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“We were sitting around with a PowerPoint”—said a senior Romney advisor, “We weren’t sitting around with a crystal ball”—how Team Romney lost Iowa over a year ago in a posh Boston suburb

December 26, 2007 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, Evangelicals, gaffs and pratfalls, GOP, incompetence, Iowa, media, mitt romney, policy, polls, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
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“DES MOINES — A year ago, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney gathered his campaign team for the first time at his suburban Boston home,” writes Michael D. Shear with the apt and able assistance of sidekick and drinking buddy, Perry Bacon Jr., scion of the legendary Perry Bacon, in a Wapo release titled Romney Strategy in Peril With Huckabee’s Ascent; Bid for Early States Appears in Jeopardy

There were PowerPoint presentations, and Ann Romney made sandwiches. “It was like the first day of school,” said one senior-level participant.

It was then that Romney put in motion his strategy to become president: Win Iowa and New Hampshire by wooing fiscal and social conservatives, and use that momentum to overwhelm the competition in the primaries that followed. But with less than two weeks before Iowans vote, that strategy is in danger of unraveling because former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has seized the conservative mantle and has emerged as the front-runner. His sudden rise in the past month — sparked by passionate support from the same Christian conservatives Romney has been unable to win over — has raised questions about Romney’s strategy.

Yes, well, we predicted all this weeks and weeks ago.

Back to Shear:

“In Iowa, someone was always going to challenge Romney as a conservative alternative,” said GOP consultant Scott Reed, who managed Robert J. Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996. “Huckabee has caught the eyes of social conservatives in Iowa, and the issue is if they have grown enough in numbers to deliver a win.”

Romney’s advisers bristle at the notion that he could have run his campaign differently. They are particularly sensitive to charges that the former governor changed his positions on abortion, immigration and gay rights to be more in tune with Republican voters, particularly in Iowa. They say his conservative credentials are genuine.

And, they say, they always knew Romney would face a challenge like this, though at the December 2006 meeting, the talk was about former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani — not Huckabee.

“We were sitting around with a PowerPoint,” a senior adviser, one of a half-dozen who were at the December gathering, said on the condition of anonymity. “We weren’t sitting around with a crystal ball.”

Question: About Team Romney’s sudden clarity about the misguidedness of their “strategy,” is this genuine, or is this a naive, transparent attempt to manage expectations. Several remarks:

(1) Whether Team Romney wins or loses Iowa analysts will publish abroad how much Romney spent for every poll number relative to his rivals, and so will his rivals. Romney has so overspent, so wildly missed the mark, and so badly botched his operation that he has denied himself in advance the possibility of a clear win, an unequivocal victory.

Conclusion: any degree of expectations management now is risible on its face.

(2) Team Romney has—unbelievably—overshot the mark playing down expectations!—Their frank depictions of dejection and disarray within the Romney organization are conditioning expectations too effectively—Romney supporters themselves are beginning to despair.

Back to Shear:

A year later, Romney’s top aides spend their time in meetings working to beat back Huckabee’s challenge.

“Are there moments of quiet and sometimes not-so-quiet desperation? Of course,” another longtime adviser said. “But . . . this is the strategy we have. We don’t have the option of doing anything else.”

Note the tone of cruel gloom and helplessness. Note the utter failure of imagination. We predicted the pain and paralysis of the Romney campaign too:

Romney campaign a victim of the “sunk cost effect”—also: how Gov. Huckabee’s sudden ascendancy is an artifact of the Romney campaign’s misguided activities

Back to Shear:

Campaign spokesman Kevin Madden described the mood at the Boston headquarters as “determined” and “poised” these past few weeks, even as Romney’s lead in Iowa has evaporated. He said staff members are following the lead of their candidate, who appeared calm as ever last week as he skipped across Iowa in a rented jet.

Team Romney’s mood is “determined” and “poised”—translation: Team Romney is “brooding in apocalyptic despair,” and it has been for weeks now, long before Gov. Huckabee’s rise:

David S. Broder describes the fuhrerbunker-like gloom that hangs over the waterfront headquarters of a besieged Team Romney

Back to Shear:

On the campaign trail, Romney tells how a friend, Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), told him in 2004 that he needed to start making preparations if he wanted to at least have the option of running for president.

