The dark line above is Mitt Romney’s favorability rating (click for an interactive graph at TPM). In the last couple of weeks, the spread between his favorable and unfavorable rate has grown at about a point per day. Even though it looks like he will win in Florida after spending millions more than Gingrich, there’s no doubt that the Republican mudfight has hurt Mitt. The question is whether he can recover. Presidential favorability ratings change for complex reasons revolving around current events and the President’s perceived responsibility for events. Presidential candidates don’t have that power — their only job is to make a good impression on voters — so I don’t know how Mitt is going to dig himself out of this hole.
Schlemizel
He will dig himself out by having the party unite behind him (big surprise!) and having the media fluffers working overtime to bury his past, smooth his imperial arrogance and talking about how Presidential he is. They made the sows ear from Connecticut into a cowboy from Texas and pretended he was a silk purse. This will be easy in comparison.
We are going to have to work harder to get Obama reelected that we did to get him elected.
scav
Another hint they’ve possibly over-focused on the immediate short-term and local battle while losing track of the long-term war? Would fit in with the curse of the MBA management style vibe.
Alexandra
Hasn’t broken above 40%… and that’s before the national campaign starts, which is going to be merciless. Axelrod and Plouffe must be pleased, all things considering.
Go Newt.
aspasia
Once he is nominated, the MSM will get busy and turn Mitt’s unfavorable ratings around. Against Gingrich and Santorum, Mitt just looks like a a more successful grifter. Against Obama, Mitt is, well, white. Republican ads will harp on this difference over and over and over, with no subtlety whatever. Brace yourselves.
General Stuck
Neither do I, short of Romney tying a dirty red bandanna around his harpoon, and learning to sing Me and Bobby McGee on the stump. Otherwise, he is a bankster incarnate, wide open for Obama to nail that identity and Romney’s 1% ass to the barn door.
And that doesn’t even get to the biggest flip flopping POTUS candidate since the beginning of time.
JPL
Mitt will start digging himself out of the hole Wednesday. By November the President will be viewed as a flip flopper and liar. The MSM will make sure of that.
Frankensteinbeck
@Schlemizel: and @aspasia:
I strongly disagree. With almost everything. The GOP will sorta unite behind him, but this is not even 2008. They’ve promised the crazy purists the moon, and they’ll vote, but not in the numbers he needs. The super PAC system means that the money is spread out all over the place, and the traditional GOP can only direct a little of it. The media won’t fluff him nearly as much as previous candidates, because he’s dull. Dull, dull, dull. He does not invite them to those awesome barbecues. He’s not Village.
Most importantly, he’s dull and weird and when people see him speak he creeps them out. Bush was dumb, but he had frat boy cowboy charm, and most people go for that. Mitt has zero charisma. If Newt pulls it off, he has negative charisma.
The GOP is about to pay the price of throwing all their A list candidates out of the party.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
Politifact rated that chart as “mostly false”.
Betty Cracker
No doubt I’m biased, but when Mittens was forced to attack Gingrich straight on, it seemed to me that he did so successfully but at great personal cost. He demonstrated Gingrich’s hypocrisy effectively, but came off as a snippy, entitled prick in order to do so.
The dynamic will be very different during the general election, of course, but I’m hoping the GOP nomination process drags on long enough to produce more clips of Mittens huffily defending his blind trusts, etc.
CarolDuhart2
All, they will try. But am I the only one who thinks that Mitt just doesn’t have it? Everybody talks about how the MSM turned Bush Jr. into a prince. But Shrub had several advantages Mitt won’t have.
1) Back in 2000. Shrub had a good, if not great, economy to work with and the glow of the Millenium. People just weren’t that focused, assuming that everything will go well regardless of who occupied the White House. All of that meant that few people were inclined to ask hard questions about him and to him.
2) A unified base. Shrub was at least liked by his base. He was also a successful two-term governor as well, which shored up the arguments. Mitt never ran for re-election in moderate Massachusetts, and a strong anti-Romney base has formed. In short Shrub didn’t have to spend much time mending fences. Romney will have to hope that enough hold their noses to make him competitive.
dmsilev
Mitt’s problem is that he has a reputation as a flip-flop-flipper. That means that the traditional pivot towards the center is going to be difficult for him, since a distrustful base is going to be keenly looking for any signs of heretical behavior from him. He *needs* the base to be fired up and eager, and the first time he suggests that maybe his experience promoting Romneycare was a good thing, he’s going to lose the frothers.
amk
@Schlemizel:
great stuff. expect msm to fellate mitt like never before.
