Interesting BuzzFeed piece on Romney’s campaign style:
They attack on everything,” said Chris Maiorana, who was on the receiving end as an aide to Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign. “Some [other] campaigns try to respond and operationally this is all that they do. They lose momentum and can’t keep up.”
[….]It’s a pattern that was set by more than a decade of Romney campaigns, ones where the candidate often chose the immediate attack over a long-term plan. Romney, for instance, declined to release his tax returns in 1994 and 2002 when he ran for Senator and Governor respectively, despite calling on his opponents to do just that. Now Romney has released two years of returns — fewer than the three years he offered to release in 1994 if Kennedy released his.
Romney hasn’t allowed logical consistency to stand in the way of more recent attacks. In the 1994 race against Sen. Ted Kennedy, Romney used the liberal icon’s trust fund as a battering ram, calling it “an age-old ruse.” When Democrats question his investments, Romney now claims he has no responsibility for those in blind trusts — though they don’t meet federal requirements for such financial vehicles.
Romney’s ability to get away with this is part of the larger phenomenon that conservative politicians almost never feel any pressure from the media, except from the right. Still, I’ve never been able to understand how Romney was able to get away with running on a record of instituting HCR in his own state in a race where Republican opposition to to national NCR was one of the biggest issues. Some of it might have been that a lot of the Republican establishment was so far in the tank for him.
Anyway, this is going to be a race where Romney says and does whatever the fuck he feels like saying and doing, with no attempt to be honest or consistent.
Brachiator
He’s a real nowhere man.
jo6pac
Why should care he’s the guy who likes to fire people. The guy born on third base, silver spoon, and all that wonderful gwb stuff.
jackmac
IOKIYMR
(It’s okay if you’re Mitt Romney)
Comrade Javamanphil
He’s concluded, rightly, that the current press corpse is too weak and ineffective to challenge him. Classic bully technique. He’s daring them to call him on his crap while knowing they are too terrified to do it. Besides, the press is pretty busy having to defend their brethren at FNC from scurrilous accusations of partisan hackery. It’s a tough job.
NonyNony
Two observations:
One – did you see the clown car he had opposing him? Which of the folks in that car was more likely to win the nomination than Romney? I suppose that might be an argument that there was a better candidate who chose not to run that could have flogged Romney’s HCR past into a viable attack – but then who would it have been?
Two – Republicans aren’t actually opposed to the Republican health care reform package that Obama signed – they’re opposed to the fact that Obama signed it. Poll after poll has shown that strong majorities of even Republican voters like most of the individual provisions of the reform, they just don’t like “Obamacare”. I actually don’t think that attacks on Romney’s health care reform plan would have gotten anywhere.
Hunter Gathers
And how does that make him different from any of the other GOPers who have run for POTUS in the past 30 years?
c u n d gulag
@jo6pac:
Yes, Mitt was born on 3rd base!
But he’s mad that those nasty ol’ regulator’s called umpires, and the fans known as voters, won’t let him just waltz on ‘home’ to the White House!!!
Oh, to be born on 3rd and denied home!
What, oh Lord, did he do to deserve this?
Violet
Romney hasn’t ever been honest or consistent. It’s not just in this race. I think it’s important to remember that.
Redshift
One question: when did Romney run on his HCR record? It exists, sure, but he’s spent the entire campaign pretending it doesn’t.
shortstop
The opposition was particularly awful this year. Really, the ones who were willing to run were about two levels below the bottom of the barrel. I don’t think he’d have been able to get away with this glaring inconsistency had there been a non-batshit candidate challenging him, provided that candidate could snag the blessing of the establishment, as you say.
shortstop
@Redshift: I think Doug means that it’s part of his record — the most noticeable thing about his governorship — not that he was flogging it as a campaign issue.
MattF
Interesting and important, because now– just in case anyone thought ‘Oh, those evil insider staff people are misleading poor naive Mittsie’– we can see where the staff is getting their ideas. It’s Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, all Mitt, all the time. It’s his strategy, his view of the world, his way of doing things, his way of beating down opposition. In case you were wondering.
Valdivia
add this to the Romney style. Telling his side not to heckle is unilateral disarmament? WTF?