Over the next year, Romney formed a PAC that he used to spread money to local candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. In 2006, he became chairman of the Republican Governors Association, a position that gave him an excuse to travel regularly to those states.

And he began meeting with his brain trust: Spencer Zwick, his finance chief; Robert F. White, a partner at Bain Financial, the firm he started; Beth Myers, who would become his campaign manager; New Hampshire consultant Tom Rath; and Iowa consultant Gentry Collins, who headed the PAC. Benjamin L. Ginsberg was the PAC’s lawyer and also a confidant. Ron Kaufman, a top aide to President George H.W. Bush, was present, as were Mike Murphy, a consultant who ran Romney’s campaign for governor, and Dave Kochel, an Iowa strategist.

That group conceived the plan for Romney, who was hardly known outside of his home state and Utah.

“There are two ways to run: run as the front-runner, or you play the breakthrough/early-state strategy,” said one of Romney’s longtime advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You don’t get to choose.”

What leadership. What moral courage. What political-moral imagination.

Why are the Romneys always telling us—and telling themselves!—what cannot be done?

The adviser added: “You burrow down deep and spend time building these organizations, going back over and over and over again. You are really playing for three years for about three weeks.”

The idea from the beginning was to focus on Romney’s business credentials and his reputation as a pragmatic problem-solver, as the savior of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and as governor of Massachusetts. It was assumed that Romney would have to work hard for acceptance in Iowa, where as many as 85 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers are against abortion rights.

Yet Romney could never develop within himself the courage, the focus, or the intention necessary to stay on topic. See:

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”

Further: Romney’s attempt to position himself as “conservative standard bearer” has failed miserably:

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 Shear:

“He’s a Midwestern guy. He’s from Michigan. His family was always well received in Iowa,” a longtime adviser said. “We felt pretty good that we could do well in Iowa. And it was self-evident that if you are going to be running against John McCain, who was known in the party, and Rudy Giuliani, the fifth most famous man in the world, an early-state strategy was really the best — and perhaps only — way to establish a rationale.”

But Romney advisers concede their candidate has spent more time than they planned talking about social issues. They say that is because rival campaigns have forced him to react, and because of the rise of Huckabee, who has coalesced more of the Christian vote than past candidates.

If Huckabee wins the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3, Romney’s campaign will have four days to recover before making a stand in New Hampshire, where he is leading in recent opinion polls. Romney aides claim a potential upside for their candidate: Huckabee’s meteoric rise has reset expectations for Romney, who will be credited with a meaningful win in Iowa should he pull it off.

Romney no longer talks about Giuliani on the stump. His advisers barely mention former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.). The message has become “all Huck, all the time,” though in the past several days Romney also has had to contend with a resurgence by McCain in New Hampshire. Romney last week began a barnstorming of three early-voting states by assailing Huckabee as a liberal, adding his own voice to new negative television ads and to mailings that his campaign has begun churning out every day.

On immigration, Romney cited Huckabee’s support for a bill that would have granted in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. On crime, he highlighted the 1,033 pardons and commutations Huckabee granted as governor. On the economy, he told reporters that Huckabee presided over a state budget that grew from $6 billion to $16 billion.

“I’m convinced that as people take a close look, that the good, conservative Republicans of South Carolina will be supporting a conservative candidate like myself and they won’t be supporting Governor Huckabee,” Romney said, campaigning in South Carolina on his way to Iowa. “But time will tell.”

Romney received a boost last week when Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed him, saying he believed Romney would protect the country’s borders.

Huckabee spent the week basking in newfound popularity in Iowa. A month ago, he was having events in pizza parlors with 40 people and almost no press. Last week, 200 people packed into a raucous event in West Des Moines, with 50 more waiting outside.

Huckabee has described Romney as “desperate,” and his descriptions of Huckabee’s record as “dishonest,” “misleading” and “unfair.” For the moment, Romney’s advisers insist, they feel apprehension but not panic. “Would we like it to be different? Of course,” said one adviser who has been with Romney for years. “You have to trust the team. You have to trust the strategy. You have to trust what your original instinct was. I think that’s where the governor is.”

