Matt Viser, at the Boston Globe:
WASHINGTON – One of Mitt Romney’s former campaign aides is planning to release a new book next week that is being pitched as an insider’s account that provides “an unblinking look at the tactical and strategic miscalculations” made by the former presidential candidate.
The book – “A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider’s Account” – is written by Gabriel Schoenfeld, who says he started working for Romney in January 2011 as a consultant and was a senior adviser from August 2011 through the rest of the campaign.
“The book illuminates the chain of errors that ultimately contributed to Romney’s defeat,” reads a summary of the 66-page book, which is being published next Tuesday as a $2.99 e-book by the Penguin Group…
As far as I’m concerned, 66 pages is a pamphlet, and yet longer than I want to read in pixels. Which proves that I’m old, and also not Schoenfeld’s target market, which I assume would be “aspiring Repub candidates looking to not repeat Romney’s mistakes.”
… “The Romney campaign’s response to the Middle East crisis left Romney and his team looking ill-informed and opportunistic,” reads a press release on the book. “It was a miscalculation that severely hampered the campaign for the rest of the race, and especially during the debates.”…
Schoenfeld’s goal with the book is to convince the Republican Party to jettison “the mechanical poll- and focus-group-driven approach embraced by the Romney campaign.”…
What, neither UNLIMITED! CORPORATE! CASH! nor yet BENGHAZAI-EEE! are winning slogans? How will fellow former Romneyboiz react to these stunning revealations?
… Another former Romney adviser told the Globe this afternoon that Schoenfeld was initially brought in to help with writing op-eds, “with the hopes he could develop into a speech writer…Didn’t work out.” In an email, the adviser said that Schoenfeld wasn’t at high-level meetings.
“Never in a strategy session, never in a senior staff meeting,” wrote the former adviser, on the condition of anonymity. “I imagine that’s part of what he was frustrated about but well, you know. That happens. But hey, could he sell a book? An e-book without a big advance or maybe no advance? Sure, whatever.”
Everybody needs a paycheck, dood…
The prophet Nostradumbass
“UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH”
Say, where’d that guy go, anyway?
James E. Powell
The Romney campaign’s response to the Middle East crisis left Romney and his team looking ill-informed and opportunistic
Is the publisher or the author putting this out as one of the super-double-secret-insider revelations in the book? I thought it was pretty evident at the time.
Suffern ACE
A senior advisor writes that following his advice would have improved things. This is not news.
Question. Is consultant lower than advisor in the world of political campaigning? Is consultant like associate whereas senior advisor is like assistant manager? Does one need to be promoted to senior consultant, then advisor then senior advisor?
mdblanche
I can see 66 pages being enough to cover a bad day on the Romney campaign, but something comprehensive would require 600 more pages.
jl
” 66-page book ”
I laughed when I read that.
Might be a powerpoint deck.
That would be easy to get through.
Or is Anne Laurie not prepared to commune with the gimlet eyed steely jawed Romneys of this world, and take the 40K foot view, survey the field, and then drill down?
Mike in NC
OK, for $2.99 I’d buy this crud. Rmoney was worse than Nixon.
Santorum will be their nominee in 2016. With plenty of bottom feeder competition.
PeakVT
UNLIMITED CONSULTANT GRIFT!
scav
Has to be unblinking . . . blink and you’ld miss it.
ahhhhhhh, the oldies. Eat your veal.
ulee
I miss Romney’s laugh. He learned to laugh from a cartoon. Ha Ha Ha Ha. And Seamus ran away in Canada. And he should lay off the hair gel. And he should name his kids Tim or John or anything but Tagg and Tugg. Can you imagine the horror of this guy being president.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Still good for a laugh:
http://whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com/
http://sadrepublicans.com/
Ash
And I misread the tag as ‘The gift of stupidity’! Anything to keep my mind off of technical difficulties!
Roger Moore
So having a candidate incapable of showing ordinary human emotion and a campaign staff loaded with grifters is not the way to win a national election? Well, knock me over with a feather.
