No matter how former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney does in his goal of getting the Republican Presidential nomination, today will go down as a day that political operatives will likely talk about for some time due to the lessons it taught to candidates.
LESSON ONE: Be sure not to have your candidate deliver a speech with lots of media attention in a stadium that has lots of empty seats in camera range.
LESSON TWO: Don’t deliver boilerplate or deliver a line that was highly ridiculed by cable pundits and late night comedians. You’ve heard of “life imitating art?” This is “life imiitating snark.”
Once again, Team Obama must be smiling and Barack Obama as you read this is probably bursting out into song but it’s the Romney’s camp that should be singing the blues: Romney’s highly touted speech in Detroit could be added to the Unites States’ nuclear arsenal on several fronts. The Hill:
Mitt Romney spoke to several empty seats Friday in Detroit, in a speech that offered Democrats more fodder for their attacks and failed to deliver the major economic address his campaign promised.
You could argue that this was an empty suit talking to empty seats…
Television cameras showed rows of empty chairs as Romney rehashed many of the policies and quips he’d used in previous speeches, made a few jokes that appeared to fall flat with the audience and said that his wife, Ann, drives “a couple of Cadillacs,” which will likely give Democrats more ammunition for their depiction of him as rich and out of touch.
And you have to read this if you’re a political junkie and be truly stunned. Did he REALLY do this?
The former Massachusetts governor also repeated a line that has been the butt of jokes by late-night comedians — that Michigan has good-sized
“This feels good, being back in Michigan,” he said. “The trees are the right height. The streets are just right.”
Romney then listed the various cars he and his wife own.
“I drive a Mustang and Chevy pickup truck,” he said. “Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually. I used to have a Dodge truck, so I used to have all three [Detroit manufacturers] covered.”
Polls show Romney is back in the lead in his home state of Michigan, which is considered a must-win for him. The primary is Tuesday.
QUESTION: Is Mitt Romney running for President or to be a regular SNL feature?
Here’s a suggested theme song for the Romney campaign — sung by Clint Eastwood:
UPDATE: Plutocrap says:
Willard truly is a man of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%.
And 1% is apparently about the number of available seats he managed to fill up for his BIG, really BIG, economic policy speech in Michigan.
The native son doesn’t appear to be getting much of a welcome home, does he?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.