Note the tone of abject despair. “You have to trust what your original instinct was. I think that’s where the governor is.”—groupthink, is what they call it.

How else do you account for Team Romney’s complete failure of the imagination?

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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Romney’s self-financing an artifact of Romney’s self-deception—we call it the Madden Doctrine

October 1, 2007 in 2008, analysis, campaign finance, campaign literature, campaign management, election, election 2008, 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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“When former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney closes the books on his latest campaign finance report today, it will reveal a slow but steady shift from a candidacy built on thousands of individual donations to one relying increasingly on his own personal fortune,” writes the estimable Matthew Mosk with the aid of his fast-learning apprentice, Perry Bacon Jr., and crack researcher Madonna Lebling, in a Washington Post article titled Report to Show Romney Fortune’s Bigger Role

Top Romney advisers said last week that they expected his campaign to raise almost $40 million in the first nine of months this year. And though they have not released a firm figure, they expected that Romney will have supplemented those contributions with nearly $15 million of his own money.

Romney’s candidacy has quietly morphed into one of the nation’s first hybrid campaigns for a major-party presidential nomination: one that is neither a traditional bid built on individual donations nor a self-funded effort such as those launched by billionaires Steve Forbes and Ross Perot.

“Romney is something different,” said Jennifer A. Steen, a Boston College professor who has written a book on self-financed candidates.

That Romney is spending some of his personal fortune, estimated to be between $190 million and $250 million, in part reflects a decline in donations to his campaign. He led all of the GOP contenders in fundraising during the first three months of the year. But he relied in large part on maximum donations from business allies in Massachusetts, where he ran the venture capital company Bain Capital Partners, as well as from fellow Mormons in Utah, where Romney managed the 2002 Winter Olympics. His donations from those two states fell sharply between April and June.

Romney’s personal money has helped him avoid the plight of another White House contender, Sen. John McCain, who found himself laying off staff in July while Romney was able to air ads in key primary states. His spending is a more dramatic and expansive version of what then-candidate John F. Kerry did in December 2003, when the Democratic senator from Massachusetts lent his campaign more than $6 million in a last-ditch effort that helped him win the Iowa caucuses …

… Ron Kaufman, a top Romney adviser who attended the event, said it sent a powerful message to potential supporters who might have wondered whether Romney would simply run on his personal fortune.

“As self-funding, big-spending candidates have proven, it doesn’t get you anything,” Kaufman said. “The bottom line is: The way to be a candidate for president is prove you can put the organization together, prove to the voters that you’ve earned the right to be a serious candidate for president. You’ve got to earn it; you can’t buy it.”

After that [Romney’s campaign launch], Romney punctuated that message, telling reporters that it would be “akin to a nightmare” if he were forced to contribute much of his own money to his presidential effort.

By the end of the first fundraising quarter, which closed on March 31, he had posted a headline-grabbing $21 million total, helping to vault him into the top tier of candidates seeking the GOP nomination.

That figure was critical to establishing Romney as a viable candidate. As almost an afterthought, the campaign revealed that the candidate had also put $2.4 million into his campaign account. When asked about it by a Boston Globe reporter, an aide stressed that the money was a loan to the campaign, not a gift.

Over the next three months, the balance between the money Romney raised from contributors and the money he drew from his own accounts began to shift. His fundraising haul dropped to $14 million, compared with the $17 million total of one of his top rivals, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and the more than $32 million taken in by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). But Romney also lent himself an additional $6.5 million.

At a news conference, he signaled that his message about the role his bank accounts would play had shifted. “It would be nice not to have to loan or contribute to your own campaign, but the reality is, if you want to have a strong campaign that gets out there and can talk across the nation, you’re going to have to do what’s necessary,” he told reporters.

Kevin Madden, a campaign spokesman, said Romney’s top advisers carefully weighed the political implications of turning to the candidate’s own money for help. What they determined, he said, was that the investments the campaign was making in early television ads were yielding a return, and that the campaign appeared to be blossoming.