Maxwel
Lots of concern trolls today.
JPL
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Good one!
General Stuck
Raising a fallen favorability rating anytime soon is likely the hardest thing a politician can attempt to do. Even with a media assist.
Schlemizel
@Frankensteinbeck:
I do agree that the media hates him & for a while it looked like he was going to be “Gore’d” but I will have to see it to believe it. The PAC system means even more money spent on even more ads about how Obama is a secret mooselimb, so-shall-ist, gun outlawing, soft on war tyrant.
I guess it to be 45/45 with the victory going to whoever can convince that 10% that isn’t even paying attention that they can do a better job. I hope its not that close but past experience colors my view.
amk
whatever happened to willard sockpuppet veritas ? No peep from him since sc primary.
scav
I’ll throw into the mix that the MSM isn’t quite as omni-dominant anymore (there are other sources) and the ad money sloshing around only complicates the issue, both is terms of messages transmitted and in terms of volume. The saturation news (24/7) and Super-PAC ads (again, 24/7) could be over-egging the mixture and provoke a backlash — against both media and whoever is perceived as their candidate (add in a smidge of populist uprising here to complicate things). I just don’t think things are as predictable as some seem to.
CarolDuhart2
All, they will try. But am I the only one who thinks that Mitt just doesn’t have it? Everybody talks about how the MSM turned Bush Jr. into a prince. But Shrub had several advantages Mitt won’t have.
1) Back in 2000. Shrub had a good, if not great, economy to work with and the glow of the Millenium. People just weren’t that focused, assuming that everything will go well regardless of who occupied the White House. All of that meant that few people were inclined to ask hard questions about him and to him.
2) A unified base. Shrub was at least liked by his base. He was also a successful two-term governor as well, which shored up the arguments. Mitt never ran for re-election in moderate Massachusetts, and a strong anti-Romney base has formed. In short Shrub didn’t have to spend much time mending fences. Romney will have to hope that enough hold their noses to make him competitive.
3) It’s hard to realize, but the organized Democratic Party was financially on the ropes. Gore was massively underfunded, lacking even a real ground game, modern communications, whatever. McAuliffe (and Dean) had to raise millions just for party infrastructure. Obama will be far better equipped.
4) Romney himself. Where’s the enthusiasm and attraction for this guy? Every challenger who has beaten an incumbent has has rock-star charisma. It’s a short list, but illustrative. FDR. Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton. That’s it. All charismatic, all memorable.
Cat Lady
The Mormon stuff hasn’t really reared it’s head yet either -it’s the very large elephant in the room. He’s a bishop in a secretive church with very very strange beliefs, and his grandfather was a polygamist who lived in Mexico to escape prosecution – not persecution as some news stories report. That background makes Obama’s family background seem Rockwellian by comparison. He doesn’t like to talk about it, and we know how he does when he gets defensive – he laughs that weird unnatural laugh which strands him in the Uncanny Valley. To know him is to loathe him – see: Guiliani, Rudy.
4jkb4ia
The Romney/GS story had the disadvantage of coming out on a Saturday. But it highlighted many things that Romney can’t wish away. There is a big difference between being a person that GS slobbered over to advise as a private businessperson and being a person with a succession of ex-bankers as chief of staff. There may not be any reason for the average voter to understand Dodd-Frank because its real effect is so dependent on the rulemaking process. But Romney sees nothing positive in it and Obama sees something. If Romney is the nominee we are set up for a great clash of economic visions and it will depend on the MSM to have actually learned something about how the economy works in the last four years.
tamiedjr
@4jkb4ia:
Then we’re screwed.
SiubhanDuinne
@CarolDuhart2:
Two small points: Kennedy didn’t beat an incumbent, unless you’re expanding the term to include incumbent Veeps. And Jimmy Carter belongs on your list of incumbent-toppling challengers. He may not have had rock star charisma, but that big grin was pretty darned infectious in 1976, everyone was fascinated by his “come-from-WHERE??-Jimmy-WHO??” backstory, and Ford was horribly tainted by stagflation, the Nixon pardon, and Chevy Chase.
pk
You can’t dig yourself out of holes. You have to climb out of them.
gbear
This story about Romney was popping up all over the place this weekend. When this story sinks in with the general population, Romney’s favorability ratings are going to sink even lower.
Brian R.
