Five Ways Mitt Romney Can Still Win As Conservative Unease Grows
Daryl Cagle, NBCnews.com
Is the growing conventional wisdom correct? Is Republican nominee Mitt Romney fated to be mentioned with tepidly received candidates doomed to defeat such as former Sen. Bob Dole (R) and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis (D)?
One of my favorite, most-solid political analysts is Marc Ambinder, who now writes an excellent blog on the equally excellent news magazine The Week (yours truly, my late father, my nephew and my sister all have been huge fans and subscribers). In this post he summarizes in non-talk show, non-ideological cable network style (i.e. standing back and analyzing without peddling a favorite) five ways in which Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney can win.
It’s worth noting his conclusion first:
There is no linear path to victory right now for Romney. That has reality-based Republicans scared out of their wits. It has others, like Tim Pawlenty, scrambling for the exits (gracefully). For now, the rest can only grin and bear it.
But here are some tidbits from the five ways:
1. Romney has a stellar first debate, which galvanizes his campaign and allows late-breaking independents to finally see the man that Ann Romney so loves dearly. Likelihood: 60 percent. Every Romney route to victory has to include a great first debate, because the first debates tend to matter the most, and because Romney will have a relatively unfiltered opportunity to try to make his case, probably his last…..
2. Romney has a human moment. Likelihood: 40 percent. Yes, I know he is a human being, and I’m one of those reporters who has seen him when the camera is off and I can vouch for the fact that he isn’t weird and stilted. But he is so cautious on the campaign trail, so full of anxious energy, that even his scripted soft moments come off as somewhat silly. So he needs someone to give him a bear-hug, or to shed a genuine tear, or to tell a dirty joke — something entirely spontaneous that expands the comfort zone. From the start, the Obama campaign has tried to portray Romney as too darn unusual to be the president, and that strategy has worked. Clint Eastwood’s talking chair routine is not going to cut it….
3. Convince Democrats that they’re going to lose. Likelihood: 30 percent. The more Democrats think they’re going to win, the more enthusiasm their base will have, and the easier it will be for Obama to get to 270 electoral votes on the strength of only marginal independent turnout. Romney needs to somehow juice the game to scare Democrats into thinking that they’re going to lose, which will set the ball rolling in the opposite direction…
4. Iran does something stupid and dangerous; Israel attacks Iran unilaterally. Likelihood: 40 percent. This is a huge unknown, and it’s unseemly to speculate about anything that would involve death and destruction….
5. The Medicare argument works. Likelihood: 10 percent. President Obama’s $716 billion Medicare … call it an adjustment … remains a viable political opportunity for Romney, albeit a very risky one. Though the Affordable Care Act cuts payments to hospitals and to private insurers that subsidize special add-on plans to Medicare (Medicare Advantage), it could well persuade a number of doctors to stop accepting Medicare in the first place…
How dire is the situation to many GOPers? I think Booman nailed it:
According to Nate Silver’s model, if the election were held today, Obama would have a better than 95% chance of winning. That is something you would not know if you looked just at national polling outfits like Gallup and Rasmussen. And it shows you how important it is to have Nate Silver at the New York Times. It’s true that I liked it better when he was working independently in the new media, but his influence can’t be exaggerated. I do not believe that the Republicans would be stabbing each other with forks and knives if they thought the election was a dead-heat. But they don’t think that because they know Nate is a smart man, and they know those national polls from Gallup and Rasmussen are better used as toilet paper than accurate reflections of that state of the race. Nate has taken one of the Republicans’ strongest tools and he has blunted its effectiveness by applying cold, hard analysis to the problem. The Republicans don’t just think they are going to lose. They know it.
But, again, it is vital for partisans and non-partisans to keep in mind that she will not sing until election day.
Even so, if you add the always-perceptive and professional Ambinder’s analysis with Booman’s take, and then you toss in this exchange on NBC’s Meet the Press it’s clear that many Republicans don’t buy the spin that all is well.
The worst spin of the campaign season came from the RNC Chairman:
Mitt Romney had a good week even as his “47 percent” comments dominated the headlines, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said Sunday.
“I think that we had a good week last week,” Priebus said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think in retrospect, in that we were able to frame up the debate last week in the sense of, what future do we want and do you want out there.”That came after Priebus said, earlier on in the interview, that Romney has been clear his “47 percent” remark “probably wasn’t the best-said moment in the campaign” and, ultimately, this was “probably not the best week in the campaign.”
That comes even as many high-profile Republicans, including Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, have begun arguing that the Romney campaign needs a turnaround and that, even more fundamentally, the Republican Party needs to change.
Still, there will be spin (particularly on Fox News and some of the new media Internet sites) that will contend that Romney is only be dissed by that mean, old, bad news media — when a good chunk of the strong criticism is coming from conservative Republicans who (a) want to win and (b) want conservative ideas articulated with specificity.