Lev
I have no way to prove this, but I’d be willing to bet that Mitt’s moderate record was a big selling point among conservative elites. Romney undoubtedly argued that the press would treat Santorum as a nut if he got the nomination, but would treat him as a moderate because of his record despite not actually differing from Ricky in any substantive way. Especially if there’s no evidence of his moderation–they’ll just argue he doesn’t believe what he’s saying because they want to believe it.
Then again, it’s barely an accomplishment these days to dupe the press.
Zach
“Some of it might have been that a lot of the Republican establishment was so far in the tank for him.”
Once Perry and Pawlenty turned out to be horrendous campaigners, Romney’s win was sealed. Blows my mind that so many Republicans are so risk adverse or lazy that they didn’t bother to start a Presidential campaign… Rubio, McDonnell and probably Ryan could’ve run shell campaigns and stepped in during the whole absurd not-Romney era. This assumes they’re better campaigners than Perry and Pawlenty, of course.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Chris Matthews last night gave what I can only describe as an openly anti-Romney rant.
The transcript isn’t up yet, and I can’t do video at the moment, but the gist of it was that he had no foreign policy experience, and was already toeing the neocon line as fed to him by his advisors. Then a comparison to Bush, and a reminder that his lack of experience got us into a total mess in the Middle East.
I know that CM was one of the few who opposed the Iraq war early on, but it was surprising to see anyone on MSM come out as so openly anti-Romney.
More, please.
Tonal Crow
Romney likes dressage, but he absolutely loves his Gish Gallop. Recommended response: “I’m not going to try to clean up that load of bullshit. Here’s what’s really going on….”
ornery-curmudgeon
“…this is part of the larger phenomenon that conservative politicians almost never feel any pressure from the media, except from the right blah the f blah.”
Oh fkc Doug … the media is BOUGHT.
See it. Realize it. Learn it. Know it. Accept it. Remember it.
Conservative immunity in the media isn’t a ‘phenomenon’ lol. Nor is it a ‘horse-race mentality’ or ‘cluelessness’ or ‘desire to go to parties’ or ‘overwork’ or any other of the frankly cowardly excuses people keep making up so they can feel like things are more or less okay. They are not.
The media is bought. It happened in plain sight because of the corporate interlocking board structure/stock ownership / country club golf meeting nature of the system. It must be reformed.
The media is not free. That’s bad, but not nearly as bad as blindness (for years!) about the situation; and misleading others about it must be even worse.
Haydnseek
I’m waiting for the debates. They’re the only thing that keeps me, a once obsessive politics junkie, interested. Romney will finally be owned, schooled, and posterized by Obama. Nothing his elves can do ahead of time will mean shit once he’s forced to go one-on-one with Obama. He will be called out on every one of his lies as soon as he utters them. I can’t wait. It will be like Floyd Mayweather stepping into the ring against Betty White. And I LIKE Betty White…
jayackroyd
Culture of Truth documented this particular atrocity last Sunday.
http://bit.ly/MbgsVk
Romney on Face (well not so much) the Nation
Frankensteinbeck
Let me join the others: It’s because his opponents were incompetent. Wildly, outrageously, ‘we have no campaign organization’ incompetent. Romney is a terrible candidate. He barely beat RICK SANTORUM, for pity’s sake. But Rick Santorum was his competition. Nose picking moron after nose picking moron stood up to face him, and he won by being the only person not to trip and fall out of the ring.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Valdivia: In all honesty, I fail to see the problem. He is quite correct.
Where’s our hecklers? Where’s the thousands of people protesting at every campaign stop of his – you know, like the Teatards have been doing to Obama for the last three and a half years?
If Dems lose in November, they have only themselves to blame.
catclub
@Haydnseek: “Romney will finally be owned, schooled, and posterized by Obama.”
Well, I thought Miami was going to be swept by OKC.
Important if true.
samuel
“Anyway, this is going to be a race where Romney says and does whatever the fuck he feels like saying and doing, with no attempt to be honest or consistent.”
Wow, deep thoughts. You must be really smart. You always manage to find angles nobody else sees. Except maybe anyone with half a brain.