Spaghetti Lee
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Start looking under rocks. You’ll find him eventually.
Redshift
Hmmm…
Let me guess — and go back to an approach of paying big bucks to consultants and advisers?
If he wasn’t a Republican, I’d say the grift was too obvious to work…
Roger Moore
@Spaghetti Lee:
The sub-lithian anti-defamation league would like a word with you, sir.
KG
@mdblanche: yeah, I’m thinking a few volumes of 600+ pages would be necessary… Maybe on the scale of ASong of Fire and Ice
What amazes me is that it was probably a winnable election for the GOP, at least based on some of the fundamentals. Yet they picked the worst possible nominee
Mnemosyne
@KG:
And yet that “worst possible nominee” was still the best of a bad bunch. Which of the Republican nominees running was capable of beating Obama on the fundamentals? Newt? Ron Paul? Herman Cain?
Steeplejack
I really miss the “latest comments” list. Hard to know where the action is on the lonely night shift. Please don’t make me watch Showgirls on HBO.
mdblanche
Gay marriage goes up to eleven.
trollhattan
Only Romney tell-all I’d read would be one by Seamus. Willard and President McCain need to go away to Beat by a Furriner Island for a nice, long nap.
Also, too, have we heard this story recently, only with different players?
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020935502_officerfiredxml.html
Monkey Business
The Republican Party is a very, very funny group of people.
They have a built in group of 27ish percent of the populace that turns out very well that would need to see a GOP candidate strangle a puppy whilst reading Satanic incantations IN PERSON before they’d even THINK of voting for a Democrat. There’s no liberal equivalent; liberals will just stay home and mutter something about both parties being the same or vote for some bullshit third party candidate with no chance to “send a message” no one with any kind of power will “hear”.
They’re financially backed by guys that can throw hundreds of millions of dollars away every election cycle and not even notice or care, because they’re that rich.
They’ve gerrymandered the House of Representatives into a farce, have created an effective 60-vote minimum in the Senate, and have total legislative control of half the country.
By all accounts, they should be wiping the floor with Democrats. Never has a political party with such structural advantages been so staggeringly inept.
Despite all of that, when relatively minor policy changes could cement conservative rule for another decade the GOP has so firmly hitched it’s wagon to cranks, charlatans, grifters, and nutters, that even minor course corrections might as well be trying to steer the Titanic out of the way of the iceberg.
Roger Moore
@KG:
Which fundamentals? High unemployment? Not really, since the best evidence is that it’s the change in unemployment that matters most in an election, not the absolute level. Since things were getting better, albeit slowly, the economy was actually in Obama’s favor. National security? Don’t make me laugh. Demographics? Clearly a Democratic advantage. The fundamentals didn’t favor the Republicans, which is a major reason that the Presidential field was so awful; all the candidates who were smart enough to understand the election chose to stay out.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Sharks sweep the Canucks. Let the gnashing of teeth and bawling continue in Vancouver!
trollhattan
Oh, The Onion, how I do love you.
Yatsuno
@The prophet Nostradumbass: There’s gonna be riots again. It’ll get ugly. And Luongo better apply for asylum in the US, unless Schneider screwed the pooch tonight.
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack:
I miss it, too. Somehow I got a live bookmark in Firefox that shows recent comments (when the recent comments disappeared the last time) – I think I subscribed to ‘comments RSS feed’ or something. Check it out in the ‘meta’ section on the right hand side of the page.
It works, sort of. (It shows up as ‘Comments for Balloon Juice’).
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
It’s amazing they can still come up with effective satire when the Republican Party is working so hard to kill it.
Steeplejack
@dance around in your bones:
Thanks for the tip, but I think I’m going to bed. I was up really late last night—later even than usual—and I’m tired. See you on the flip.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yatsuno: Schneider was the goaltender tonight.
