Somebody Call Hugh Hewitt. STAT!
Bad Week in the Conservative Blogosphere for Romney
By Hunter Baker Posted in 2008 — Comments (26) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It is my habit to read Hugh Hewitt daily. I got into that habit while borderline suicidal over the looming 2006 midterms. Hugh and Dean Barnett kept my spirits up. Sure, the GOP crashed and burned, but they kept my spirits up till the finish.
It is no secret that Hewitt and Barnett have been big advocates for Mitt Romney. Hewitt had the stones to write an entire book about Romney's campaign without even knowing whether the guy would place in the primaries. This week Mitt Romney has desperately needed some cover from his buds at HughHewitt.com, but it hasn't been forthcoming until today. Before I share that with you, let's sum up a bit.
We love to talk about "who won the week" in politics. I don't know who won the week (some argue Rudy for laying low), but I know who lost it. Mitt Romney lost the week.
Join me for contention and strife under the fold . . .
Mitt took flak here at Redstate (from Erick and me) for shifting positions, particularly on abortion, at opportunistic moments and for running from what is arguably electoral weakness having demurred to gather up his second term in Massachusetts. The single term in Mass. serves as a glaring tacit admission that he couldn't win his second term. When arguing how well he did in Mass., one wonders then why he wouldn't be able to convince the voters to punch his ticket again. Is incumbency + a claimed record of great success worth nothing?
But then, things began to look up, if only briefly. James Bopp, Jr., the pro-life adviser for Mitt's campaign, wrote movingly of Mitt's evolution to a pro-life position and gave many pause. One of Mitt's defenders on this site wrote a strong post in defense of Mitt on the basis of Bopp's piece.
But the resurgence fell apart fairly quickly. Asked by The Politico how abortion would fit into Mitt's campaign, the brand new Romney adviser answered, ""I don’t know yet about Romney. I’m not really sure where [abortion] will ultimately fit in his agenda. He's still on a journey." (HT to K-Lo at NRO)
Place awkward pause here.
In addition to the Bopp surge and recession, the Romney campaign took hits for slicing and dicing McCain comments on abortion to make him look like a great supporter of Roe v. Wade when those same comments were bracketed by language urging the repeal of that decision. Of course, McCain has been equivocal on the issue, so the edit job is not quite as dastardly as it appears, but it ain't pretty either and falls into the zone of throwing stones from the interior of one's own glass abode. In an exchange with opponent Shannon O'Brien during his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, he angrily denied having accepted the Mass. Citizens for Life endorsement.
We're all glad he's pro-life, but the public picture of the potential leader is not shaping up admirably. He looks like the politician who will say whatever is necessary to get elected. And a lot of people don't like that, even when it's to the benefit of their team.
Erick is right that it's early, way early, but Mitt is running hard right now and is airing ads right now. That means the candidate and the campaign are ready for inspection. And right now, prematurely perhaps, but then again, perhaps not, the lights are not shining too brightly for Romney and company.
Can Hugh Hewitt and Dean Barnett shore things up in the media/netzine/blog world for Mitt?Dean Barnett has now posted his estimation of Romney's week. Guess what? It was actually a great week for Romney. He's been giving the press the old rope-a-dope technique. Romney is Ali and the media (maybe meaning the conservative media) is Foreman. Don't worry, Romney's detractors will punch themselves out and he'll land a haymaker.
Convinced? If that's true, I'm praying fervently that George W. Bush has been employing the same tactic and that he just timed the counterpunch a few months too late to save Congress.
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Somebody Call Hugh Hewitt. STAT! 26 Comments (0 topical, 26 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Puh-leeze. Does this mean that in a few years Romney will be brain-damaged from all the pounding?
I like Dean, but this is nonsense for one simple reason: people are just getting to know Romney. And if his flip-flops are old news by next year it will be because that was the first thing a lot of people learned about him.
It is emphatically not true that a candidate can't be knocked out many months before the primaries. Just ask George Romney, whose candidacy tanked due to a televised gaffe in August 1967 that followed him to his grave.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
Dean is great, but this bit about Romney pulling a rope-a-dope is crap. If he was really doing a rope-a-dope, why would they get that Bopp piece out there. It was to counter the flip-flopper image! He wasn't laying back. He just got whacked this week. Better luck next week, but the flipper thing is gonna stick a bit.
