Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
How Romney can recover
Romney is currently down in Florida and nationally in the polls as of today because of the surprising surge by Gingrich over the past week that led him to a resounding victory in South Carolina. Conservative voters are so far willing to overlook Newt's considerable baggage because they feel he is they only candidate willing to take it to President Obama, the Democrats in Washington and their sympathizers in the media. What Mitt has failed to do so far is call out Newt not so much on his conservative apostates and political failings, but tell the voters exactly who Newt is.
Newt is simply a jerk. Personally, professionally and politically he is a jerk in his dealings with others, both those that support him and oppose him. The reason Gingrich calls the President names is not because he cannot work with Democrats (he did fold under Clinton's charms), but because he looks down on Obama as compared to his own grandiose self-importance (aka Reagan, Thatcher, Churchill). We may elect Presidents who have various shortcomings and personalities, but what we don't do is elect a jerk as the Commander in Chief and head of state. That is why Obama's campaign team is so giddy. They know that Romney is a plausible President despite his awkward public persona because although voters might have doubts about his core convictions, he is not, nor ever has been a jerk. Gingrich could never be President at least not up against someone like Obama who still has the heart of the general public because he is the embodiment of being a jerk.
Romney has gotten distracted by the primaries in that what once was a race to see who could best fix the economy (which is what really concerns voters) has turned into a race as to see who is the "true" conservative. Romney must return the narrative to who best can right the ship instead of trying to outbid Gingrich on who best can deliver the red meat. Whether he can do it in time for Florida is an open question, but since there will be a relative pause in the calender between the end of January and Super Tuesday in the beginning of March Romney has time to recover and reassert himself to the voters with this message.
Newt is simply a jerk. Personally, professionally and politically he is a jerk in his dealings with others, both those that support him and oppose him. The reason Gingrich calls the President names is not because he cannot work with Democrats (he did fold under Clinton's charms), but because he looks down on Obama as compared to his own grandiose self-importance (aka Reagan, Thatcher, Churchill). We may elect Presidents who have various shortcomings and personalities, but what we don't do is elect a jerk as the Commander in Chief and head of state. That is why Obama's campaign team is so giddy. They know that Romney is a plausible President despite his awkward public persona because although voters might have doubts about his core convictions, he is not, nor ever has been a jerk. Gingrich could never be President at least not up against someone like Obama who still has the heart of the general public because he is the embodiment of being a jerk.
Romney has gotten distracted by the primaries in that what once was a race to see who could best fix the economy (which is what really concerns voters) has turned into a race as to see who is the "true" conservative. Romney must return the narrative to who best can right the ship instead of trying to outbid Gingrich on who best can deliver the red meat. Whether he can do it in time for Florida is an open question, but since there will be a relative pause in the calender between the end of January and Super Tuesday in the beginning of March Romney has time to recover and reassert himself to the voters with this message.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Newt the Jerk
Newt Gingrich is a jerk. Professionally, personally, and politically he is a jerk. Americans might elect someone who they don't always agree with or has some shortcomings, but they don't elect a jerk. Romney must make the case that Newt is the embodiment of a jerk.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
How to best Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich is the clear front runner for the 2012 Republican nomination according to multiple national polls. As of December 9th, the Real Clear Politics polling average has Gingrich at 33 to Mitt Romney at 21.3, a spread of 11.7 points. Gingrich has captured nearly all the support that formerly went to Herman Cain, who withdrew from the race last Saturday. Further, Romney's support has declined a bit, even as Rick Perry, once a formidable competitor has seen his polling numbers fall into the single digits. Unless something dramatic happens it will be a two person race from here on out: Gingrich as the conservative firebrand and Romney as the establishment stalwart.
Recently, Rommey has gone on the offensive against Gingrich to thwart his momentum by painting him as unacceptable and unelectable. While surrogates like John H. Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and Jim Talent, the former senator of Missouri, have tried to portray Gingrich as not really a conservative and mostly in it for himself, that portrayal won't work because it doesn't tell the voter why Gingrich should not be the nominee of the Republican party. Moreover, Romney doesn't make a clear contrast to Gingrich as to why he should be the one they choose instead.