Spaghetti Lee
@Roger Moore:
I suppose I’m also in trouble with the National Bedshitters’ Society and the Organization of People Who Can’t Tell Their Ass From a Hole In The Ground. Oh well, such is the price of speaking truth to power.
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack: Sweet dreams :)
Nemo_N
Anderson Cooper interviews Charles Ramsey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=e5elloa4kOc
I’m still amazed at how level-headed this man is. And I don’t mean that as in “despite his zanny demeanor”, I mean he really seems to be a level-headed person.
mdblanche
@KG: I think just 600 more pages plus the existing 66 should be enough to get the message across.
@Roger Moore: What smart enough candidates? Jeb [last name redacted]? Governor Harkonnen of New Jersey? We all saw how smart their late entry from Texas was. Mitt was one of their best potential candidates for 2012 period.
PeakVT
@Spaghetti Lee: Mini-President McCain actually used the phrase “speak truth to power” today in a manner that implied he has no power. Really.
NotMax
Any more than 66 pages and they’d have to include a second box of crayons.
Spaghetti Lee
@mdblanche:
Governor Harkonnen.
Nice. Goes well with Governor Voldemort (R-FL). I’m glad that so many Supervillain-Americans are finally getting their voices heard!
? Martin
In today’s episode of Failing Upward…
Michael G
I always thought the problem wasn’t that Romney was a bad candidate, but that the insane republican platform pretty much demands bad candidates.
It’s like the woman who dates a series of psychos and is always asking “why can’t I find a nice man”. Honey, the problem is you aren’t attracted to nice men.
dance around in your bones
@Nemo_N:
Yes – he talks about losing sleep over the knowledge that these girls were held in captivity next door and previously he had only lost sleep over lack of money.
Then when A.Coop asks him about a possible monetary reward, he immediately says “Give it to them” (meaning the girls) without a second’s thought. I think the guy is quite genuine and he also says he’s not a hero. Which is usually what heroes say – “I just did what anyone would do”.
I like his style.
mdblanche
@Spaghetti Lee: I thought Skeletor was the governor of Florida?
MattR
@Nemo_N: He definitely hasn’t had any media coaching. He sounds like a genuinely good human being. I am sure we wouldn’t see eye to eye on everything but I would be happy to have him as a neighbor.
? Martin
@MattR:
So you’re planning to imprison women in your basement too?
Calouste
@dance around in your bones: McDonald’s tweeted earlier today that they will be “in touch” with Charles Ramsey after he mentioned he was eating one of their products when the events happened.
eemom
heh. I must say, beating on a dead Romtron is one meme that never gets old.
LosGatosCA
Nobody likes the fall guy to be asking too many questions, or even be motivated to ask any questions, if possible. Don’t talk too good (putting airs), don’t think too much (that hurts the head), and when you say “God bless America” sell it, like you mean it. Nobody sounds authentic when they use words like legal, ethics, or competitive bidding. Who wants some wonky person who can’t sum up their entire tax policy in a single hyperbolic curve? Or who talks about immigration without understanding how a fence will self-deport all the illegal brown people on welfare in the US.
The only bad part about being a Republican is that 73% of the population can’t recognize simple genius if it hit them between the eyes.
James E. Powell
@Roger Moore:
all the candidates who were smart enough to understand the election chose to stay out.
I’m inclined to agree with you and I’m pretty sure I’ve said almost the same thing, but I am at a total loss to name a single smart Republican who would have been a credible candidate had he or she run in the 2012 election. Seriously, who?
LosGatosCA
@Calouste:
Excellent spontaneous product placement, Mr Ramsay has flair. If he plays his cards right he might become the new Jared (from Subway) for McDonalds.
Plus, I can see another ad:
Narrator: Charles Ramsay, now that you saved 3 abducted women from their living hell by kicking in their door like a modern day super hero, what are you going to do next?
Ramsay: Heck, I’m going to DisneyWorld – to kick Captain Hook’s butt.
dance around in your bones
@Calouste: Oh cripes, that’ll prolly improve his life so much.
