, the Romneys have made several brilliant operational and organizational moves in light of recent setbacks

January 9, 2008 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign finance, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, Evangelicals, GOP, incompetence, media, mitt romney, policy, polls, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
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[…] “NPR reports that Mitt Romney is shaking up his staff today and taking more control himself,” writes Erick of Redstate.com in a blog burst titled Sources Say

Also, I hear from multiple sources that he has shifted some staff around, pulling people from Florida and sending them to Michigan […]

Loses learn. This is one of the uses of adversity. Not so Team Romney, we used to argue, because Romney’s vast personal fortune insulates Team Romney from the costs of its failures.

But now there is evidence that the Romney is attempting to rationalize its organization and its operations. This could allow them to, you know, develop a message that connects with voters.

Regard:

“Mitt Romney hasn’t extended his television presence into next week in South Carolina and Florida, an aide confirms,” writes Jonathan Martin of the politico.com in a blog burst titled Mitt not re-upping his S.C. and Fla. TV time

Romney has been on TV for months in both states, owning the airwaves long before his GOP rivals purchased their first spots.

But his multimillion-dollar investment in the two key states that may ultimately decide the GOP nominee has not paid off as he continues to lag behind rivals there.

Spokesman Kevin Madden declined to say whether their decision was based upon strategy or money […]

[…] Ten days before South Carolina and 20 before Florida it’s difficult to see why he’d go dark in either crucial state, unless he’s decided to limit how much of his own cash he’s using on what has so far been a disappointing campaign.

UPDATE: Another indication that Romney is easing back on the self-funding — an adviser tells AP’s Glen Johnson that they recognize that their ad campaign wasn’t terribly effective and that now they’re going to focus on earned media. Also known as free media […]

Martin interprets this move as weakness.

We interpret it as strength, amazing strength, strength combined with a stern resolve. Viz.: Romney has the money. So this is not the voice of grim necessity. Rather: This is a rational choice, a sober choice, and the correct choice.

These corrections suggest a more accurate interpretation of the upcoming contests and the players involved. These corrections also suggest a more accurate assessment of what is achievable and for what cost. Here is the money quote from the Glen Jonhson AP article that Martin links to:

[…] Conceding Romney had been hurt by a backlash against the hard-hitting television commercials the former Massachusetts governor ran against Huckabee and McCain, the adviser said the campaign hoped to “get away from the paid media and get more of the earned media.”

The shift would suggest a greater emphasis on generating newspaper, Internet and television coverage, especially in Michigan, where Romney was born and which is next on the primary calendar on Jan. 15. Romney flies to Grand Rapids, Mich., on Wednesday after a fundraiser in Boston […]

A targeted, earned-media strategy will allow Team Romney to correctly assess the effectiveness of their messages. The data and experience that accrues from their efforts can help them increase their ROI and develop more effective messages. They will have at last organized themselves into a learning loop more closely coupled to their audiences and sources of support. They will in the very least be be spending less which will improve their image. In other words, they will have caught up with the other campaigns.

However: In the same article, Johnson also reports this:

[…] Nonetheless, Romney chided McCain and Huckabee for cherry-picking contests, with Huckabee having focused on Iowa while McCain focused on New Hampshire. Romney spent more than $7 million on advertising in each state, and held as many, if not more, events in both places than any of his GOP rivals […]

But reports are that Romney is withdrawing staff from SC and FL to invest in MI. Also: reports indicate that Romney is scaling back his ad buys in SC and FL. In other words, Romney too has learned to cherry-pick. As we have argued elsewhere, what Romney calls “cherry-picking” is the most rational strategy in an election cycle with no clear coalition. Politics specifies itself in space—demography, geography, and ideology all intertwine and pass into one another—to build a coalition from the ground up you need to first establish a regional base.

The other candidates have staked out the parts of the map they want to contest. (The first candidate to recognize and act on the new reality was Mayor Giuliani. His strategy has yet to encounter its first real contest.)

Romney has yet to do that.

But: Evidence indicates that he now moves in that direction.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

P.S. Hypothetical questions: What if Romney were to campaign on who he is instead of an invented Romney? What if Romney were to organize a rational and ethical campaign? What if Romney were to cease his grimly negative campaigning?

Answer: the governing assumptions of this web log would be all, and in an instant, overturned. And we would be forced to admit that this was the case or risk being accused of being irrational ourselves. At that moment we truly would become a Blog for Mitt as we would no longer have a case against a Romney presidency.

Question: Is such an outcome even possible?

Go Mitt!—i.e. stop lying, stop shape-shifting, stop sliming other candidates, and stop spending money that you did not raise through your own hard efforts, and go and be our President.

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Gov. Mike Huckabee has all the right enemies, Romney first among them

December 21, 2007 in 2008, analysis, argument, conservatism, election 2008, Evangelicals, GOP, Iowa, media, mitt romney, republicans, romney, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
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[The GOP elites] “are panicking because a) Huckabee is a wild card who could lose massively in the general election; b) Huckabee doesn’t owe any of them anything; and c) Huckabee’s rise shows how badly, perhaps irretrievably, the fusionist settlement (uniting social and economic conservatives) has broken down, leaving the GOP in a shambles,” writes Rod Dreher in a belief.net Conservative Blog post titled Why Does the Establishment fear Huck?

It’s funny, but when it looked like Rudy Giuliani, a social liberal, was going to be the nominee, we didn’t see many, if any, establishment Republican opinion leaders freaking out over what kind of danger to the future of the party and the nation he represented, even though as Ross points out, Giuliani hasn’t exactly been deep on policy (I had to research Giuliani for our Dallas Morning News editorial board debate on which candidate to endorse, and I was genuinely startled by how vague he was on many things). I think it’s fair to say that it was assumed that Giuliani would be a sound representative of the Republican Party, and that the social and religious conservatives would do like they always do and get in line. Pat Robertson sure did.

But lo, it turns out that the candidate who’s caught fire comes straight out of the religious/social conservative wing of the coalition, and he is unsound on issues most important to the fiscal wing. It’s not supposed to work that way. Nobody at the elite level seems to expect the economic conservatives to suck it up for the sake of party unity. What does that say about the place of social conservatives in the party all these years? … etc.

We have no brief for Gov. Mike Huckabee. We are for whoever is opposed to Willard Milton Romney—this is our editorial position for as long as there is a Romney in the race. (To be honest, we tend to like Mayor Giuliani because we once lived under his rule and witnessed first hand how he transformed NYC.) But the more we study the figure of Gov. Mike Huckabee, the more compelling he becomes. Besides: He has all the right enemies.

Erick of Redstate.com opines:

… The other day I said all the attacks on Huckabee come across as so anti-evangelical, so anti-southern, and so anti-social conservative that the attacks are doing nothing but helping Mike Huckabee.

I expect him to go up in the polls even further as a result of the establishment New York-Washington Corridor of Mainstream IntelligentsiaTM and parts of the New York-Washington Corridor of Conservative IntelligentsiaTM attack his Christmas ad.

Jesus Christ! Seriously. Jesus Christ — that’s what people are hung up on him saying. And there’s the floating cross segment of a book shelf in the background that the truly paranoid saw immediately (I only noticed it as something extra after all the cries from people — most of whom I suspect were just upset that their candidate didn’t think of doing such an ad first) … etc.

Comment: We’re Jewish and felt no sense of threat in Gov. Huckabee’s sectarian salute. But Erick makes an interesting point: Romney and his surrogates are now on public record not simply as non-Evangelical despite Romney’s many attempts to identify himself with the Evangelical movement, but as anti-Evangelical by virtue of their vicious attacks on the character and person of Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Or: At least that is the perception.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.