What Romney needs to do to win is to tell a political story of how he evolved on the issues and came to the conclusion that as he became more involved in government and politics as a candidate and governor of Massachusetts that the conservative viewpoint and policy is more correct than the liberal viewpoint and policy. Romney has to make the case that though he indeed has had different views in the past he is moving in the one direction, from left to right. Therefore, when Romney says that he is a candidate of consistency, what he means is that he tries to seek the out the best answers and has found those answers over time be more on the right than on the left.
With Gingrich, Romney can portray him as a man of inconsistency and volatility. The positions Gingrich has taken have been all over the political map, even though he uses incendiary language against Democrats. He was a revolutionary who lead the Republicans to the control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years in 1994. A decade after he was ousted as Speaker of the House he cut a climate change ad with then-Speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi in 2007. Gingrich claims he wants a smaller, less intrusive government, yet he was paid 1.6 million dollars by Freddie Mac to help it become more involved in the housing market, which we are still suffering the aftermath of the bursting of that bubble.
What you want in a president is someone who is calm, steady, and makes decisions carefully. What you don't want is someone who is brash, volatile, and makes decisions on a whim only to say it was stupid later on as Gingrich did with the ad he did with Pelosi.
The message that Romney can take to Republican primary voters is that he has indeed had policy positions earlier in his life that differ from what he has today, but that the direction he has moved to is one shaped by his experience and evidence he has gathered over the past two decades. He has learned that the answers and the direction the country needs, especially in a troubled economy hurt by high unemployment and unsustainable debt and deficits, is toward conservative, free market, pro-growth policies rather than liberal, regulated, and pro-government policies.
Romney has demonstrated that even if he has not always been a perfect conservative he has gotten the direction correct, consistently moving from the left to the right. Whereas Gingrich has not shown such temperament, with swings right to left and back again, based on his own personal predilection of what matters. Therefore, Republican voters need to decide if they want to nominate someone who gets the direction right grounded in evidence or someone who decides what's right based on a whim.
Recently, Rommey has gone on the offensive against Gingrich to thwart his momentum by painting him as unacceptable and unelectable. While surrogates like John H. Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and Jim Talent, the former senator of Missouri, have tried to portray Gingrich as not really a conservative and mostly in it for himself, that portrayal won't work because it doesn't tell the voter why Gingrich should not be the nominee of the Republican party. Moreover, Romney doesn't make a clear contrast to Gingrich as to why he should be the one they choose instead.
What Romney needs to do to win is to tell a political story of how he evolved on the issues and came to the conclusion that as he became more involved in government and politics as a candidate and governor of Massachusetts that the conservative viewpoint and policy is more correct than the liberal viewpoint and policy. Romney has to make the case that though he indeed has had different views in the past he is moving in the one direction, from left to right. Therefore, when Romney says that he is a candidate of consistency, what he means is that he tries to seek the out the best answers and has found those answers over time be more on the right than on the left.
With Gingrich, Romney can portray him as a man of inconsistency and volatility. The positions Gingrich has taken have been all over the political map, even though he uses incendiary language against Democrats. He was a revolutionary who lead the Republicans to the control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years in 1994. A decade after he was ousted as Speaker of the House he cut a climate change ad with then-Speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi in 2007. Gingrich claims he wants a smaller, less intrusive government, yet he was paid 1.6 million dollars by Freddie Mac to help it become more involved in the housing market, which we are still suffering the aftermath of the bursting of that bubble.
What you want in a president is someone who is calm, steady, and makes decisions carefully. What you don't want is someone who is brash, volatile, and makes decisions on a whim only to say it was stupid later on as Gingrich did with the ad he did with Pelosi.
The message that Romney can take to Republican primary voters is that he has indeed had policy positions earlier in his life that differ from what he has today, but that the direction he has moved to is one shaped by his experience and evidence he has gathered over the past two decades. He has learned that the answers and the direction the country needs, especially in a troubled economy hurt by high unemployment and unsustainable debt and deficits, is toward conservative, free market, pro-growth policies rather than liberal, regulated, and pro-government policies.
Romney has demonstrated that even if he has not always been a perfect conservative he has gotten the direction correct, consistently moving from the left to the right. Whereas Gingrich has not shown such temperament, with swings right to left and back again, based on his own personal predilection of what matters. Therefore, Republican voters need to decide if they want to nominate someone who gets the direction right grounded in evidence or someone who decides what's right based on a whim.
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