Yes, the MSM turned Dubya into a rugged, brush-clearing Real American who was a contender. But they also made Gore into a phony, two-faced, stiff out-of-touch elitist.
Which one of those fates seems more likely for Mitt?
chopper
@Schlemizel:
meh. W at least elicited sympathy in people because, at some deep level, they liked him. romney doesn’t do that at all. people see him get attacked and think ‘good, fucker deserves it’.
Violet
@Cat Lady:
I agree that the Mormon stuff hasn’t really sunk in. Even non-religious people are kind of weirded out by a religion that is as secretive as Mormonism is. With most mainstream forms of Christianity in the US, they welcome you into their houses of worship. Mormons claim to be Christian, but unless you join up, you can’t go into their temples. Then there’s the magic underwear that Mormons really don’t want to talk about. Add to the mix that Mitt Romney wasn’t just a member of the church, he was a bishop, so he was in a leadership position, but he won’t tell anyone what that means or what he did, and it all sounds just…creepy.
Evangelicals may be completely turned off by his Mormon faith, but others may find it just as weird and concerning.
CarolDuhart2
@SiubhanDuinne: Accident, but I should have included the Veeps. Nixon/Kennedy (advantage Kennedy), Gore/Kerry (small advantage, Bush). Even the open races where the member of the challenging party won illustrates this principle. Ike vs Adlai, Obama vs. McCain.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MRs_Nt465oE/SLVUTU1tXSI/AAAAAAAADAc/ZJMdL3rkS1s/s1600/FavBOJMHC.png
What is also ominous for Romney: I took a look at that chart to compare Obama 2008 to Romney 2012. Obama went over 50% approval in 2007 and mostly remained there. That gave Obama a cushion during some of the rougher parts of his campaign. Romney has no cushion of likeability to spare.
Judas Escargot
On the one hand, I look at these clowns and try to imagine either of them debating Obama, and can’t see how anyone with a functional brain could choose them over him. We’ve gone well beyond “I’m entitled to my opinion” in this country: There’s only one reality, and right now only one party, flawed as it is, tries to deal with that reality. The other has a delusion/denial complex so deep that it (quite literally) threatens the world as we know it.
On the other hand, I know that most of the little turnips out there haven’t been paying any real attention to these GOP debates, and many will accept whatever face Mitt Romney and the MSM present to them as of July or so, as though those debates had never happened.
So, either-or: The country will get what it decides that it deserves.
CarolDuhart2
@Judas Escargot: If that worked for Romney, why couldn’t it get him a second term in Massachusetts and closer in 2008?
burnspbesq
This won’t help him dig out.
According to Forbes, Romney was on the board of a company that committed Medicare fraud on a previously-unheard-of scale.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/01/21/romney-supervised-medical-testing-company-guilty-of-massive-medicare-fraud/
Mnemosyne
So my boss was telling me that her 8-year-old grandson has been coming home from his very liberal (and very pricey) private school talking about how Obama sucks and hasn’t gotten anything done. This is, of course, all coming from the other kids, who are getting a daily dose from their parents.
Funny how it’s all of these rich, white liberals in So Cal who are so upset about Obama.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Aah, the Westside. They don’t just make illusions, they buy into them.
Linda Featheringill
@CarolDuhart2:
Obama has one real asset that Romney doesn’t: Almost 3/4 of the entire population thinks he is a nice guy. Probably because he is. This was true even at the end of 2011 which was a rough year for him.
And yes, he is very charismatic.
I’m old enough to remember that Eisenhower was charismatic, too. And he was liked by lots of folks who usually voted for the Democratic ticket.
cmorenc
@4jkb4ia:
Imagine Wolf Blitzer explaining or moderating that explanation of how the economy works. Does that make you hopeful? Didn’t think so.
rikyrah
to know Mitt is to dislike Mitt. Mitt has no narrative to relate to the regular Americans.
Judas Escargot
@CarolDuhart2:
I don’t know, but Massachusetts is not the whole US (as I am constantly reminded, I am not a Real-Merkin because I live here). And in 2008, it was McCain’s turn.
We’re one of the super-Tuesday states: I was kind of hoping that Newt and Paul would have enough legs to keep Romney under 40% here, just for the sheer Schadenfreude of it… but we’ll see how FL goes.
General Stuck
Drip drip derp
Of course, the Romney campaigns claims they will make amendments to the record for this minor oversight. I doubt you can amend stashing corporate raider profiteering funds in a Cayman bank, while not listing that in official documents to run for prez. Tip, meet ice berg.