Shit. Well maybe he won’t have to worry about money so much anymore.
Mike G
@Roger Moore:
So having a candidate incapable of showing ordinary human emotion and a campaign staff loaded with grifters is not the way to win a national election?
It’s how Rmoney conducted his entire corporate career. It’s the only way he knows how to do things. And people like Rmoney and Bush don’t adapt themselves to new situations, they’ve spent their whole lives being able to boss reality into what they want, or are so insulated that they can pretend whatever they want to think.
Villago Delenda Est
@mdblanche:
I thought Lex Luthor was the Governor of Florida.
The main problem with the 2012 GOP Presidential campaign was the nominee.
Villago Delenda Est
@dance around in your bones:
As opposed to say an Eric Cantor who would call a press conference to let everyone know what a great hero he was.
Shalimar
@KG: I watched their primaries. They weren’t lacking for worse nominees.
Debbie(aussie)
My not so small cat Fry has just returned from the vet. He had an abscess. Turned out be very large under skin, size of a tennis ball an totally putrid, now with three drains. Shaved from tail to waist, poor buddy.
Death Panel Truck
@dance around in your bones: You mean it WASN’T all about the Benjamins like LarryMoeJesus said it was last night? You mean this guy WASN’T auditioning for his own reality show like LarryMoeJesus said he was last night?
Color me SHOCKED.
Death Panel Truck
@Debbie(aussie): Sorry to hear it, Debbie. I hope Fry gets better soon.
Ash Can
Sure, Schoenfeld. A Republican Party that ended up getting blindsided in the last presidential election because it ignored the polls and believed in fairy dust instead needs to lose its “mechanical-poll- and focus-group-driven approach.” You’re a fucking genius.
I only hope that the Republican nominee and campaign team is just as cement-headed in 2016.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Sixty-six pages is about sixty-five pages too long for the 27%. The “real” tell-all book will be the one that goes to the greatest lengths to explain why Romney’s loss was in no way the result of the policies he espoused and it especially wasn’t caused by his selection of Ryan for the VP slot.
Bill E Pilgrim
Niall Ferguson’s ongoing apology tour is cracking me up, as chronicled by Brad de Long and others. All I could think of on reading Ferguson’s second offering was this scene.
raven
Here comes “worse than Watergate” Scarborough.
cmorenc
@KG:
So if Romney was the “worst” possible nominee, then who would have been the “best” possible nominee?
Rick Perry?
Michelle Bachman?
Herman Cain?
Newt Gingrich?
Tim Pawlenty? (who couldn’t even stay in the GOP field past the Ames, Ia. straw poll in 2011 (as in, he didn’t even the first real delegate-awarding primary in 2012).
Fred
Guy’s just pissed that when he went to buy his bus ticket home the damn plastic bounced.
The big mistake in the Romney campaign was when Mitt talked and he just kept on doing it.
Anya
@Bill E Pilgrim: This is the most pathetic thing ever. Ferguson’s apology boils down to: I can’t be racist because I sleep with a black woman and I am definitely not homophobic because I am friends with a famous gay person. Harvard should be ashamed to be associated with him.
Patricia Kayden
Romney’s biggest blunder in the 2012 campaign: being Romney.
He was stiff, cold and heartless and that 47% comment made off the record to his millionaire friends sealed the deal. To be honest, the Repubs had no viable Presidential candidates in 2012. We’ll see who they run with in 2016.
Patricia Kayden
@KG: Who would have been a better candidate? Are you kidding? Their entire field was pathetic and probably would have lost worst than Romney.
NotMax
Next GOP outrage du jour?
Air Force sidelines 17 ICBM launch officers; commander cites ‘rot’ within system
WereBear
It wasn’t just self-delusion that had them embracing the skewed polls nonsense. It was a necessary setup for the long con that was supposed to culminate in Karl Rove stealing the election. Again.