My first ever vote went to Mitt Romney. I had a "Romney for Senate" bumper sticker on my '86 Chevette. I knew he was the right guy when the Olympics hired him. I knew he was the right guy to fix the budget crisis in MA. My best friend here, who was a media advisor for each of the last 3 democrat governors of California, asked me how in the world does a right-wing Mormon get elected in a left-wing Catholic state. Its because he's a leader and has a resume of accomplishment to prove it. Of course, having an opponent whose husband was an Enron lobbyist helped but he still would have won and I really don't think he would have lost to a schmuck like Deval Patrick. Mitt would have eaten him alive but he wanted to run for President and he will be a great one. He solves problems, fixes things, and leaves every job in better shape than when he took it. He is going to get the harshest media treatment because they know how qualified and capable he is and they fear him. I firmly believe he will win and 20-30 years from now, we'll be here wondering when our next Mitt Romney is going to come.
This week's set of polls again show Romney matching up poorly against Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. Unless he turns these around, he does not get past the electability issue.
Interestingly, electability has taken on a priority status now that we're having a wartime election. During 1996 and 2000, I think there was a perception that voters could watch the process unfold and there was time for a candidate to introduce himself to the electorate. A candidate like McCain could launch in the fall of 1999 and still be competitive.
But the difference between the parties over the war is so pronounced, it may be that a lot of Republicans are unwilling to take a chance on a candidate who can't line up competitvely from Day 1. And bad matchup polls beget more bad polls, so there's a compounding effect.
Romney has a very steep hill to climb. Those like Huckabee and Brownback face virtually impossible odds.
He won't perform better in head-to-head national polls until his name ID goes up. That takes time, and their focus is not on national name ID, but that in early states.
I think that it's interesting that as many people polled for Romney against the Democrat field when so few people even know of him yet. Everyone knows of the Democrats in the field and of McCain and Giuliani.
Mitt Romney is at his ebb. His polls will only go up as the year progresses.
Romney has urine-poor name rec right now, which means that both his favorables and his unfavorables are at their low ebb. Giuliani shares this, in the sense that most folks no more know about anything he did other than cleaning up Times Square and 9/11 than anyone knows about Romney's healthcare initiative or his jobs record in his former home state.
What you folks kinda need to be prepared for is that both numbers will rise.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
Actually,
Urine has high name recognition. My guess is most people are thankful for it, thus ensuring high approval numbers.
Making lemons into lemonade:)
Mitt Romney had one RedState director flip-flop on him after absolutely no new information about Romney had come out, and then he had another front page commentator basically say 'okay, I know that Mitt is a great looking, charismatic, articulate communicator who was brilliant enough, capable enough, and competent enough to earn $500 million in the private sector, to save the Winter Olympics from deficits and scandal, and to turn a $3 billion deficit in Massachusetts into a $100 million surplus all the while fighting a socially liberal tidal wave heading his way in an already liberal state - but what exactly makes Mitt Romney a top tier candidate?'
Honestly, words fail.
I can think of few men or women as qualified to be president of the United States as Mitt Romney.
Whether due to the weakness of the opposition that rose against him this week or due to the resiliance of the candidate, Mitt Romney comes out of this week better than when he went in for one reason - the week has exposed how unsubstantial his detractors are, or at least can be.
It was a good week for Mitt Romney. It was a very, very bad week for a couple of directors at RedState. I'm afraid that they showed that they're a little bit less serious and a little bit less able than some of us would hope.
Actually, EZ, it WAS a bad week for Mitt and not just on RedState. Erick went out of his way to be fair. And you are being less than fair when you characterize my own case against, Mitt. You say nothing, for example, of my primary point that he cowardly walked away from trying to run on his supposedly huge success in Mass. to get a second term and run for the presidency on strength.
If it wasn't a bad week, then how do you explain Dean Barnett's strange rope-a-dope explanation for why it was really a good week?
I agree that Mitt was attacked this week, that doesn't mean it was bad week. If this is all that detractors to Mitt Romney have got, I'd say that Mitt Romney is going to sail into the general election as the GOP nominee and knock out his opponants with far more ease than Ali did with Forman.
The Kennedy War Machine tried to dig up all the dirt they could on Mitt's business career and came up with nothing.
On the other thread, I already explained why your "primary point" was an unintelligent, vacuous argument in this case.
Mitt Romney had governed too conservatively to be re-elected (a plus, not a negative in my book,) and since Mitt had already steered the state out of their financial crisis, they no longer needed him. Massachusetts had already reaped the benefits of Mitt's leadership, and thus - while it would have been better to keep him around - it was no longer necessary. Mitt saw MA through the crisis, and now they could and were determined to move on to a more liberal governor - especially in a Democrat tidal wave year.
I think most people knew that rather intuitively and didn't need to have their hand held to reach that conclusion.
