5 Reasons not to worry about Mitt Romney
By RightSideRedux Comments (23) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
There has been a lot of jive-talk in the blogosphere (can I say jive-talk?) about Mitt Romney having a bad week. I indicated to a few people last week that he has the endorsement edge and probably the money edge as well; he organized a robust South Carolina team and a very solid Georgia team.
"Oh," I say in realization, "you mean he had a bad week in the blogosphere?!" Here are the facts of where we stand and why I'm not worried (and I'm not worried for different reasons than those that help Dean Barnett sleep well.
1) Nobody but political junkies are paying attention to the election right now. - Accoding to a Pew Research Report just 24% of Republicans are paying attention to the 2008 race right now.2) The early polls reflect name recognition not voting decisions - For example, in late February 2003 Joe Liberman was leading the Democratic contendors.
3) Romney is better positioned than past candidates at this point in the race. Let me draw you a picture:
For the dark horse candidates at this point in the race (especially pointing out Governors from small states) Carter was at 1% in 1975; DUkakis 1%; Clinton 2% in 1992. Even McCain stood at just 3% in 1999. Once again, name recognition does not a primary make.
4) Romney has STRONG favorability ratings among voters who have heard about him. A recent Quinnipiac poll clocked this number at 83%.
5) How about what really matters - the KEY primary states? - Let's take Iowa and New Hampshire:
Romney's polling at this point is even more impressive when you consider that his December 2006 numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire were 6% and 9%.
In short, this is a historically excellent start for a no-name small-state governor running for President.
Recommended, if only for quality workmanship. I say "if only", because I'm already tired of '08 :-|.
[TiTiT] The Academy: Your Logic Service Provider
That's because it's no longer an image, but:
<span style="background-color:darkblue; color:wheat;">[TiTiT]</span>
I put that in the 'alt' text, but decided I liked it well enough just to use it.
Or were you snarking at me, brigand? No offense, if you were :-).
[TiTiT] The Academy: Your Logic Service Provider
I just saw that it was working and I was glad to see it was, 's all. Formerly it was one of those ugly red boxes with a X in the middle, ya' know. Glad to see you're flying the flag once more. ;)
It's ASCII art for this:
![[TiTiT]](http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/4290/3239/1600/103743/gse_multipart51158.jpg)
Does it come off ok, or does it look stupid?
[TiTiT] The Academy: Your Logic Service Provider
Most bloggers on this site would benefit from knowing how to create and included graphics such as these. Great job on yours.
The Iowa and New Hampshire graphic is especially interesting. Do Romney's percentages hold up compared to the other candidates in these primaries as well?
My guess is that he registered the domain name and creates the images that he hosts, which makes it easy.
Never let it be said that I don't think people should be able to run their own servers in an end-to-end fashion.
The graphics software he used to *create* the images are anyone's guess, but they are hosted from a server that he's maintaining, either himself in a fixed location or (probably) at a hosting provider.
Do tell us about the backend in a general way, I think it would add to the discussion, because I want to do the same thing. I can host images and webpages on my local servers, and of course get them to respond to a DNS search, but let's make it easy, for people who don't have MCSE qualifications.
The bare essentials are that you register a domain name and pick a hosting provider to host the domain name and who also gives you a certain amount of space for files on a webserver. Then you create the images and put them out there, and link to them from wherever you want. The Internet takes care of the rest.
There are dozens of hosting providers in the universe that are all basically competent, some cheaper than others. You basically purchase the domain name, get your hosting provider (in my case, it's me) to assign it to the right IP address, and then you create the stuff you want to link to. After that, you just make sure the things you're linking to are in the "right place" and don't disappear because of service outages, mice eating the power cords, etc., etc.
It's simple.
Well, if I wanted graphics like that, I'd use Inkscape, myself, for what it's worth.
Run like Reagan!
Shoot, I don't even know how to post a link with anything but the URL which is ugly and stops the flow of a comment in its tracks. I'm a video editor, not a blogger.
Is an exceptionally strong candidate, and will get stronger the more people know about him as time goes on. I know that when the other 3/4ths of the Republicans get a clue and start comparing him to the rest of the field, Romney is going to be well-placed and maybe even dominant. That's why I didn't want to see him strangled in the crib.
