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”

December 24, 2007 in 2008, analysis, campaign communications, centrism, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, media, mitt romney, republicans, romney
Tags: botched rhetoric, impression formation, liberal, liberalism, Michael Luo, perceptions, polling, polls, Rasmussen Reports, Russ Schriefer, stupid politician trick

You can read Rasmussen’s full analysis here.

Michael Luo, from an earlier discussion:

… 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.”

Um, not so fast, Russ. Your hapless candidate is losing ground. Less people believe that Romney is a conservative, not more. So perhaps what makes Romney “unique” is his singular ability to leave his listeners ambivalent and unconvinced.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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how Romney’s spending has distorted perceptions in Iowa and New Hampshire

December 2, 2007 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign finance, campaign management, election 2008, GOP, incompetence, media, mitt romney, policy, republicans, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: corruption, Jonathan Martin, perceptions, political primitives, Politico.com, Romneyism, self-financing, spending, team romney

“The facts are well-known, but worth repeating,” writes Jonathan Martin of the Politico in a post titled Huckmania running wild in Hawkeye Country

Mitt Romney has been on TV almost non-stop for nine months in Iowa. He’s been to the state dozens of times over the last three years. His 99-county organization is viewed as the most formidable of any Republican in the state.

And now he’s lost the lead he’s enjoyed for the past six months to somebody who just in the past few weeks has gone up on TV, has been to the state less (almost not at all in the past month) and whose campaign team, by their own admission, does not have what Romney does on the ground.

The cross-tabs are not available on the Register website now, but apparently voters sampled see Romney as more presidential and Giuliani as more electable. So why are they moving to Huckabee? Beyond his social conservative credentials, he also wins points for being the most civil and principled in the field. In short, they just like him.

Romney’s challenge now is to change that dynamic by providing them new information (i.e. oppo) that will lessen this ardor. But it won’t be easy. As I’ve said before, Romney risks a serious backlash by going negative. He’s started to do contrast in the mail and in campaign appearances, but it’s a bigger and riskier step to do so on TV … etc., etc.

Remarks:

(1) We predicted this:

• Sargent: “[Grrrr-Romney] was spending $100,000 a week through October, and he’s now upped the ante to $200,000 a week [in NH]”—in which post we discuss how Romney grossly overshot the mark—overshot the culminating point of his gains—in the early primary states.
• how Romney’s early state strategy is creating conditions that resemble a general election—in which post we discuss how Romney mis-timed his media blitz and thereby conceded every advantage to his underfunded, and un- or under-organized rivals.

(2) Another string on which we harp here is Romney’s fantastically low ROI for his every campaign dollar, i.e. the ultra-low efficiency of Romney’s organization.

Examples:

• Romney has spent upwards of US$10 million in Iowa and all he got was this lousy t-shirt—Romney suddenly aware of his painfully exposed position in the early-state primaries—yet more evidence of Romney’s appallingly low ROI for his every campaign dollar
• Romney spending US$85,000.00.00 per day in Iowa, yet Huckabee has suddenly risen to within 7 points of Romney while spending nothing—zero—goose-egg—yet more evidence of Romney’s appallingly low ROI on his every campaign dollar—yet another blow to the Romney von Schlieffen plan
• Is it “mittmentum,” or is it the US$85,000 a day—$US600,000.00 last week alone—for a total so far of US$10.2 million that Romney is spending on television advertising that has resulted in Romney’s unstable, unreliable early primary-state leads—yet more evidence of Romney’s frighteningly low ROI for his every campaign dollar

We have also harped on the string of Romney’s self-financing:

• Romney with a straight face: “it’s the height of irony that the father of McCain-Feingold now has his supporters raising vast sums of money, more than regular citizens can donate, to support his campaign”—also: will someone at Team Romney please explain to the candidate what “irony” means?
• Tapper: Romney Surpasses Steve Forbes’ Self-Funding Pace

(3) Follow us for a moment: the point we want to make is a subtle one.

Say that someone buys a home in your neighborhood and what they pay is significantly below market value. What does this do to the price of your home? It drives it down. Say that some agent or agency dumps a commodity on the market at below market prices, even selling at a loss. What happens? Chaos. Dislocation. A crash in the value of the commodity, the ruin of competitors etc. Moral: free money or huge subsidies can cause distortions that correct themselves in chaos and collapse—generally, you want to pay for a good or a service what that good or service is worth (and no more), and you want others to pay for a good or a service what that service is worth. Otherwise, price become meaningless as an index of value.

Now, consider the Romney campaign, awash in free cash from Romney’s own pockets.

Political fund-raising is costly, especially for Republicans at this precise historical moment. But Team Romney is largely insulated from these costs—as well as from the learning these costs exact upon their payers. Campaigns organized on a more rational basis—i.e. campaigns whose spending is constrained by the success of their operations, campaigns more closely coupled to a broader base of funding sources and support—must adjust and adapt to develop their coalitions. Not so Team Romney, which behaves with the arrogance and sense of entitlement of a spoiled rich kid.

Further: the millions that Team Romney has squandered in Iowa and New Hampshire has so distorted perceptions that no one—not pundits, not pollsters, not analysts—can resolve a clear signal—no one really knows what is happening on the ground. The market realized as a price system—to continue our metaphor—will not support accurate comparisons. For example, when Gov. Huckabee gains on Romney in Iowa it is considered huge news for no other reason than what Romney has spent in Iowa, when the real and un-remarkable story is that Romney is a weak candidate with no clear message.

In other words, were Romney a real candidate and not an artifact of Republican decline combined with our absurd campaign finance laws—i.e. if what Romney could spend were a reliable indicator of his political fitness—then there would be no story, as there would probably be no Romney.

Our point: confusion is what results from what we call Romneyism. Romneyism is what happens when a corrupt political establishment sells off a national party for a pittance.

All of the operational questions that confront Team Romney reduce to one: How much of the patrimony of Romney’s beloved sons is Romney willing to squander? Does Boy Romney have the will and the nerve to sustain his current burn-rate?—or: does he lack to the good sense to cut his losses and pull out now? Here is the problem for the political primitives of Team Romney: the distortions caused by all that free-floating low-cost Romney-money will reach their limit in the form of a massive market correction, i.e. a big crash. We wish we could predict with confidence that it will be Team Romney that gets corrected, but we cannot. What is more likely is that Romney will take the party down with him.

“The system that you have is the system that you deserve,” our systems-administrator is fond of saying. The same could be said about leadership.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.