Frankensteinbeck
Let me further add that I’ve been predicting the primaries would tell us about the current state of the GOP and who controlled it. The results are in, and the answer wasn’t ‘the crazies are in charge’ or ‘the money guys are in charge’, it’s ‘insane, frothing rage is balanced out by the incredible stupidity it engenders’.
japa21
@Haydnseek: I am waiting for the debates as well. I figure Obama won’t use the lie word, but will come as close to it as possible. I have heard Romney has a tendency to lose his cool if pushed so I expect, at some point, his response to be “Are you calling me a liar you uppity nig…oops I better not go there.”
Bobby Thomson
@NonyNony: Another observation. When did Romney actually run on Romneycare in the primaries, as opposed to pretending it never happened? I must have missed it.
RareSanity
DougJ,
WARNING! Sports analogies ahead…
The field that Romney faced in the primary, was like the out of conference schedule, for an SEC football team. Not that Mitt Romney is as high quality as those SEC teams, just that the disparity with regard to competence, was that great.
However, the worm is about to turn. While Romney may think he’s SEC…he’s about to find out he’s Ohio State (no offense OSU fans). Got real fat beating up lesser competition, only to get shellacked by real SEC teams.
Until it became apparent in the later stages of the primary, that Mitt was all the Republicans had, the majority of the primary voters, voted for “not Mitt”…and for longer than anyone expected.
If the Clinton political machine, which had the benefit of a qualified, competent and well liked candidate, and a semi-competent campaign organization, couldn’t beat Obama…Romney doesn’t have a chance.
If the McCain camp, which had the benefit of a well liked, semi-competent, mostly qualified, incorrectly labeled “maverick” of a candidate, paired with a mostly competent campaign organization, couldn’t beat Obama, Romney is toast.
You are discounting President Obama’s most important campaign talent…the ability to drive opponents insane, because nothing they do ever throws him off his game.
Think of the various angles that both Hillary Clinton and John McCain took, that caused people to look at them differently, in a negative sense.
Obama ate their lunches, and never lost his cool doing it. The same thing is going to happen to Romney, Obama is just not going to have to work as hard. Romney doesn’t need much help saying something that causes people not to like him, he just needs a stage. That stage is coming immediately after the GOP Convention, and Mittens is going to learn first-hand, the meaning of the saying, “Be careful what you ask for…you just might get it.”
Bobby Thomson
@shortstop:
Except that’s exactly what “running on his record” means. Romney didn’t run on his record. He ran away from his record.
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
This. Mitt can attackattackattack all he likes, but we know from 2008 that the Obama campaign does things in their own sweet time and can’t be rushed into making a foolish mistake just because they’re being attacked. The campaign has an official response prepared for each attack, but Obama generally doesn’t bother to respond on the stump until he’s good and ready and can make the counterattack really count.
Like so many of Obama’s Republican opponents, Mitt is going to discover that there’s nothing more maddening than an opponent who can smile while he sticks the dagger into your most vulnerable spot. I could almost pity Romney if he hadn’t brought this all on himself.
ETA: The more MItt attacks, the more he diminishes himself. He’s going to end up looking like an angry Pomeranian clinging to Obama’s pant cuff well before October arrives.
negative 1
You wonder if there will ever be a point in which the media gets sick of people flipping them off and laughing about it. This is what Rmoney is doing, in a sense. He’s going to lie and count on the fact that reporters won’t do their jobs. People are already beginning to turn them off in droves, and far more people get news online. How many more shots at getting it right do they all think they get? The younger ones shouldn’t even be counting on retiring in the field at this point.
Dave N.
@Haydnseek:
Not likely. Do you recall the VP debate in 2008? By the time Sarah Palin took the stage, the GOP and media had moved the goalposts so far back that if she managed not to puke on the podium or wet her pants, she would be declared the winner. If it looks like Mittens will bomb the debates, the media will do the same for him.
Then they just shift the narrative from Mittens looking like an idiot to that mean ol’Obama just couldn’t stop himself from picking on poor little Mittens.
Jebediah
@c u n d gulag:
It’s a long list (and my version of it includes strapping a dog to the roof of a car.) karma’s a bitch, mitt.