That is what his meltdown on Fox that night was about.
And 66 pages? Are you kidding me? That’s a Kindle Single, not a book.
Linda Featheringill
The Republican Party is behaving much like the USSR during WWII. Thinking the right thoughts, spouting the party line, and sucking up to the right people were more important that actual competence. Think of the military officers Stalin went through. Think of the moderate Republicans available that the Rs didn’t even want to listen to. Think of their refusal to believe Nate Silver because he was perceived as being liberal and actually is gay.
The USSR did manage to beat off the invading Nazis but only because the common Russian people realized they were fighting for their very existence. And they fought like Hell.
The Republicans don’t have that resource.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Anya: He must also think that if some guy were accused of being sexist, saying “Wait, he can’t be, he’s married to a woman!” would be a sound defense.
What made me laugh though was the lashing out at the “Pee Cee” intolerance and playing poor pathetic victim almost in the same breath as apologizing and agreeing with everyone that he deserved the criticism, thus the Kevin Kline scene.
scav
@WereBear: It’s a book for the purposes of the GWB Presidentin’ Li-bury. A Tome even.
Schlemizel
@Linda Featheringill:
Similarly Stalin thought nothing of sacrificing millions of common citizens in the effort. The population of his namesake town were specifically not allowed to flee as they impeded the Germans and forced the Army to fight.
Cold, cruel, calculated, it led to millions of needless deaths but it did help win the war.
So, yeah, a lot like todays GOP
dmsilev
So let me get this straight. The problem with the Romney campaign, source of such hilarity as ‘unskew the polls!’ and ‘we don’t need to test our GOTV software before election day’, was that it was overly mechanistic and poll driven?
Just keep on fucking that chicken, Republicans.
Baud
@dmsilev:
That, and too much outreach to Latino voters.
Southern Beale
Feh. Pamphlet is the right word, exactly.
These campaign post-mortems are just another part of the politico-industrial complex, another way to grift money off of the system.
Anya
@Bill E Pilgrim: I know. He is ridiculous. I am happy though he’s trying to do some damage control. This means he’s getting some heat from Harvard.
Getting back to his apology, I tent to agree with Oliver Burkeman’s take:
aimai
@Redshift:
Well, its novel to try to force the mark to pay for the prospectus. Usually you have to lure them into a hotel room and offer them free drinks before you lock the door and go for the hard sell.
Todd
@Mike in NC:
Bloviating belly Bill Bennett had Byron York on yesterday, and they were speaking of the wondrousness that is Rick Santorum.
Former senator foamy remnants will be the TRVE CONSERVATIVE in the hunt. Wall Street will pimp Mark Sanford after Christie gets thumped in a few early primaries.
Just wait and see.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Anya: I’ve been saying basically this one, myself:
He was showing off to impress an audience he figured would be impressed by the gay/liberal bashing (and even they were a bit stunned according to some accounts so he might have been surprised) and then when he realized that more enlightened friends were hearing about it, he said whatever he figured would impress them. And in the case of Sullivan, it worked.
I think searching for core principles or beliefs in someone like him is futile, it looks more like opportunistic hackery all the way down.
IowaOldLady
Interesting post by Maureen Johnson on the difference between book covers for men vs woman authors. She had readers redesign some covers and posts the results. It all looks real.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/coverflip-maureen-johnson_n_3231935.html#slide=2421749
'Niques
@mdblanche: I see what you did there!
aaron pacy
Check this song….
rikyrah
grifting, baby.
nothing but the grift
AxelFoley
@mdblanche:
I see what you did there.
AxelFoley
@Roger Moore:
Thank you. It still cracks me up when some folks try to keep floating that “This was a winnable election for the GOP, if only they ran the right candidate” meme.
lojasmo
@mdblanche:
GM bill has passed through every committee in both senate and house in MN. Comes up for vote tomorrow in the state house, and wasn’t expected to be heard unless the votes were a lock here in MN, and of course, our ubermensch of a gov, Mark Dayton has promised to sign, so it looks like Minnesota might be next.