Anya
“I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.”
Why do I think about Holden Caulfield every-time I hear Mittens name? The whole family gives me the phony vibe.
DanielX
Have been re-reading the classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and there’s a very apropos line…
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
This question has not yet been answered, since I don’t think we’re yet near the bottom of the barrel of crazy that Newt keeps refilling.
Violet
@4jkb4ia:
Hilarious. What in the world is Romney’s economic vision? As far as I can tell, his “vision” is whatever he thinks will get him elected at that particular point in time.
Anya
@rikyrah: Not even a picture of Romney doing laundry will change your mind?
Judas Escargot
@Mnemosyne:
I know more than a few rich, white liberals (most of them techies under 35) from Cambridge and Boston that are, too.
Contrarianism seems to be in fashion again: Shame that it wasn’t back in 2002-3, when it would have been much more useful.
dmsilev
@General Stuck:
Who among us has *not* forgotten about a trivial 3 million dollar Swiss bank account that we just happen to have? I mean, it’s exactly like finding a quarter behind the sofa cushion.
JCT
*If* the economy holds up, the Obama team is going to let the Bush bogeyman out of the closet in a big way. As in “Bush and his policies caused this mess to begin with, we are just starting to recover, Mittens the .01% vulture capitalist who’s richer than X presidents COMBINED wants to go back and do it all again to help him and his friends take what’s left”. Just like Bush! The GOP’s Voldemort.
General Stuck
@dmsilev:
Your comment gave me a much needed chuckle.
cmorenc
@Violet:
The Mormons are the most aggressively proselytizing religion in the U.S., but with much better manners than Jehovah’s witness. Just visit their visitors complex at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, which is designed not just as a welcoming home for already-committed Mormons, but is skillfully designed to present an extremely attractive, welcoming face on the religion and make clear that they’d love to have you (true, until you belong, the one place you can’t go is into the Temple itself). One of the most attractive things about their religion is the obligation every young man has to spend two years as a Mormon missionary (in essence, a public service obligation), and one of the more attractive things about going through the Salt Lake City airport is the likelihood of coming across an extended family-and-friends welcome-home gathering to meet some young man coming home from completing his two-year mission in someplace far, far away.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a Mormon myself, and there’s zero chance I could buy into their theology. Joseph Smith was a cranky messianic fraud who was charismatic enough to gather a sect of credulous people to buy an astonishingly fantastic bullshit story, and for every follower, seems to have left a trail of at least as many bitterly estranged, angry people behind him, beyond just those against him for alleged heresy to traditional Christian sects. I can also see behind some of the very positive aspects of Mormon social beliefs to see the deeply authoritarian paternalistic , stranglingly uptight side.
Nevertheless, it’s misleading to say the Mormons aren’t welcoming; they’d love to have you, even though most of us will be firmly inclined to respond: thanks, but no thanks. Not interested.
rikyrah
this is funny.
Davis X. Machina
He’s still white, isn’t he? And he’ll have an R after his name.
That’s 60 million popular votes, right there. Find ten million more — or have Angela Merkel hand them to you — and we’re talking about who we should run against him in 2016.
dogwood
@cmorenc:
Belonging to the church does not grant anyone automatic entrance to a Mormon temple. Tens of thousands of Mormons can’t get a Temple recommend for one reason or another. Your Bishop has to sign off before you are deemed worthy.
DanielX
@rikyrah:
Yup. I mean, just last week I discovered that I had forgotten about the Ferrari F40 with a tarp thrown over it in the garage of one of my other houses. I had to be reminded by one of the three mechanics on my numerous personal staff. What’s the odd Swiss bank account, after all? Could have happened to anybody.
Violet
@cmorenc:
As I wrote in another thread, I worked in an office full of Mormons for several years. They tried several times to convert me as well as several of my co-workers, some of whom were African-American. I specifically remember an exchange where one of my African-American co-workers had asked, “Are black people allowed in your church?” (The horrified “Of course! We just had a black family join a few months ago!” was kind of entertaining.) And the following day one of the Mormon women brought a Mormon magazine to show this co-worker because it had an African American on the cover. One. In a large group of blonde, white people. I don’t think my co-worker was sold.
I’ve been to Salt Lake City many times and have seen the lovely Mormon families and the greetings in the airport and so forth. When I worked in this office, I became very well acquainted with the lovely Mormon families of all my Mormon co-workers because they were constantly dropping by for visits. And they are unfailingly nice and there is a lot that is very attractive and appealing about it.
