Both the Domenech and the Pethokoukis articles hit the main features of Romney’s problems. But I re-arrange the items slightly, into different categories. Whenever I say “Romney” below I mean “Romney and/or his staff”:
1) Romney confuses mass with sincerity and persuasion.
Here are a few examples:
An 87 page, 59 point economic plan? Are you serious? Who is going to read that? Of what value is it to convincing the mass of voters?
None.
And in fact it’s very mass has deleterious effects. It reminds you of that kid in class whom, when the teacher assigns everyone the task of doing a one or two pager paper, this kid turns in 87 pages. No one likes that kid – not even the teacher. As Petho wrote, Mitt needs a bumper sticker phrase with punch, not a booklet. And it has to be backed up with real detail.
Romney ad ratio against Newt was 65 to 1. Yes Romney won Florida, but I suspect he lost nationwide.
Romney uses variants of the word “Conservative” 25+ times at CPAC. Again he tries to convince people he’s a conservative with mass. It failed.
2) Romney uses fluffy, fuzzy phrases rather than punch and detail.
It is clear to even the most casual of observers that Newt does well in debates when he’s specific. So when Newt talks about drilling for oil and gas, flooding the market and dropping the prices of heating and driving fuel through the floor, people go wild in their seats. It’s simple, obvious, clear, and affects every single listener. Newt has several of those to hand.
9-9-9 was flawed but had the advantage of being simple, punchy and semi-correct.
What do we get from Romney?
“I’ve been in the private sector for 25 years – I know how to fix this!”
Big effing deal, Willard. Tells us HOW you are going to do it. If this vaunted 25 years of experience clues you in, then you should be able to reel them off the top of your head 1-2-3. You don’t do that. Which makes us think you can’t do that, and that your vaunted experience isn’t worth a dime.
Worse, you sound like that other “glittering phraser” – Barack Obama. A huge part of the electorate got burned by voting based upon fuzzy uplifting phrases. You, Willard, remind people of Obama and they aren’t going to sucker for that again
(Some will – for some reason close to 50% of the electorate are blind to the myriad of Obama lies, unconstitutional cheats, liberty-sucking executive orders, and truckloads of contradictory statements uttered within hours of each other and will still vote for Obama anyway. But that’s another saga-length tome.)
3) Romney refuses to be himself.
And so therefore, he comes across as a massive phony. That, plus his pretty huge flip flops, and past declarations of being a Progressive; his ridiculous and wince-producing attempt to lead the crowd in “God Bless America”; his stupid attempt to seem like “one of the guys” by wearing perfect blue jeans with a white shirt….. all create a 1000 foot high neon sign screaming:
PHONY!
See item #2 with regard to being suckered by Obama.
He’s frightened to show us who he is. Al Gore didn’t have a clue who he was: you could see this when he looked, combed his hair, had his make-up arranged and got the head tilts just right, so that he’d look and act like Reagan during the first 2000 election debate, and had to hire people to advise him to wear earth colors to seem more earthy.
Gore lost. Even his home state.
And the phoniness leads to……
4) Romney rejects the one group of voters who have the energy and drive to get him into the White House:
The Tea Party People.
He shuns them; neglects them; ignores them. Further cementing the opinion that Romney lives in a country club bubble and hasn’t a clue what regular people are like, what they think, what would motivate them to work hard for him.
Willard shunned Fox for a while; that also reinforced the above negatives.
There is this business of one’s poker “tell.” That is, what facial, voice tone, or body language cues indicate your sincerity or perhaps lack therof? Governor Huckabee had those animated eyebrows. John McCain would get this pained look on his face.
I see Mitt Romney inteviewed on a Sunday morning political program, and I see him shake his head “no” as he is explaining some point and then flash a forced smile. It seems every answer to a reporter’s question is as a defensive reponse by a corporate type of what used to be called a “loaded question.” “When does BigCorp plan on stopping your pollution from your factories?” (shakes head no) “BigCorp has already reduced pollution by 80 percent, exceeding EPA standards, and our R&D lab is working on eliminating the rest.” (flashes forced smile).
I don’t know of Governor Romney is a phoney or not, but he is giving “poker tells” of phoniness.
I do not care. Romney is the best one standing. ABO.
I keep hoping that Victor Davis Hanson and Thomas Sowell will stage a coup at the national convention. I have no idea how that would work, I just want it to happen.
