Romney: Senator John McCain “has always stood for reform and change”—Hazelbaker: “It is laughable that Mitt Romney would think anyone buys his latest act as an agent of change, when the only thing he’s ever changed are his positions on every issue of importance in this election”

January 5, 2008 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign literature, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, incompetence, Iowa, media, mitt romney, policy, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: fixed point, Michael Luo, New Hampshire, NYT, redacting the Iowa decision, rejoinder, retort, Sen. John McCain, theme of change, themes, wonkokevin, wonkosphere

[…] “In response to Mr. Romney’s new theme, the McCain campaign circulated an e-mail message to reporters, highlighting a statement from Mr. Romney in 2002, when Mr. McCain campaigned for him. At the time, Mr. Romney said that Mr. McCain ‘has always stood for reform and change,‘” writes the estimable Michael Luo in a NYT article titled Romney Embraces Theme Used to Beat Him

Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said: “It is laughable that Mitt Romney would think anyone buys his latest act as an agent of change, when the only thing he’s ever changed are his positions on every issue of importance in this election” […]

The struggle for Iowa has entered its archival phase. This is when the political community and various media dispute, interpret, or redact he results. An emerging “fixed point” now conditioning and organizing the discussion is the notion that voters want “change.” (By “fixed point” we mean a point of convergence or common assumption emerging in the popular account.)

What is meant by “change” now becomes the question.

But there are grounds to dispute this fixed point:

[…] The relatively stronger showing of Thompson and weaker showing of McCain (I don’t think he met expectations), along with Huckabee’s win over Romney, also demonstrates that conservative ideology was more important to Republican Iowans than pragmatism per se […], writes WonkoKevin in a wonkoblog blog burst titled ObaMo and HuckMo.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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the high price Romney pays for his aggressively negative campaigning—blogosphere blogbuzz suggests movement away from both Gov. Huckabee AND the hapless candidate from MA, Romney

January 2, 2008 in 2008, argument, campaign communications, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, incompetence, Iowa, media, mitt romney, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: advertising, ambivalence, blogbuzz, blogging, blogs, ennui, negative, negative attacks, negative campaigning, negativity, new media, political blogs, ROI, wonkokevin, wonkosphere

“The conservative Wonkosphere continued to focus most of its attention on Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, the two front-runners in the upcoming Iowa caucus. Both are kind of hobbling into the finish line though–most of the attention to both of them is strongly negative, and this negativity has gone on for the last 3 weeks,” writes WonkoKevin for the WonkoBlog in a post titled Ennui: Conservative bloggers increase their negative focus on Huckabee and Romney

… IF we assume that conservative bloggers yesterday are of similar sentiment to conservative voters in Iowa, then we might predict low turnout, which helps Huckabee, probably helps Paul challenge for third place … etc.

Pass in review. What happens when your own negatives are high and you go negative? You implode.

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

This explains Romney’s sudden and wild over-spending—on top of his earlier over-spending—in Iowa. He needs to compensate for the collapse of his own support. Evidence: Romney’s ROI for his every campaign dollar continues to plummet; he spends wildly, he spends more and more, yet his numbers are static.

Romney’s Kevin Madden “flabbergasted” at Team Romney’s helplessness against under-funded and un-organized Gov. Huckabee—Romney loses control of his spending says Carr—more on Romney’s fantastically low ROI for his every campaign dollar

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

wonkosphere: Dec 30 23:00 MST, Romney’s blogosphere buzzshare more negative than norm, and trending down as we slide toward Iowa

January 1, 2008 in 2008, analysis, argument, conservatism, election 2008, GOP, media, mitt romney, republicans, romney, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: buzzbulletins, buzzshare, negative, negativity, tone, trends, wonkokevin, wonkosphere, wonkosphere.com

You can track these trends here.

… “What’s going on?” asks WonkoKevin in a wonkoblog post titled Clinton and Paul’s waning dominance in political blogosphere suggests shifting attentions [The emphases are ours, as are changes in formatting to foreground points]

These data suggest that, as one might expect, the Wonkosphere is transitioning from a pre-primary to primary phase, and that means all of the old “attentional structure” that has existed is going to become much less significant in light of upcoming voting results.

What do we mean by “attentional structure”, and why is it important?

It comes from two sources.

First, the Wonkosphere directory is made up of the 1200 plus most prominent political blogs in the country. In the directory there are a significant number of “candidate-only” blogs–blogs that are unabashedly for a single candidate, and may even only talk about that candidate. This is why Ron Paul has had relatively more buzz share than other Republicans, and why Bill Richardson has had relatively less buzz share compared to other Democrats. It’s also why the predictive ability of Wonkosphere buzz share is based on changes in buzz share, not absolute buzz share.

The second source of “bias” in buzz share is the bias that bloggers have towards particular candidates, for any number of reasons. For example, the liberal blogosphere settled on Joe Biden months ago as the 4th candidate, and it’s been that way ever since.

The deterioration of Clinton and Paul’s dominance indicates that the Wonkosphere has shifted into a different phase where those old historical tendencies won’t matter as much, a kind of a change point. We would expect as much with Iowa at our doorstep, and the data is proving it out. A huge increase in the number of blog posts that is occurring now is overwhelming the candidate-only blogs (hence Ron Paul’s decline in buzz share, even though his total buzz amount is about the same). Previous attentional biases are being wiped clean as every new poll comes out and every news item butterfly flaps its wings.

So Clinton and Paul are down, but who else is hot and who’s not according to Wonkosphere data? …

… Barack Obama has moved up from 25% to 32% liberal buzz share in the last 2 weeks.

Ditto Mitt Romney, who has moved from 16% to 23% … etc.

Yet precisely at the moment that buzzshare decouples from the candidate-only blogs, and but hours away from a decision in Iowa, the tone of Romney’s buzzshare trends decidedly negative, especially among conservatives where it has dropped beneath the critical 0.1 level.

Gov. Huckabee’s buzzshare tone trends negative too, way negative, yet his poll numbers are holding.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.