Erick Erickson at RedState has said the Unutterable Phrase...

[GordonGecko]

"If The Election Were Held Today Barack Obama Would Win"

"Regardless, Team Romney seems so scared of being more unliked than he is already is that they refuse to actually pound a consistent, hard hitting message. Negatives be damned, his message is too muddled for voters to be anything other than confused. Voters have been subjected to two straight Presidential campaign seasons where Romney’s opponents have hit him for being inconsistent and now he is … well … too muddled up to look consistent. If you are going to beat the incumbent, you must convince voters you’ll be a steady, consistent hand or they really will go with the status quo knowing at least they can plan around the guy they already know.

There is time for Mitt Romney to close the deal. But he can’t close the deal with a schizophrenic campaign message..."


http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/17/if-the-election-were-held-today-barack-obama-would-win/

 

[degsme]

What was it I said about a month ago about Romney's PR Team being incompetent?

 

[GordonGecko]

The scapegoat is Stuart Stevens....the RW punditry is either trying to get Stevens fired (a PR nightmare for Romney, since it would prove they ARE in disarray)...

or it's a way for them to blame the Romney CAMPAIGN without blaming Mitt.....if November 6th goes "badly".

 

[Bo-4]

Couple of Pugs on Morning Joe were speculating this morning that if Mittens loses, it could be the end of the Republican Party (esp if Hilly runs in 2016).

I have a nice bottle of champagne chillin'.

 

[zzigzzag]

Which pugs? Limbaugh, Coulter and Ingraham had already said it was the end of the party if he loses. Are these new converts to "reality based" conclusions?

 

[Bo-4]

Which pugs? Limbaugh, Coulter and Ingraham had already said it was the end of the party if he loses. Are these new converts to "reality based" conclusions?

Joe was one of 'em. I was half asleep and just listening. Oh dear, what will the RW squawkers have to talk about if R voter suppression tactics don't get 'er done?

 

[Arkady]

What was it I said about a month ago about Romney's PR Team being incompetent?

There are, I guess, two possibilities:

(1) They're incompetent.
(2) They know something we don't.

I'm open to both. But, if they're incompetent, it's very strange. Many of the best PR people in the country are right-wingers (since the skill is often honed in the corporate world, to sell products and services for profit). Romney could afford the best of the best. So, why wouldn't he have assembled an elite team of proven winners? Why couldn't he assemble the best Republican campaign managers and the best conservative Madison Avenue image crafters? Why such incompetence, if it is incompetence?

If, on the other hand, it's something they know that we don't, what is it? They're having him make all sorts of moves that play negatively in the polls, among leading pundits, and among swing voters -- so, are those moves playing positively with somebody they think they need more? For example, do they have polling that suggests that if Romney doesn't appear aggressively conservative, a substantial part of the Republican base will vote for the libertarian, instead, dooming his chances? Are they aware of some Tea Party bigwigs who have promised to jump ship, publicly, to the Libertarian if Romney doesn't make the moves that, to us, look incompetent (like picking Ryan)?

I wouldn't rule out mere incompetence, since I know a lot of people in my professional capacity who are actually really crappy at their jobs, but have risen to near the top of their fields because they're really good at some interpersonal stuff that careers actually depend on. But I also consider it a real possibility that they're making the best moves available to them, given information we don't have. Someone could look like a drunk, moving erratically across a field, when in reality he's deftly dodging buried landmines that the observer doesn't know about.

 

[GordonGecko]

They're already trying to scapegoat Stu Stevens the way the McCain campaign did to Palin in the LAST WEEK of the 2008 campaign.

The striking thing is....we're still 50 days out, and the MR Campaign is already trying to find somebody to blame for November 6th evening.

 

[degsme]

Yup... I was wondering how long that would take. Al Gore was at this point in October/November prior to the major primaries. That Romney is here this late in the game is telling.

 

[GordonGecko]

Yup... I was wondering how long that would take. Al Gore was at this point in October/November prior to the major primaries. That Romney is here this late in the game is telling.

Erickson's entire post was interesting (he's really letting Romney have it).....but another line from above is interesting-

"Regardless, Team Romney seems so scared of being more unliked than he is already is that they refuse to actually pound a consistent, hard hitting message. Negatives be damned, his message is too muddled for voters to be anything other than confused."

It points out two key problems Romney has had since the Primaries-

1. FEAR of being disliked or saying something controversial that leads to being disliked by the General Electorate.

2. INCONSISTANCY....i.e. his scatter-shot "bright shiny object" attacks on the President.

 

[degsme]

The competence to run a Corporate World enterprise, where you hold promotion and $$ as a reward, and firing as a penalty is very very different when running an organization where the hierarchy is less clear cut, where there are multiple players in the mix and where the "rewards" for some are not necessarily aligned with the goals of the top of the ticket. In fact it is a lot more like participating in an industry standards body or (god forbid) organizing a community of volunteers.

Its not that the crafting of the message itself is incompetent -as the best lines of the discarded speech show. Rather it is that making sure that the message is coordinated, and that everyone participating is doing what they were asked to do, and doing it on time and with the quality expected, that is being screwed up. In that sort of mess, things get dropped on the floor - like forgetting to give a shout out to the troops, or schedules get bumped - or you don't do your own Oppo Research because you really WANT TO BELIEVE them that they are as clean as they claim to be.

The difference between the drunk and the landmine doger is that while both patterns of travel might be similar... the execution of each step by the two is different. Here we have ok initial execution - just an inability to followup. Which is often the signof someone dropping the ball.

And then there is just the bent world view of Romney himself driving the issue

[video=youtube;XnB0NZzl5HA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XnB0NZzl5HA[/video]

 

[degsme]

More Redstate:"Political Communication is not among his skills"
http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/17/mitt-romney-friend-in-need/

Romney himself hasn’t helped the matter by being such a stiff, tin-eared speaker who actually looks and sounds like a walking stereotype; political communication is not among his skills

Then WTF is he doing running for POTUS where POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IS THE NUMBER ONE JOB REQUIREMENT???!!!??

 

[NightSwimmer]

There are, I guess, two possibilities:

(1) They're incompetent.
(2) They know something we don't.

Or both. I think they've given up on affecting the vote and are now expending all of their energy on affecting the vote count.

 

[TomFitz]

I was going to say that they don't really care about Mitt.

Their problem is that, like McCain before him, the conservative establishment doesn't trust Mitt.

McCain stood up for campaign finance reform, something that is anathema to Republicans, and he also did the deal to avoid the "doomsday" filibuster rule change the GOP had threatened in 2003. For those two acts, McCain earned the enternal distrust of the men behind the curtain.

Romney's problem is that he has his own money. He won't necessarily be beholden to Goldman Sachs or David Koch, the way a Gingrich would.

None the less, half the Romney campaign is also on Fox Noise's payroll, so the power centers are still making a show of backing the candidate.

It will be interesting to see whether the large coroprate intrests that promised to shovel $1 billion plus into the Romney campaign are still going to ante up given the poll numbers and the disarray within the Romney campaign.

I suspect that the first debate in October will tell the tale. Frankly, I've heard Gov Romney speak unfiltered quite a bit recently, and I expect that the President is going to make short work of him in the debates.

We'll see what happens after that.