Is Fehrnstrom and Obama mole:
On Sunday, Fehrnstrom insisted that the Obama campaign strategy was not going to work.
“Mitt Romney is pro-life,” the senior adviser admitted to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “He’ll govern as a pro-life president, but you’re going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people’s attention from the Obama performance on the economy. This is not a social issue election.”
Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter noted that Romney had promoted his social policies throughout the primary season.
“If it’s not a social issue election then why did Mitt Romney just spend the last year campaigning on social issues?” she wondered. “These are his positions that he’s taken. Whether it’s giving bosses control over whether female employees can get contraception, being for the so-called personhood amendment that would ban all forms of abortion or telling the American people that he’ll get back to them on whether he supports Lilly Ledbetter [Fair Pay Act] — which is an economic issue and it should be a no-brainer, but the governor couldn’t even bring himself to be for that.”
“I think that getting rid of Planned Parenthood or a number of other social issues that the governor injected into the campaign — I think that women don’t like that intrusion,” she added. “What Mitt Romney is really saying that he’s going to do is he’s going to use government to intrude into their lives. And I think that they resent that.”
That’s right, ladies. Women’s health and reproductive rights are just “shiny objects.”
Shinobi
Well since research indicates that we are so used to seeing women’s bodies treated as objects that our brains actually process them as objects, I can’t say I’m surprised that women’s issues are considered the political equivalent of LOLcats.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
One small change takes us right back to 1890 where the Modern Republican Party wants us to be.
Different century, same party.
James E Powell
That’s right, ladies. Women’s health and reproductive rights are just “shiny objects.”
The reason Fehrnstrom can say this is that women do not vote as a bloc, or even as a substantial majority, on these issues. Unless and until they do, these issues will continue to be shiny objects.
Yutsano
I can’t recall where I read it, but supposedly Fehnstrom is Willard’s Karl Rove. He’s the guy who is supposed to be out there taking cheap shots and doing the dirty work so Willard doesn’t get seen as attacking and taking cheap shots. It’s not really working, because Fehnstrom has diarrhea of the mouth it looks like. He doesn’t know when he should just shut up.
scav
Despite our usual love of rusty objects and the wielding thereof, knives and guillotine blades are also shiny objects and should be handled with care.
Valdivia
Now I have that song stuck in my head.
Cutter is great, I wish Obama had more surrogates like her.
Turgidson
The Rmoney campaign’s explanation of why Mass job growth sucked so hard while Mitt was governor is basically a cut and paste of what Obama is arguing (we inherited a really shitty situation and did what we could to turn it around), also too.
And the media won’t care, or perhaps even notice. Rmoney will continue lying and holding himself out as a job creator. Obama will keep getting blamed for the mess Bush left him and his inability to overrun the teahadists in the House to fix it. And when his campaign dares utter the truth about Rmoney’s record or his own, he’ll be denounced as demagoguing or being too partisan.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: There could be worse ones. Like certain Disney earworms that just will. not. die.
(In less pain than yesterday thank the FSM. Decided to not do very much today. For once.)
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
No no Yutsano, you see according to Politco Romney is his own Rove. The fluffing of Mitt the Myth has begun in earnest.
/not a politico link. just a summary.
@Yutsano: and, please don’t even mention the type of earworms that Disney produces lest I get them too. Glad to hear you are in less pain! Don’t forget your nap. :)
Roger Moore
He’s just shaking the Etch-a-Sketch as hard as he can.
Just Some Fuckhead
Romney is going to have a gang of Republicans hold women down and insert shiny objects into their reproductive area.
TaMara (BHF)
Well I’ve had my lady parts complimented in many ways, but no one has ever before called them shiny objects. Maybe they need more bling.
I’m sorry, it’s so hard to take anything these people say as serious. It’s what’s making this election season even more depressing because there are people who do take them serious and don’t see though the bs and outright lies. The fact that some of those are women makes it even more disturbing.
Between the climate change deniers, the birthers and the fact my basic rights as a woman are being threatened, it often feels like a speeding train that cannot be stopped heading straight for a mountain cliff.
I’ve said it before, bring on the rapture, I want my planet back.
Roger Moore
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The Republican party is trying to shrink government until it’s small enough to
drown in a bathtubprobe a woman’s vagina.ed
completely O/T but this is why we have an EPA – http://io9.com/5915418/before-environmental-regulations-pittsburgh-looked-like-the-capital-of-hell?tag=holy-crap-wtf
Rosalita
I add Pierce’s comment on this topic
slag
So, when priests fixate on taking away women’s access to comprehensive medical care, that’s Religious Freedom. But when women fixate on retaining access to comprehensive medical care, that’s Shiny Objects.