Frankensteinbeck
@Todd:
Santorum won’t win next time for the same reason he didn’t win this time: Wild, unthinkable incompetence. Romney was the only guy in the 2012 primaries who had a campaign organization at all. It’s funny that a ‘boots on the ground’ strategy won him the primary, then he lost to a ‘boots on the ground’ strategy in the general.
artem1s
@Patricia Kayden:
well, the GOP had no viable candidate that was willing to sacrifice themselves to an incumbent President. Even a Lilly white guy couldn’t get the 70% of the white vote needed to make it a race. It was a near impossible task. Rmoney just made it harder because he was just so good at being a typical Rethug Sooper Dooper Dick. He was just the least dickish of the sideshow exhibits who were really only in it for the grift. Really only about 2/3 of the GOP candidates were really running.
Clinton may not have beaten incumbent Poppy if not for the Perot side show. It just doesn’t happen that often. And once you have lost, your chances of coming back for a second try and getting past the primaries are not good. So I’m betting the field on both sides will be a little more serious in 2016. But who knows, Citizen’s United may have completely ruined the GOPs ability to keep the grifters out of their primaries.
lojasmo
@Patricia Kayden:
Huntsman would have been a better candidate in the general.
ETA, but the rest were a total shitshow, so …yeah.
NonyNony
@KG:
I know that other people have already beaten you up over this, but this isn’t really true. The economy was, in general, getting better over Obama’s 4 years and it’s the (perceived) direction of the economy that has historically been important for Presidential elections, not the absolute.
On top of that – Republicanism has been shown to be a failed experiment. 8 years of Bush (of which for 4 of them he had a solid Republican majority to push a Republican agenda) has shown Republicanism to be a terrible way to govern a country. The national Presidential election shows the country rejecting Republicans, though since our legislatures are horribly undemocratic in their representation that rejection will take a while to filter down.
(That doesn’t mean that they’re embracing Democratic ideas either – but Republicans screwed things up most recently and Democrats have been actively working to fix them. Combine that with the toxic hate the Republican party has been selling for a while now and you get an overall rejection of Republicanism and a tepid acceptance of Democrats, which is enough for a Presidential election at least).
Romney was the best possible nominee that they had who was willing to run and could get through their primary process. He really was. The more moderate elements couldn’t get through the primary, and the only reason Romney got through was because he had the big money to push himself along as his more crazy opponents flamed out.
This is only going to get worse as the Republicans let the Tea Party continue to dictate their legislative races, since what wins over a bunch of highly-gerrymandered Republican districts to win House seats is not really what you need to play to to win a Presidential election. But those are the kind of primary voters they have these days.
Grumpy Code Monkey
While I enjoy bashing Mittens as much as everyone else, we can’t lose sight of the real problem. The GOP may not have a candidate that can win the Presidency, but as long as they own Congress, it doesn’t really matter.
The real action is at the state level, because that’s where districts are being gerrymandered to ensure a GOP Congressional majority. I would really rather the Democrats take back Congress than win the next Presidential election, but until we throw the Republicans out of the state legislatures, that’s going to be difficult at best.
Less Popular Tim
@Death Panel Truck: Regardless, LarryMoeJesus *was* correct about one thing– Ramsey wasn’t a hero, as Ramsey himself admits ;-):
Tonal Crow
So does this hack say anything about Romney’s “42 percent” speech? Or is it all about how Teh FEDERAL RESERVE villainously CUT INTEREST RATES by MORTGAGING GOLD from FORT KNOX to EUROTRASH BANKS to prop up SOLYNDRA and FAST AND FURIOUS with the CONNIVANCE of GEORGE SOROS and AL GORE IS FAT and “climate change” is THE BIGGEST HOAX EVER and NANCY PELOSI is GRABBING OUR GUNS out of the hands of OUR 5-YEAR-OLDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!