My specific observation was that they don’t let you into their temple unless you’re one of them, which is different than most Christian religions that I’m aware of. That is just one of many secretive rituals or other issues and it’s the secretive nature of it that makes it seem scary or untrustworthy. Sort of, “what else are they hiding?”
Cacti
The biggest reason why I’m not buying these fearful predictions from BJers of what a formidable candidate Romney will be in the general, is chiefly because…
They’re all premised on Romney showing a political acumen that he’s never shown in 18 years of running for various elected offices.
Emma
I can’t stand it anymore. Can we please get over this terror we seem to have of the media? What, did they develop superhero powers when I wasn’t looking? You know, last time they tried to throw it to Hillary and we know how well it worked out. Also, can you at least stipulate that Obama’s team knows that and are working on a proper way of managing it? Wasn’t this the man who still put feet on the ground in places like Iowa other so-called unwinnable states and managed to pull off some?
Maybe if we stopped cowering under the lash of the all-powerful MSM and worked at helping the President it would all work out.
With apologies to all of you who are already working at it!
EconWatcher
@cmorenc:
I’ve always had trouble reconciling the weirdness of the religion with the decency and levelheadedness of Mormons I’ve met. Admittedly, life experience isn’t statistical evidence. But from what I’ve seen Mormons seem to practice what they preach in their personal lives more than any other religion I’ve found. They certainly put evangelical Protestants to shame.
Someone on another thread suggested that maybe evangelicals hate Mormons so much because Mormons show them up with their genuinely upright personal lives. I think there may be something to that.
BudP
Posthumous baptism would seem easy to demagogue, I’m surprised Newt hasn’t done so.
Chris
@cmorenc:
Sounds a lot like the fundamentalist Christian church I experienced. By and large nice, warm, welcoming, and generally speaking just an extremely cool extended family. (Which is especially good if you’re at a point where you’re alone and could use friends).
Later on, gradually, the peer pressure to conform builds up and gradually, you discover just how batshit the ideology is.
It’s not specific to Mormonism, I guess is what I’m saying. Any conversion-centric church worth its salt knows to operate like that.
Michael
Greg Sargent had a breakdown of Mitt’s drop in favorability, and it’s almost all described by a complete collapse in his favorability among independents. Which is awesome.
Davis X. Machina
@Cacti: You can buy political acumen. Bush II wasn’t exactly the second coming of Henry Clay.
Michael
Here’s the post I was talking about:
Plum Line
Violet
Holy cow. I had the TV paused and had forgotten about it. I guess the lag caught up and it started and Meet The Press is on. Of course John McCain is on, but Fred Thompson is on as a Newt surrogate. He’s got a goatee! He looks like a bad guy in a movie. Hilarious.
DanielX
@Frankensteinbeck:
Charisma? Mitt Romney makes John Kerrey look like fucking Mick Jagger, and Kerrey had about as much personal magnetism as a statue of young Abe Lincoln. Newt has a little mojo, but he’s also a fat, pompous, hypocritical shitweasel, which kind of puts a handicap on whatever charisma he has got. No wonder David Brooks cries bitter tears every time he writes a column.
Cacti
@EconWatcher:
Mormons are big on putting up a positive appearance for the outside world, “every member a missionary” is a well-known maxim within the institution.
In reality, Utah leads the nation in anti-depressant prescriptions. The perma-grins frequently hide the despair of trying to keep up with the numerous demands of the faith, and feeling like no matter how much of yourself you give to the church, it’s never quite enough.
WereBear
The true downside is not just the pressure to conform, which is huge; but also the pressure on members themselves to not form bonds with non-members. In Southern Baptists, it is framed as “leading you astray” and with Mormons it is the secrecy; I’m sure there are other examples.
But, as in cults, the pressure to leave is countered with the stark fact that you will lose your family and friends, too.
Judas Escargot
@Cacti:
Negative ads, with unlimited funding. I watched them turn war hero John Kerry into a bumbling loser back in 2004. And he was white and uncontroversial for the most part.
I agree that Romney can’t win. He does, however, have enough money behind him to try to make Obama lose.
We’ll see if it works or not.
Chris
@WereBear:
Good God, YES. That’s what killed it for me too.