Both the Domenech and the Pethokoukis articles hit the main features of Romney’s problems. But I re-arrange the items slightly, into different categories. Whenever I say “Romney” below I mean “Romney and/or his staff”:
1) Romney confuses mass with sincerity and persuasion.
Here are a few examples:
An 87 page, 59 point economic plan? Are you serious? Who is going to read that? Of what value is it to convincing the mass of voters?
None.
And in fact it’s very mass has deleterious effects. It reminds you of that kid in class whom, when the teacher assigns everyone the task of doing a one or two pager paper, this kid turns in 87 pages. No one likes that kid – not even the teacher. As Petho wrote, Mitt needs a bumper sticker phrase with punch, not a booklet. And it has to be backed up with real detail.
Romney ad ratio against Newt was 65 to 1. Yes Romney won Florida, but I suspect he lost nationwide.
Romney uses variants of the word “Conservative” 25+ times at CPAC. Again he tries to convince people he’s a conservative with mass. It failed.
2) Romney uses fluffy, fuzzy phrases rather than punch and detail.
It is clear to even the most casual of observers that Newt does well in debates when he’s specific. So when Newt talks about drilling for oil and gas, flooding the market and dropping the prices of heating and driving fuel through the floor, people go wild in their seats. It’s simple, obvious, clear, and affects every single listener. Newt has several of those to hand.
9-9-9 was flawed but had the advantage of being simple, punchy and semi-correct.
What do we get from Romney?
“I’ve been in the private sector for 25 years – I know how to fix this!”
Big effing deal, Willard. Tells us HOW you are going to do it. If this vaunted 25 years of experience clues you in, then you should be able to reel them off the top of your head 1-2-3. You don’t do that. Which makes us think you can’t do that, and that your vaunted experience isn’t worth a dime.
Worse, you sound like that other “glittering phraser” – Barack Obama. A huge part of the electorate got burned by voting based upon fuzzy uplifting phrases. You, Willard, remind people of Obama and they aren’t going to sucker for that again
(Some will – for some reason close to 50% of the electorate are blind to the myriad of Obama lies, unconstitutional cheats, liberty-sucking executive orders, and truckloads of contradictory statements uttered within hours of each other and will still vote for Obama anyway. But that’s another saga-length tome.)
3) Romney refuses to be himself.
And so therefore, he comes across as a massive phony. That, plus his pretty huge flip flops, and past declarations of being a Progressive; his ridiculous and wince-producing attempt to lead the crowd in “God Bless America”; his stupid attempt to seem like “one of the guys” by wearing perfect blue jeans with a white shirt….. all create a 1000 foot high neon sign screaming:
PHONY!
See item #2 with regard to being suckered by Obama.
He’s frightened to show us who he is. Al Gore didn’t have a clue who he was: you could see this when he looked, combed his hair, had his make-up arranged and got the head tilts just right, so that he’d look and act like Reagan during the first 2000 election debate, and had to hire people to advise him to wear earth colors to seem more earthy.
Gore lost. Even his home state.
And the phoniness leads to……
4) Romney rejects the one group of voters who have the energy and drive to get him into the White House:
The Tea Party People.
He shuns them; neglects them; ignores them. Further cementing the opinion that Romney lives in a country club bubble and hasn’t a clue what regular people are like, what they think, what would motivate them to work hard for him.
Willard shunned Fox for a while; that also reinforced the above negatives.
There is this business of one’s poker “tell.” That is, what facial, voice tone, or body language cues indicate your sincerity or perhaps lack therof? Governor Huckabee had those animated eyebrows. John McCain would get this pained look on his face.
I see Mitt Romney inteviewed on a Sunday morning political program, and I see him shake his head “no” as he is explaining some point and then flash a forced smile. It seems every answer to a reporter’s question is as a defensive reponse by a corporate type of what used to be called a “loaded question.” “When does BigCorp plan on stopping your pollution from your factories?” (shakes head no) “BigCorp has already reduced pollution by 80 percent, exceeding EPA standards, and our R&D lab is working on eliminating the rest.” (flashes forced smile).
I don’t know of Governor Romney is a phoney or not, but he is giving “poker tells” of phoniness.
I do not care. Romney is the best one standing. ABO.
I keep hoping that Victor Davis Hanson and Thomas Sowell will stage a coup at the national convention. I have no idea how that would work, I just want it to happen.