Apparently, one way to become this skilled in the art of the double standard is to spend at least three years working in business. Why am I not surprised?
Roger Moore
@TaMara (BHF):
You obviously need to start vajazzling.
Martin
Considering the fair pay act stance, isn’t this more accurate?
The Other Chuck
@Rosalita:
My favorite part of that comment:
Sadly though, Pierce has to be shockingly naïve to believe that saying dumb shit on a regular basis is in any way detrimental to a career in punditry. The only thing — the only thing — that matters is the “regular basis”.
Martin
@Roger Moore: I never knew there was a word for that. I should have figured there was. I sorta wish I didn’t know what it was, though, particularly closer to Christmas when the Bedazzle ads start running again.
JPL
Family planning does effect the economy and only a Romney surrogate would pretend otherwise.
Frankensteinbeck
Romney is trying to pivot to the center SO HARD. And you know, it’s the correct strategy if he can pull it off. That’s usually effortless. Romney may not pull it off.
shortstop
@slag:
Uh huh. Who could have predicted that this attitude would annoy women? Jesus, we’re so emotional.
The Other Chuck
I like to explain the right wing mindset to my girlfriend this way after she launches into any sort of logical reasoned argument attacking the right:
Me: Okay, say what you said again and I’ll play devil’s advocate and give you the Tea Party point of view.
GF: All right, so if what you’re saying about job creation is tr–
Me:SOSHULIZM!
GF:Uh, what? Okay, so about job creation, if you go by the statis–
Me:TRAMPLING THE CONSTITUTION! SOSHULISM! OBAMACARE!
… and so on. I think she’s gotten wise.
TaMara (BHF)
@Roger Moore: @Martin:
Roger, see what you’ve done. Now everyone will want them.
Jay in Oregon
Shorter Fehrnstrom:
It’s not fair that the Obama campaign sees the gentle, slow pitches that Romney is throwing at them and knocking the cover off the ball as it sails over the fence.
scav
Guy can’t juggle a single clue through a single paragraph
Shouldn’t that be, Mitt Romney is a businessman with three-years experience and thus possessed of the constitutional right to the next presidency, blah blah blah, rather than dragging in the shiny object fodder than you deny before the periods have crowed three times?
The Other Chuck
@scav:
“He’ll govern as a pro-life president … This is not a social issue election.”
… Didn’t even make it two sentences.
Rick Massimo
They’re so mad that Herman Cain ruined the phrase “You want a job, right?”
That was so totally gonna be their slogan, and now they’re straining SO hard to come up with something else.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Frankensteinbeck:
Everything’s an effort with Rmoney. He really is an atrocious politician. That became clear during the primaries when a loon like Congresswomen FarawaycrazyEyes ran rings around him on the stump.
Yutsano
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: He’s been running for President for 8+ years now. You would think he would have developed some kind of clue by now.
dedc79
And that would make women what? the dumb animals that chase the shiny objects?
Martin
@TaMara (BHF): See, but the thing I most remember from the Bedazzler ads are the loud ‘ca-chunk’ when you clamp down on the handle of the thing to get a rhinestone into your Motley Crue denim jacket.
Something makes me think that’s not really how you do it down in the fun zone.
slag
@shortstop:
Exactly. It’s must be the ladies’ shine of the month.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Yutsano:
I thought that might be the case but actually watching clips and some of the debates, I was amazed at just how utterly awful he is out there. Mygod, he makes Bob Dole look animated.
I shouldn’t snark on Dole, I usta watch a lot of CSPAN back when he was Minority Leader and his sense of humour was finely tuned. Vicious but really good.
Where were we? Oh yeah, Rmoney. He might have been running for Pres since 1992 but there’s a big difference between running an campaigning. One would think Malcolm Gladstone’s “10,000 Hour Rule” would apply here but I don’t think Rmoney has actually put in 10,000 hours *campaigning*. And if he has, then he really is hopeless.
Or counting on Rove’s billion dollars in untraceable money and widespread voter suppression to carry the day for him.
shortstop
@Yutsano: Is it that his advisors are terrible? That some of them are not terrible but he doesn’t listen to them? That he listens to them but truly can’t pull off the simplest gladhanding and speechifying because he’s a) really dumb, b) a complete social misfit, c) so arrogant he doesn’t see how he comes off or d) some combination of the above?
I really do wonder how someone’s political instincts can be that poor. I wonder a lot.
Martin
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
The trick with Gladstones’ rule is identifying what you are practicing. You could argue that Romney is an expert at campaigning because he’s spent so much time at it. But you could equally argue that Romney is an expert at losing campaigns, because that’s really what he’s been doing almost all of that time.
scav
If one hypothesized that how he runs his campaigns reflects how he ran his businesses — well, um success doesn’t exactly mean what I thought it did and it must be explained to me slowly by one of those MBA-Business-Savvy Election-worthy gods-bestriding-the-earth.
