2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumTagg Romney: Mitt had “no desire” to run
A behind the scenes account in the Boston Globe finds cluelessness at the Romney campaign's highest levels
BY DAVID DALEY
Just how bad was Mitt Romneys campaign? So bad that top Republican officials are now trying to reverse engineer his race to make sure no GOP candidate ever makes the same mistakes.
According to a behind-the-scenes story of the Romney campaign in todays Boston Globe by reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Holman, who co-authored the biography The Real Romney Mitts aides are still in disbelief over what hit them.
It describes a campaign that was deeply divided on whether to run on Romneys biography or on his business record. Ultimately, the paper reports, Romney sided with campaign manager Stuart Stevens rather than with the family members who wanted to stress his biography.
Among the revelations in the story:
* Romneys Ohio director had no idea what Obamas campaign was doing with all of its ground-game power. In a hilarious quote, Rich Beeson tells the paper: Now I know what they were doing with all the staffs and offices. They were literally creating a one-to-one contact with voters.
-snip-
more:
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/23/tagg_romney_mitt_had_no_desire_to_run/
Link to Boston Globe article:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2012/president/2012/12/23/the-story-behind-mitt-romney-loss-the-presidential-campaign-president-obama/2QWkUB9pJgVIi1mAcIhQjL/story.html
ywcachieve
(365 posts)Evergreen Emerald
(13,069 posts)The man ran for president for...7 years
Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)monmouth3
(3,871 posts)Cha
(295,899 posts)thing. How much better it would have been to come out and say; "they all fought hard(read LIE) because dad wanted it and thought he could do a good job"?
Now.. they've only given accurate well deserved talking points to their oppostition.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)DFW
(54,050 posts)Creating contact with voters. Amazing!! Your goal is trying to get people to vote for your candidate and here, the opposing campaign comes up with the unheard-of concept of talking to them. Wow, no wonder they won. Who would EVER have thought up such a brilliant devious scheme?
I'll tell y'all what's unbelievable--not that Obama's people thought to do that, but that Romney's people DIDN'T!!!
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)ideas don't present well. They are too crazy. They make no sense.
You have to be a true believer in -- well -- Republican ideas in order to talk with someone who wants to talk about Republican ideas.
When Republicans try to talk to voters, the Republicans just get embarrassed. That is the problem.
Republicans need to rethink the fundamentals about what their party stands for.
Born-again, fundamentalist Christians pretty much can only talk to each other about their fundamentalist, Christian ideas.
Same for the Ayn Rand types. Most people just don't buy into those ideas.
Republicans won when they talked about family values, but once their own lack of family values came to light, they couldn't win on that point any more.
Ahhhh, the poor Republicans.
What they need to do to win is to become Democrats, proud and free Democrats.
Wounded Bear
(58,437 posts)They should talk to Bernie Sanders, a socialist who wins cycle after cycle in a rather conservative state. Yes, upper New England is fairly conservative, and was for many years a stronghold of fiscal/economic conservative Republicans. The "Southern Revolution" of the last couple of decades have pretty much rooted that out.
How does Bernie do it? Mostly by going around and holding town hall meetings and talking to voters. He's famous for that.
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)missing piece where it counts.
karynnj
(59,474 posts)Very few people in each generation have the chance to be their party's nominee. If you ignored that people are the nominee more than once and assumed that the probability was equal for all birth years, it would be 1/ (4 * the average number of births in the period you are speaking of). Note this is an over estimate as there often are incumbents running again.
If you define a generation as a dozen years, there are usually no more than 6 people who become their party's nominee. This does not just happen.
Cha
(295,899 posts)insulting the Intelligence of the American People.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)The billion they squandered in the 50 states gave a lot of people jobs and was a nice economic stimulus.
Saddest thing was when they stuffed bloggers with mac n cheese, pulled pork and open bar. Was sad, they killed poor Breibart with that heat attack diet and making him scream at protesters.
