What Romney Needs To Do
Gary Gerard,
dumbhoosier.com
I may be outside the conventional wisdom a little bit
here, but I’ve been hearing a lot about how this protracted
Republican primary is hurting the chances of the eventual
nominee against President Barack Obama in the fall.
One thing is for sure, the Republicans are spending a lot more
money this time around than they would in a more normal
primary election. That will hurt, because Obama will have a
cool billion to toss around by election time.
But will the mudslinging and the personal attacks among
Republicans doom the nominee in the fall?
I’m not so sure.
Some of the vitriol is because of the personalities of the
candidates themselves. And some of it is because of this
seeming uneasiness with making Mitt Romney the frontrunner.
But some of it also is the Republicans’ own doing. Many states
have changed the rules from an all-or-nothing delegate pool to
a proportional one. That means, like in Michigan, for example,
when Mitt Romney won by a scant 3 percent, he and Rick
Santorum split the delegates almost 50/50. In an
all-or-nothing format, Romney would have taken all the
delegates.
The idea behind the changes was to keep the campaign going
longer, even past Super Tuesday, to drum up more enthusiasm
among voters. I’m not sure that’s what’s happening, but that
was the intent.
But aside from the downside of cost – exhausting lots of money
on the primary that won’ be available for the general election
in the fall – I don’t think a protracted primary hurts the
eventual GOP nominee all that much.
That’s because by the time the November election rolls around,
there won’t be anything new for the Obama camp to use against
the GOP nominee.
I’m going to assume for the rest of this column that the
nominee will be Romney, which, I’m pretty sure it’s going to
be.
What’s Obama going to be able to say about Romney that
hasn’t already been beaten to death by the media during the
debates and the primary campaign?
He raided companies when he was with Bain Capital? Romneycare
was the basis for Obamacare? He’s rich? He’s stiff and
impersonal? He’s flip-flopped on social issues?
It’s all old news.
Everything anybody has had to say bad about Romney has already
been said over and over and over again.
And frankly, the American people, if they’re paying attention,
know way more about Romney’s stand on the issues than they do
Obama’s.
During the past few months, Romney has been grilled over and
over in 20 debates and dozens of interviews and television
appearances about everything from budgets, deficits,
immigration, energy, environment, health care and the economy
to Libya, Syria, Egypt, Russia and Israel.
Meanwhile, Obama has been giving lots of speeches and holding
lots of fundraisers, but press conferences have been few and
far between. And when he does take questions, it’s usually
just for a couple of minutes and off he goes.
So while the Republican candidates are being grilled by the
press on everything from soup to nuts, Obama has, largely,
been getting a pass to push his message.
Which brings me to the thing that hurts the GOP the most – the
message.
I think Romney gets it right when he hawks “more jobs, less
debt, smaller government.” I think that message cuts across a
huge swath of American voters from the left to the right.
Of course, the economy plays a big part in all of this. If the
economy continues to improve, I think it makes it tougher to
unseat Obama. People largely vote their pocket books. If they
feel as if the current situation is on the upswing, they’ll
vote for the incumbent.
But if the economy remains sluggish, and Romney can stick to a
jobs and smaller government message, I think he has a fighting
chance.
Something else Romney needs to do is stop stuffing his foot in
his mouth. He’s a smart guy. A really smart guy. An adept
business man. An accomplished leader. But when he tries to be
folksy, it almost always goes wrong.
Somebody asks him if he’s a baseball fan. Oh yeah, the last
game I was at I turned to the guy in the box next to me
...
Somebody asks him if he’s a NASCAR fan. Not like some of the
most ardent fans, but I have some great friends that are
NASCAR team owners ...
He tries to tell us how he loves American cars by saying his
wife drives a couple Cadillacs ...
Seriously, Mitt, stop trying to be like the voters.
You’re not like the voters. The voters don’t even really want
you to be like the voters. The voters don’t want to go out and
have a beer with you. The voters want you to fix the nation’s
problems.
Show them that you can do that. Tell them how you will do that
and they just might vote for you.
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