Martin
@shortstop:
I think it’s a combination of things. I think Romney is just so completely emotionally detached from the world that he just sucks at this. He’s a wicked rich guy with a religious background that he can’t actually let out, so absolutely everything about him is filtered in multiple ways. He’s the anti-Biden. Biden can go out on the campaign with ashes on his forehead and talk about his parents working hard, and him losing his wife and daughter, and taking the train home all the time and be completely genuine about it. Even while he’s rolling out gaffes left and right, you can’t help but accept that he’s genuine about what he says. Romney has none of that. And its somewhat unfortunate – because at least half of it is because of a prejudice against his religion.
I think another side of it is that the GOP has presented an impossible gauntlet that their candidates have to run. Even with good advisors and a good candidate, it’d be a hell of a job to get right.
And I think the final side of it is that they do have shitty advisors because the decent ones have all been drummed out and attacked due to ideological purity, so getting good advisors is damned near impossible.
Montarvillois
Charlie Pierce chimes in.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/eric-fehrnstrom-shiny-objects-quote-9423305
Yutsano
@Martin: A lot of the good advisors also have the stink of Bush on them. And considering the fact that the Bush family still has a lot of sway in certain Republican circles, the fact that Willard has gotten this far almost seems like a set-up. But the discussion of the sacrificial lamb has been brought forth before. It’s running into the reality that is Citizens United and the teatard racist hatred of Obama, but I can’t rule out the possibility of Willard being set up to essentially get rid of him.
kay
I loathe Mitt Romney’s voice. I hate that manufactured breathiness.
It’s like he’s pushing the words out with too much air behind them to imitate engagement with what he’s saying.
Mike E
@Yutsano: Try being an usher at a musical theater; Hello Dolly! put me in mental traction for weeks.
Yutsano
@Mike E: Heh. I did a pit orchestra for The Wizard of Oz in high school. Don’t get me started. I now hate the whole damn thing, especially after the run went from two to six weeks.
shortstop
@kay: The third baseman notes that when Mitt turns to people, ostensibly to “engage” with them, he pivots his entire torso (keeping his shoulders and head rigid) rather than turning his head. The body language screams, “Why do I have to talk to these people?” Contrast it with Obama’s mien in a crowd or one-on-one with a voter.
TTB used to do an excellent imitation of Governor Romney around the house…until he noticed that I was never in the mood for luv for a good while after seeing this impression. He stopped post-haste.
Redshift
@Martin: Based on how thin-skinned and condescending he was in response to the few times Fox interviewers gave him slightly less-than-softball questions, I suspect Romney can’t stand to have anyone around who isn’t a total yes-man. As a result, any advisor with better political instincts than the big man (which is to say, most of them) has to constantly decide whether to suppress their best instincts to avoid ending up on his shit list.
If the guy always has to be “the smartest guy in the room,” that could explain why he’s been essentially untrainable and hasn’t gotten any better at campaigning in six years.
Yutsano
@shortstop:
And people make fun of me when I suggest the Lysistrata defence would work. :)
shortstop
@Redshift: There’s a lot in this, I think. I mentioned it here once, but there’s a line in David Mamet’s Race that resonates: “No one has said no to him in 40 years.”
PaminBB
I agree with Roger Moore that Fehrnstrom is shaking the Etch-a-Sketch, but he does not seem to understand that other people can shake it again after he draws his stick figure.
dww44
@James E Powell: You are so right. I am just constantly amazed by conservative Republican women who find a rationale for supporting the party’s anti-woman stance. Not the fundamentalist ones, but the supposedly educated, independent and business minded ones. Mostly, they just opt out of the system because they just don’t seem to have the courage to do otherwise, i.e. Snowe and Hutchison. Forget the pundit types;mostly they have no moral core.
Citizen_X
Thank you thank you thank you for putting it this way, instead of the BUT BUT MY RELIGIOUS FREEDOM! (of the rich and powerful only).
lacp
Bullshit. Play-Doh and bacon are not shiny.
James E Powell
@dww44:
I am just constantly amazed by conservative Republican women who find a rationale for supporting the party’s anti-woman stance. Not the fundamentalist ones, but the supposedly educated, independent and business minded ones.
Not to mention the tote-baggers who labor under the delusions that ‘both sides do it’ or ‘they don’t really mean it’ or ‘it isn’t going to affect me or mine.’
Shinobi
More on today’s women are objects front. Apparently men and MEN ALONE invented the internet, so they should be allowed to sexually harass us or something.