Rozlee
(2,529 posts)ANN ROMNEY wanted Mittens to win the presidency more than anything in the world. Mitt was just the hapless hostage.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)more than anything in the world. I think they ORDERED him to run, and being an obedient member, he did.
They overlooked the fact that they couldn't MAKE him want to win.
That makes sense. Got to be a good little cultist.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Could be that blind faith. I think it was more the republicans running the show, wanted someone really clueless in the presidents seat, so they could continue to bleed Americas Federal and State funds into their pockets.
Romney never was presidential material at all, never.
NYC Liberal
(20,132 posts)A huge portion of the country these days will vote for the Republican no matter what, no matter how awful they are.
Not only did Romney run one of the worst campaigns ever, Obama ran one of the best (again, along with his 2008 campaign). Given that, I don't think many people -- if anyone -- could have done much better than Obama did
NICO9000
(970 posts)Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)It's a lie he didn't want to run! Another LIE! Why the hell had he been campaigning for 6 years?
He and Ann both wanted to be President Romney and clothes horse First Lady. They just feared the pain of being losers again. But they wanted the presidency so much...it overrode their fears.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)I don't think he really wanted the job either, just the power.
JHB
(37,128 posts)The article stressed how much the family wanted to stress "what kind of person he was" through anecdotes about people he helped.
But that also shows the disconnect: there are relatively few "warped frustrated old men" of the Mr. Potter/Ebeneezer Scrooge vein who are uniformly sour. Most people can find it in themselves to be kind to individuals.
The key is when that gets abstracted a level and one starts thinking of groups. At that level, how freely do your prejudices flow? Romney put his on display in the 47% video, and has followed up showing it in his post-election excuse-making about "gifts".
Yeah, it left that impression... because to hit that 47% number, you are talking about Social Security recipients and veterans. And people on unemployment for economic reasons that Mitt only had experience in exacerbating, not counterbalancing. And people who do work at a job (or jobs) using Republican-supported tax credits, so that the income tax liability on their low-paying jobs is zero.
People noticed that it was the most honest he'd been in the entire campaign. The rest was all "Who let the dogs out". Months and months of it.
LynneSin
(95,337 posts)Good riddance
Mz Pip
(27,403 posts)Do they really expect us to believe that the guy who ran for 7 years didn't really want it? Ha Ha.
He wanted it so much he thought he had it in the bag and put together a $8.9 million transition plan that now has to be paid by the tax payers.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)Gotcha, there, Tagg.
Tagg -- Isn't the name of a popular end table at Ikea?
JHB
(37,128 posts)"retroactively NOT running"
Cha
(295,899 posts)Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)Romney announcements 11/6/2012 10:59 Eastern
I retroactively retired from my position as GOP candidate for the office of President.
Posted by Fresh_Start | Mon Nov 5, 2012, 12:51 PM (0 replies)
rurallib
(62,343 posts)May it take you far Tagg - from America.
Third Doctor
(1,574 posts)run for a office for 6 years and go through two bruising primaries and not really want the office? How could he be shellshocked after the loss and even ordered a fire works to display to start the minute after he won, if he did not want or expect to win? Romney wanted the office but did not want to be properly vetted (taxes ect) that went along with it. He did not like campaigning and mixing up with who he views as the help either. Tagg, seems to be a chip off of the old block. A damned liar.
Cosmocat
(14,543 posts)he darn well wanted the job.
he just didn't feel that he needed to do what was needed to get it
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,272 posts)How much money would he have spent if he REALLY wanted to be President?
Malikshah
(4,818 posts)What complete and utter tripe.
Romney-- you lost because your vision of the country is skewed in the wrong direction, pure and simple.
Give it the fuck up, pollsters.
Superbot
(59 posts)What a nail in the coffin!
MurrayDelph
(5,279 posts)their own belief in themselves:
i.e. If Mitt really wants something, he gets it.
He didn't get it, therefore
He didn't really want it.