And I'm not saying that Erick's post wouldn't have been a legitimate original opinion to take. But, unless he is withholding something, there's really nothing new that has come to light to those following the presidential contenders. And Erick didn't really explain how his evaluation of the known material had changed, either, if that was the case. That, too, would have been legitimate.
If you think that being challenged constitutes a "bad" week, then I guess Mitt had a bad week. But I think that Mitt came out looking remarkably well and those who came out against him came out looking ridiculous at the end of it. If anything it steeled my previously much more tempered support for Mitt Romney.
It was a bad week.
I don't have a horse, yet, EZ. Really don't. But you can't argue that your guy doesn't look good right now.
"No, I never accepted any endorsement from those pro-lifers. I didn't. Don't know how I can say it otherwise!"
We just ran an entire campaign knocking a guy for being a flip-flopper from Massachusetts. I'm just saying, yo . . .
I would argue that Mitt Romney looks far and away better than any candidate than Newt Gingrich at this point. He looks good all on his own, and he looks even better by comparison to the field. I think Newt knows he can't win the general and won't run.
Romney's point in the debate was, how do you accept an endorsement? They give it to you. I didn't ask for it. In pro-choice MA, that is the finest line that he could have walked and still gotten elected. He was splitting hairs so as not to give people who would have voted against him simply based on his position/response to that issue alone a reason to pull the level for his opponant.
Randy Graff was endorsed by David Duke. You think that if there was some mechanic by which he could return the endorsement that he wouldn't? The only thing that Mitt could have done would have been to disavow the endorsement. Guess what? He had the opportunity on statewide television, and it looks like he didn't do it. He kept saying he would protect a woman's "right to choose." Why? Those were the laws of the state and he promised a moratorium on abortion law. Ipso facto, that means protecting the law as it stood, which held such a right.
Splitting hairs when necessary is not the same as flip-flopping. And, as it turns out, the pro-life organization's endorsement proved prescient.
How long have you been following politics? I mean, I would think that you would be wise to some of these things WITHOUT HAVING TO SPELL THEM ALL OUT.
Now, if you'd like to point to areas where Romney could be splitting hairs now to reveal a candidate that might be less pro-life than I think he is, then by all means, let's hear it.
EZ, I've been following politics for a long time and have worked professionally as a lobbyist and free lance writer in the field. You want to see nuance. I see Clintonian equivocation.
"I can think of few men or women as qualified to be president of the United States as Mitt Romney."
LMAO!!!
Wow, I guess those other one term politicians would be equally qualified then?!! That is only about 1000 Americans still alive today. I think the Quinnipiac Poll said it best yesterday:
Iowa: Giuliani 24% Mccain 19% Gingrich 15% Romney 9%
Boy, a few more great weeks like this and Romney might get down to 5%!
United States Air Force
http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com
I would encourage you to do your research on the man but you appear to be more stubborn than John McCain.
Matt Lewis of Townhall.com notes that the now infamous little tidbit of supposed backwalking in the Politico interview was misleading. Here is Bopp on the Politico website:
"The last four paragraphs combine answers to several questions creating the erroneous impression that I am uncertain about Romney's pro-life position. I am not. He is sincere about ending abortion and is not paying lip service to it. He will promote pro-life legislation, oppose pro-choice legislation (as he has as Governor) and appoint strict constructionist judges. My statement about his 'journey' was about what priority he would give it. It is important now and is growing in importance to him."
It seems that some folks are WAY TOO EAGER to read into slight comments whole volumes of insinuation. I'm sure that the front-runner financial status and endorsement charge that Romney has sustained has a lot of people worried.
argue this has been the best week for Romney. But he has had some great things happen that were completely ignored by the RS editors, especially in this article.
Wrapping up nearly the entire Utah state house as endorsers (not a surprise) gives him the third state of majority state of state legislature endorsements.
He also did great in Georgia while there. He had many strong endorsements, while news coming out that Georgia is moving up their primary.
He also raised over an estimated million dollars in one day yesterday.
The Bopp defense was a good one. I am not discounting the Politico report, although it would be nice to see a transcript of the whole interview rather than a few snippets and say that's Bopp's opinion of Romney. Bopp was strong for Romney yesterday and in an email interview he did for us at MyManMitt. Bopp is also an unpaid advisor to Romney, which tells you he believes enough in the man to loan him his name, advice and suppport for free.
He put up the first ads. Some spin it to mean that he's in trouble. I can be equally spun to mean that he has the resources to begin this now, and it's a smart move that puts him first in an undefined territroy where his naysayers have yet to reach.
All in all, he had some set backs- no denying- but it was hardly a weitght on his ballon.
www.mymanmitt.com