Though the comparisons to previous years meaningless, unfortunately, despite the awesome graphics.
The primary calendar has changed since the 90s (which had in turn changed since the 70s). The campaign is amazingly compressed, and I am sure it will be the worse for it.
In 2008 bloggers matter, because only bloggers are paying attention right now. By the time the general public starts paying attention in January 2008 the nominating process will have only three weeks to run. There is no time for an outsider to build a reputation in Iowa and New Hampshire and still raise funds for New York and California.
I consider this a disaster, and the biggest change to America's political process since TV revolutionised the 1960 election.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
Because I think it's a disaster also. I really, really wish you would write something about why you think so, because I have a lot of thoughts that I'm sure will be interesting, supportive, and perhaps even contradictory.
Please do if you get the chance. This is probably the best moment for you to do so. This is one of those moments when I really do not like the way the process is being run -- it's being taken away from "the people" and thrust into the arms of the "cognoscenti" very, very early on. As much as I don't like to think in a general election that there are uninformed people who will cancel my vote, I don't like to see things crystallizing in this way around the blogosphere.
I'd really enjoy reading your thinking on this. Thanks.
that Romney is a strong candidate whom America will like when it gets to know him, and that he's decently positioned, but also that the comparisons at this point may well be apples to oranges. both because of the difference in campaign seasons past with present, but more especially because of the difference in parties. Republicans choose upstarts much less frequently than do Democrats.
but, isn't there still some chance that a darkhorse winner in the small states gets sufficient mojo to trump ads in large states the next week?
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
Consider writing this blog as something that is near the top (though not I'm afraid, at the top) of my to do list.
>>but, isn't there still some chance that a darkhorse winner in the small states gets sufficient mojo to trump ads in large states the next week?
If if it were just a matter of advertising, then yes. Editorial coverage is worth more than advertising - traditional estimate are that it is worth 1.3 times the same space of advertising. Unfortunately, you need more than advertising to win these mega primaries - you need infrastructure on the ground to get out your vote.
Where it can work is to resurrect an apparently dead campaign - cf John Kerry in 2004. A longtime frontrunner with infrastructure in place who appeared to be falling apart was able to come back from the dead on the basis of Iowa. But without the infrastructure, I doubt it can be done.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
I recognize that the frontloading of this process is unbelievably unfair. The candidates are being selected and winnowed out by a very, very small (elite) slice of the electorate, almost two years before the election actually happens.
I think that it's profoundly antidemocratic and it goes against almost everything I believe in as an American, personally.
I can hold my own with Photoshop but I use an excellent progam called SmartDraw 2007 to get the stuff out there quickly.
It does make all the difference.
I'd say your graphics and stats make the opposite arguement: A strong lead is a bad thing (aka he's crested too early). If all of these people eventually won their nominations and their numbers were that low, it means somebody else (like Romney) had significantly hirer numbers, and that's and indication that Romney will lose.
[grin]
But seriously, while I won't vote for either McCain or Guiliani (both are BIG government "conservatives", which is what lost us the last election) in a primary, I do still have concerns about Romney. He may be a Republican in a Blue state, but would he be one in a Red one? Or even a Purple one for that matter? Does he look stronger than he is because of where he came from? Bush came from a Red state and the cogniscenti lined up behind him assuring us he was a true conservative, one of us whom we could count on when the going got tough. I never thought he was. I always thought he was a right-leaning moderate (well, actually a left-leaning moderate who saw his dad get mugged by reality once too often [taxes, Desert Storm] for his head to stay left-leaning, so he looks like a right-leaning conservative and mostly acts like a right-leaning conservative [taxes, Iraqi Freedom, most of his judges], but whose heart is elsewhere [NCLB, Medicare Part D, comprehensive immigration reform, Harriett Meyers (sp?)]; but it's shorter to say he's a right-leaning conservative).
In the end, I sent the Bush campaign a check anyway because I thought he deserved a chance, and he was better than some of the other also-rans. My choices got cut out early in the process, so he was the best candidate by the time I had a chance to pull the lever for him. I may do the same with Romney, but that doesn't mean I don't have concerns about him (although contray to what M. Dowd and her fellow kool-aid drinkers scream, his Mormonism isn't one of them).
Subject is mildly interesting, graphics are awesome.
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