“In order to maintain the campaign’s growth, we needed to have the resources,” Madden said. “The decision was to match that growth with his own personal contribution, so this campaign would not be short of resources, so we would remain competitive and grow into a national organization.”

The campaign also faced a significant challenge that was not confronting Romney’s chief Republican rivals, Giuliani, McCain and former senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee: Romney is much less well-known around the country.

Romney “invested” — the term his campaign likes to use to describe the use of his personal resources — significant sums in paid advertisements, far outpacing the other candidates by devoting more than $6 million to television spots, according to Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. He also poured money into Iowa, assembling an operation for the state’s straw poll that included a statewide corps of 60 “super-volunteers,” who were paid between $500 and $1,000 per month to talk up his candidacy; a fleet of buses; a direct-mail campaign; and a straw poll consultant who was paid nearly $200,000 …

Romney’s aides have signaled that he will report putting in about $6 million more of his own money over the past three months, and there are reasons for this. Romney’s poll numbers in New Hampshire are slipping; and with him still running fourth among the leading GOP contenders in national surveys, his campaign sent out a memo both to reassure supporters and to lower their expectations.

And as Romney prepared to release his third-quarter numbers this week, he began hinting that he will be using even more of his own money. He presented at an event in California a new rationale for doing this — far from the “nightmare” he had described earlier — telling supporters that, by dipping into his pocket, he would not be “beholden to any particular group for getting me into this race or for getting me elected” … more

What interests us about this article is how succinctly it chronicles how every conclusion that the Romney campaign reaches is based on self-deception and circular reasoning. Consider what we call the Madden Doctrine—we call it that because in the article it gets articulated by Romney’s maddeningly inarticulate helper-monkey Keven Madden, and because it is maddeningly circular—it goes like this:

  1. We determined that the investments the campaign was making in early television ads were yielding a return
  2. Because of these investments the campaign appeared to be blossoming.
  3. In order to maintain the campaign’s growth, we needed to have the resources.”
  4. So: “The decision was to match that growth with his own personal contribution, so this campaign would not be short of resources, so we would remain competitive and grow into a national organization.”

To paraphrase: we believed our early television ad buys were working; the campaign appeared to be blossoming. (Note the use of the modal operator appeared—was it blossoming, or wasn’t it?) But to keep blossoming—to maintain our “growth”—we needed more resources—i.e. we needed more of Romney’s cash. Here is the problem: the Romney campaign was hardly “blossoming” or “growing”—i.e. developing a base of support, i.e. people willing to invest their labour or substance in the campaign—if the blossoming and growing were only sustainable with massive infusions of cash from Romney’s personal accounts. Apparent is right!—what Madden describes as “growth” was, and is, an illusion, an artifact of Romney-cash and not of interest in the candidate himself—otherwise the campaign would call on its supporters to support it, a far surer and more reliable sign of political strength.

In other words, the campaign spent lots of money, Romney-money. In return the Romneys got lots of attention. Only in the Romney-Hall-of-Mirrors this attention somehow got mistook for a “blossoming” of “growth” and support—it was not as if the Romneys were trying to deceive anyone—per contra: they had managed to deceive themselves. Now the campaign is announcing further Romney infusions to maintain the illusion as opposed to developing a genuine base, coalition, or successful message!—it is as if a patient on palliative care mistook the absence of pain as a sign that they should forgo a life-saving surgery—such is the power of illusion born of self-deception, and such are the addictive properties of free money among Romney’s entourage of parasites and hangers-on, the hireling flaks and flatterers that pass for Romney’s campaign staff.

We have been both predicting, and chronicling, these melancholy developments here for weeks now—we started this blog to follow these events to their inevitable conclusion—question: are we the only ones who have made note of this slow motion train wreck? For only a small sampling see:

Conclusion: Romney as a candidate exists only by virtue of his vast personal fortune. Romney has no base. Romney has no following. And: the man and his staff are ridiculously incompetent—bafflingly so.

Romney is more than an aberration or a transitional figure. Of this we are convinced. He is a sign of a troubled and corrupt era.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.