Specifically, in my case, it was the Muslim friends. You can imagine how that went. Early in sophomore year, I got invited to the local Muslim Students Association’s end-of-Ramadan dinner by a friend I’d made in Arabic class. I’ll leave it to your imagination how unhappy my roommate who also went to that church was.
scav
@Judas Escargot: Indeed We’ll see. I read in the Guard he’s outspending the Newt 4 to 1 in FL, and, while there is a turn, it’s a turn against the Newt (consider) and it’s not exactly a 4 to 1 turn.
dogwood
@Judas Escargot:
True, but John Kerry was partially responsible for how that all played out, and so were the Dems. in general. The 04 DNC was held in July, which left the Kerry campaign unable to raise funds in Aug. to effectively combat the Swiftboaters, and Kerry didn’t seem to have any strategy to counter them anyway.
shortstop
@dmsilev: There is almost no circumstance in which Mitt can’t make a bad situation worse by waving his tin ear around. This is someone who not only has no idea how most Americans live; he’s purposely turned his back on hundreds, nay, thousands of opportunities to find out.
Not that it’ll hurt him anywhere near as much as it should.
feebog
Emma @ 55:
Second the motion sister. Yes, the media will fluff the Romneytron 3000. Not because they are so fond of the Bot, but because they want a horserace. Not a good story line if the incumbent is crushing the challenger by 10 or 15 points.
But I agree with Emma, I think Team Obama gets this, and is ready to take it on. What we need to hope for right now is for Noot to hang in this race to the end, and to continute to be the mean, nasty weasel he has already demonstrated he can be. That will furthe damage the Bot’s favorables, hopefully beyond salvation.
GO NOOT!
Shawn in ShowMe
@dogwood:
There is no strategy that an uncharismatic Dem can follow that will turn away rightwing media attacks. The entire history of American media supports this. That’s why Dems should never a person who is incapable of winning over the masses with his/her personality.
Nice guys who can’t translate that niceness into votes truly do finish last.
shortstop
@Cacti: Well, and I’m only being half-flippant here, you know how they say a decent haircut does wonders for one’s outlook? Every time I’m in Utah, I’m stunned by the number of women who have long, straggly, flat hair that has been poorly permed and is accented by short, curled bangs (like this). It’s like Mormon gang hair.
shortstop
@feebog:
The desire for a horserace is incidental. They will fluff Romney nonstop because their liberality is a crude myth and they want a Republican to win. Best not to forget who the biggest corporate money is behind and who has the most to lose.
Kane
More than his problems associated with his reputation as a flip-flopper. More than his problems of being perceived as an out-of-touch plutocrat in a populist election. More than his problems about his taxes, his work at Bain or his record as governor. More than is problems for repeatedly making “corporations are people” like statements. His one major problem above all else is his underlying dickishness that always comes across.
EconWatcher
@dogwood:
The attack on Kerry’s war record was a disgrace, but he was one godawful candidate. I had the chance to hear him speak and talk with him briefly at a meet-and-greet event, long before he won the nom. He came across as the ultimate empty suit. I talked with others at the event, and no one was impressed.
On the question of bumbling loser: You’ll recall that he was asked, knowing everything we knew then, whether he’d still vote to authorize the Iraq War. He said yes. At which point I had no idea what his candidacy was supposed to be about, and still don’t.
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
You’d be surprised how many Americans have inherited foreign bank accounts and not paid enough attention to what they got from Pipa and Mima to realize it. The IRS’s Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiatives brought thousands of people like that out of the woodwork.
WereBear
@Chris: Hear from an ex-LDS member how different the reality is from the image they are trying to project:
That last paragraph is what many people have told me. It’s like when outsiders attend a church picnic, and are enthralled with the scrubbed image portrayed. While, in the meantime, no one pays any attention to the women who are working on the sidelines, making it all happen, cooking at dawn and still washing dishes when the “supper” is over.
It’s the Baptists’ own fault I left; there was no room in their theology for an intelligent, independent, woman. Yet here I was; as God made me.
Frankensteinbeck
@Emma:
The MSM is great at creating a screen of noise to hide information they find inconvenient. I’ve seen that clearly in the last three years. Their attempts to tell the common man what he thinks do not work very well. I’ve seen that, too. They come off like mini-Romneys.
EDIT – @shortstop: If they were going to fluff Romney nonstop, they’d be doing it already. Instead they kind of chuckle and go ‘He’s a true entrepreneur, but he’s kind of unlikeable, isn’t he?’ They’re high school kids, and Romney just isn’t cool.
