NH Union Leader: “In this primary, the more Mitt Romney speaks, the less believable he becomes”—also: “Romney has not received a single newspaper endorsement in NH”

December 26, 2007 in 2008, argument, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, media, mitt romney, republicans, romney, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: duplicity, editorial, fake, false, ideological cross-dresser, liar, New Hampshire, phony, trust, trustworthiness, union leader, untrustworthy

“THERE IS A reason Mitt Romney has not received a single newspaper endorsement in New Hampshire,” write the editors of the NH Union Leader in an editorial titled The Romney backlash: Conservatives are coming home

It’s the same reason his poll numbers are dropping. He has not been able to convince the people of this state that he’s the conservative he says he is.

The data points support the Union Leader’s conclusion. People really do perceive Romney as less and less conservative.

Rasmussen Reports: “Romney is now viewed as politically conservative by 38% of Republican voters and moderate or liberal by 43%—Those figures reflect an eight-point decline in the number seeing him as conservative and a ten-point increase in the number seeing him as moderate or liberal”

Back to the editorial:

Like a lot of people in New Hampshire, we wanted to believe Romney. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. We listened very carefully to his expertly rehearsed sales pitch. But in the end he didn’t close the deal for us. Now, two weeks before the primary, the same is happening with voters.

Republicans and right-leaning independents in New Hampshire gave Romney a chance. His events have not been sparsely attended. Nor have they been scarce. He’s made more campaign stops here this year than any other Republican, even John McCain.

And after a year of comparing Romney to McCain, of sizing up the two in person and in the media, Granite Staters are turning back to McCain. The former Navy pilot, once written off by the national media establishment, is now in a statistical dead heat with Romney here.

How could that be? Romney has all the advantages: money, organization, geographic proximity, statesman-like hair, etc.

But he lacks something John McCain has in spades: conviction.

Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that day in and day out, never wavering, never faltering, never pandering.

Mitt Romney has not. He has spoken his lines well, but the people can sense that the words are memorized, not heartfelt.

Last week Romney was reduced to debating what the meaning of “saw” is. It was only the latest in a string of demonstrably false claims — he’d been a hunter “pretty much” all his life, he’d had the NRA’s endorsement, he saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr. — that call into question the veracity of his justifications for switching sides on immigration, abortion, taxes and his affection for Ronald Reagan.

In this primary, the more Mitt Romney speaks, the less believable he becomes. That is why Granite Staters who have listened attentively are now returning to John McCain. They might not agree with McCain on everything, as we don’t, but like us, they judge him to be a man of integrity and conviction, a man who won’t sell them out, who won’t break his promises, and who won’t lie to get elected.

Voters can see that John McCain is trustworthy. Mitt Romney has spent a year trying to convince Granite Staters that he is as well. It looks like they aren’t buying it. And for good reason … etc.

Dear political primitives of Team Romney. This grim editorial is the kind of attention you get when your negatives are high and you go negative. Please see:

Rasmussen Reports: Romney has the least core support, and the most core opposition of all the leading candidates, Republican or Democrat—these findings predict the sudden and fierce backlash against Romney’s negative attacks on other candidates

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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McLaughlin of Redstate on Romney: Americans hate phonies

October 10, 2007 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign literature, campaign management, centrism, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, mitt romney, republicans, rhetoric, romney, triumph of reason
Tags: Bill Clinton, Brownback, Dan McLaughlin, false, Giuliani, Huckabee, Jonah Goldberg, McCain, phoney, redstate

… “This is admittedly subjective, but Jonah Goldberg aptly summarized the way Romney often comes off in public by describing [Romney’s] demeanor as, ‘What Do I Have to Do To Put You In This BMW Today?'” writes the estimable Dan McLaughlin in a not-to-be-missed Redstate post titled The Trouble With Mitt Romney (Part 1 of 5)

I’ll discuss the specifics in more detail later, but the broader issue is that Romney seems unconvincing as the conservative he is running as; his calculations seem too close to the surface.

When the race kicked off, with Rudy and McCain as the frontrunners and the second tier filled with unknowns and/or candidates with their own issues with the base (e.g., Huckabee on taxes, Brownback to some extent on immigration), there was an opportunity for a candidate to build a market niche as the sane, electable conservative. Romney, to the credit of his business instincts, jumped on that opportunity like a starving man on a sandwich. The problem is that that posture is just not consistent with Romney’s history of campaigning and governing as a moderate, pragmatic, non-ideological Northeastern Republican, and specifically with numerous stands he has taken in the very recent past. Now, a good businessman, or even a candidate running principally as a competent technocrat, can get away with running on what the public wants today rather than on principles. But Romney is running a fundamentally ideological campaign, and he is doing so all too transparently as a businessman pursuing an underserved market rather than as a true believer.

Romney’s air of slickness and phoniness manifests itself in a number of specific ways I will get into later in this series, but the overall effect is an even more pronounced than usual (for a politician) tendency to leave people feeling like he will say anything to get elected. Democrats have, justly, suffered for that perception in the last two presidential elections, and they are almost certainly nominating a candidate who is legendarily calculating (Bill Clinton, by contrast, was a master at faking sincerity; but Romney, like so many others in politics, lacks Clinton’s talents in this regard and would do well not to try to imitate him). Republicans, having successfully and appropriately attacked Gore and Kerry and most likely Hillary as well on this basis, cannot afford to run a candidate who comes off as a phony … more [Emphasis ours]

Question: Does anyone like phonies?

Excellent metaphor: Romney as a “businessman pursuing an underserved market.”

yours &c.
dr. g.d.