@scav:
Money Romney can’t spend in the general. The cash supply is not unlimited, it’s just secret and can come in big lumps now. The ultra rich who could blow millions in pocket change on the election are either too crazy to support Mitt that much (see the Kochs) or are the greediest motherfuckers on the face of the Earth. Their shameless desire to not give up another 100k (you know, less than 1% of their earnings) is why they support him.
burnspbesq
@Cacti:
The BYU student section certainly didn’t put up a positive appearance for the outside world at last night’s nationally televised game against St. Mary’s. A technical foul for throwing stuff on the court, and the officials called the game with four seconds left because more stuff was being thrown on the court. And BYU is the dirtiest team I’ve seen this season.
BYU is now in a league with five Catholic schools (Gonzaga, St. Mary’s Santa Clara, USF, and USD). This is going to be really interesting.
ruemara
You lot of the pathologically pre–losing bunch need to get a fucking grip. You’re claiming the media will fluff Romney into high favourability ratings? The same people that your average independent/moderate also tends to mistrust? You mean the failed media that conservatives outright despise and liberals avoid as MSM? Really? You’re considering Kerry, a decent man who also completely failed to defend himself, a slow walker out of the gate, a very uncharismatic person–with Barack Obama, a man who could croon a few bars of an old Al Green song and push downloads of the original to top 20 category on iTunes? Seriously, people. Get. A. Fucking. Grip. New ballgame, new players, you can stop cutting yourself in fear of the awesome that is Campaign Romney. I’m not saying it won’t take work, because it will, but it’s more about the down ticket races than anything else and I do not fear media bullshit turning someone as awful as Romney into anything like a statesman.
burnspbesq
Oops: six Catholic schools. Forgot about Loyola Marymount.
wrb
I sure hope you all are right. I suspect that it is going to be a very tough fight. The right doesn’t like him but they’ll vote against the socia!list. With those in the middle I suspect he’s more appealing than he seems to those here. He’s been sounding good enough in the last couple of debates.
The potential swing voters I’ve heard sound like this: “Obama’s a nice guy but he’s had his chance and the economy still sucks. Of course a businessman who’s made millions in the real world will be more likely to be able set the economy right than an academic who only made money by writing a book about his father. I wish it had worked out for for Obama but we are in pain, desperate.”
WereBear
I’m interested in where you live. The people around here are very skeptical of the “rich businessman” because they think of them as people who are “too stupid to pour piss out of a boot without instructions written on the heel.”
eyelessgame
I’m not worried that Mitt gets a whole lot of uncommitted people to vote for him.
I’m worried that the super-PAC ads will get a whole lot of Obama supporters to stay home. They’ll run ads about the economy not having ponies yet, about indefinite detention, about any given thing any disillusioned liberal might be upset about.
That’s what I worry about – depressing turnout.
Chris
@WereBear:
Yikes. I can’t imagine that being a woman’s a lot of fun in a fundie/Baptist/whatever environment. I’d probably have gotten turned off a lot sooner otherwise.
@WereBear:
Clever them.
I’ve never understood this notion people have that being a successful businessman will translate into being a successful president. It’s not a politician’s job to make money. It’s not a businessman’s job to run a government. And there’s absolutely nothing in running a business that would make you more qualified for the Presidency than running an economic department.
Good on the people you know for not falling for that. With luck, most of the swing voters will feel that way too.
wrb
@WereBear:
Central West Coast. Purple county. No major employers, no academic base, but a scenic, destination place.. Some west coast redneck/hippies, a lot of small business people, some programmers, consultants etc. whose work allows them to live anywhere, a lot of retirees of all income levels.
I reckon the real unemployment rate is over 20%, but more significantly businesses are being boarded up every week, and the foreclosure rate is astronomical- and toll increases more every week. Romney would probably do less well in a place where more people worked for salaries. Here many people faces losing their business and their home- everything.
Romney would take almost all the retirees and would do well among all the other groups.
shortstop
@ruemara: Please don’t confuse “pre-losing” with “taking a clear and solidly supportable look at how many people will actually vote for Romney despite his deep unfavorables.” I have no doubt Obama will win, but it won’t be by nearly as much as he should, and the reasons he won’t include Citizens United, GOP media control, low-information voters, a huge cultural divide and flat-out racism, not necessarily in that order. We will have to work hard, and Romney’s numbers will be quite a bit better in the fall than they are now, once the party and most of the media coalesce behind him. It’s not going to be a cakewalk, even at the top of the ticket, and we’ll do better if we recognize that going in and work accordingly.
ETA: It’s also worth noting that no one has to make a silk purse out of Romney, a guy who’s deeply disliked across most demographics; they just have to give people an excuse, however ridiculous, to tell themselves that the lousy GOP candidate is still better than the black guy. I don’t see how this is arguable, unless you think this will be the year that voters finally disengage the reptilian portions of their brains and begin voting with reason only.
WereBear
I never have, either; but then its origin was propaganda by the Right Wing, so I’m not surprised :)
Where I live is a low income area; but populated by rich people from “elsewhere” who have second homes. They generally have a not-good reputation locally, because while it’s nice they’ve scared up so much cash, no one is under any illusions that it was because they were so freakin’ smart. Not when the Caretaker community loves to swap stories about their utter cluelessness.
Shawn in ShowMe
@ruemara:
Didn’t you get a copy of the syllabus? For the next 24 weeks we’ll be discussing the viability of the GOP candidate and expressing our deeply-held fears of the MSM. In the wake of the GOP convention, we’ll ramp up the fear to 11 after their weak-sauce candidate gets a routine bump in his poll numbers.
The run-up to the election will consist of violent mood swings in response to each new MSM poll or MSM fluff piece of the weak-sauce GOP candidate. So basically, what we have now but with a lot more page hits and fewer cat pictures.
Reality will set in about two weeks before the election as the poll numbers stabilize. Visiting professor Green Greenwald will bitterly opine why the upcoming Obama victory is the end of civil liberties as we know it.
Frankensteinbeck
@shortstop:
I agree that your argument is reasonable. I disagree and think Romney’s going to be murdered and possibly drag down the rest of the election for the GOP with him. I still think your position is perfectly supportable, even if I disagree.
@Shawn in ShowMe:
I’d say this prediction nails it.
@shortstop‘s edit:
The counterargument to that is that this effect is what they need to stop the GOP base from failing to show up en mass. Their enthusiasm will still be depressed, and a small percentage of voters that would normally be a lock will stay home. When a few percent of your most reliable voters stay home, that’s a disaster.
JCT
@shortstop:
Jeez, I’m reading this on a plane and just laughed so hard two rows of people turned around. Cue sheepish grin.
Rick Taylor
@Judas Escargot:
That’s how I felt after I saw George Bush in the first debate with Al Gore, and that didn’t turn out the way I expected.
Still, I’m hopeful this time. Romney hasn’t had much in the way of competent competition up to this point, and Obama is a far more accomplished politician on every level than him. I think Romney’s in for a shock, assuming he wins the nomination.
Emma
@eyelessgame: Then perhaps they deserve what they’ll get. Of course, we’ll be along for the ride…
Emma
@Rick Taylor: Yes, but there’s a difference: at that time, most people depended on the MSM to tell them what went on. Now, not so much. Even Fox is hemorraghing viewers.
wrb
@Chris:
It is more or less automatic among businessmen and small business owners. They look at the skills they’ve had to acquire and can’t imagine how someone who hasn’t had similar experience can run anything.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@burnspbesq: Actually, seven, you also forgot Portland.
slightly-peeved
If the media successfully set every narrative in the US, people wouldn’t be angry that rich people pay too little tax. The MSM don’t like that meme, and would have squashed it if they could have.
Lojasmo
@Davis X. Machina:
Jesus. SHUT THE FICK UP WITH THAT TIRED, CONCERN-TROLL TROPE. It’s all you ever do here.
Daniel Thomas MacInnes
The average American peasant doesn’t follow one bit of politics. They are only vaguely aware of this mythical creature called “gov’mint,” but they have no idea what it is or what it does. Their moods change with each passing breeze.
Given the amount of money that will be spent on the 2012 election, Romney is in no trouble at all. You spend $100 million on an ad campaign, and you can sell the American people on anything. I don’t think this will have any impact on anything. What youi really want to look at is the “enthusiasm gap” between the Republican and Democratic bases. Both sides are feeling depressed and neglected, and both sides are convinced their man sold them out. It’s all going to come down to who’s more motivated to actually show up.
Right now, I’d say the election is 50-50. If the economy improves, then Obama wins, but that’s a pretty big IF.
Anyway, that’s my own slightly-depressed rant on the subject; I would love to be proven wrong.
Danny
2012 narrative: It’s hip to be square! Huey Lewis & the News sell millions on the back of Americas love affair with candidate Mitt Romney.