Proof of that is this segment from NBC’s Meet the Press that pits a hapless, spin-spouting Romney surrogate Bay Buchanan against some conservatives who are actually trying to analyze the campaign rather than do talking points for Romney or against Barack Obama. MUST VIEWING:
There seems concern here — genuine concern here — that time is running out and the campaign can’t be waged the same way.
And there are already indications Romney is about to make a major campaign style shift.
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Don’t forget what Reince Priebus said today. Romney has specifics coming out of his eyeballs. Changing this strategy may be the secret to Romney future success. Once he realizes that people hear his specifics more clearly when they come out of his mouth he may get his message across. The specifics that come out of his eye balls are hard to hear, taste and smell.
I am part of Mr. Romney’s 53%.
I have worked hard all my life. And I pay taxes. Lots of taxes.
I have never received food stamps, but never begrudged helping those who needed them. I have never needed to use unemployment insurance, but never thought it “wrong” to use something that individuals pay into for just such emergencies. I have never used Medicare, but believe it is a good system I have paid for and that, with careful management, will be there when I need it. I have yet to take social security, but have paid into it my whole working life and expect and demand that it be there for me and for my children and grandchildren.
I am sick of Mr. Romney.
His vision of America is NOT mine.
And want him to go very far away very very soon.
..The election is now out of Romney’s hands. Romney is going to have to depend on events he cannot control to win now. So, only #4 above is a realistic outcome for him. Why do I say this? Research shows that debates do not structurally change elections. Many voters walk away from debates thinking the other guy won and still vote for their guy. Additionally, who really thinks that women will suddenly forget the positions he has taken on issues important to them during this campaign because he had a good debate. Hispanics will also not forget his positions on immigration (“self-deport”) because he does well on October 3rd.
Romney has to hope for an event like #4, or maybe Obama making a major mistake like Gerald Ford did in 1976 (and those odds are slim to none) for things to change. On election day, he will have to hope that the vaunted Obama turn-out machine fails.
Unlike Dean, I am the poster boy for the 47%. I paid into the SS and Medicare system, served my country (came out injured, but only mildly so), paid taxes, raised babies and…got sick due to no fault of my own. Then I had to use Social Security (Disability), food stamps–only at certain times though, Medicare, government housing, etc.
I have, since the very first day of my disability, tried to find ways to be a useful member of society–even beyond that of being a father who was there for his children. I have looked for cures and mechanisms of relief for my disability. I spent a two-year time period in a study conducted by the SSA to see if they could help me find either a job or volunteer work that I could do. Spoiler alert: they could not.
Romney was my governor for four years of my disability time. During that time
1) Rent was increased from 25% of income to 28% of income
2) Eyeglasses and dental for adults were no longer covered
3) Money for building maintenance of public housing was cut (Just what the hell do they do with that extra rent money anyways???)
4) Lotteries were increased, funding for gambling addiction was decreased, funding for the suicide hotline was eliminated.
5) Funding for schools was cut–wealthiest communities had the most cut. When it was put back it was put back proportional to what the schools were receiving–thus the wealthier communities got less proportionally less back, even though they lost the most!
The points are interesting, but those odds are way off and it sounds like someone is trying to keep the horserace going.
The odds of Iran or Israel acting before the election: 0
Convince Dems that they are going to lose: 0
Romney has a human moment: 10 (he has had, a decade to have one of those?)
Mitt should perform well in the debate, but Obama will too. Reps know they need the first debate to go their way, Dems know that Reps need this too.
I’m not so sure this would help Romney. Foreign catastrophes tend to favor the incumbent. Yes, Iran hurt Carter, but more because he let it linger rather than it being an “October Surprise”. Iran is so fundamentally whacky I doubt anyone could successfully pin Iranian madness on Obama. But based on Netanyahu’s comments recently, pinning Israeli aggression on “wag the tail” motivations to help Romney would be pretty easy.
“1. Romney has a stellar first debate, which galvanizes his campaign and allows late-breaking independents to finally see the man that Ann Romney so loves dearly. Likelihood: 60 percent.”
Lol, 60 percent? This would mean he beats Obama in the debate, and I don’t think any of the odds makers in Vegas are giving 3-2 on Romney walking away from an unscripted, fact checked, moderated debate looking better than Obama. Unless of course he’s been saving up all his real talking points for the debate. I’d put that closer to 15%.
I agree #4 is by far the likeliest of the possibilities, but given that Romney has pretty much shot himself in the foot on several occasion in just the last few months I don’t see how the American people will look to him over Obama for a solid foreign policy crisis plan.
I agree with many of the other comments that at this point the election is out of Mitt Romney’s hands. Option #4 (trouble in the Mideast), some huge screw-up by Obama, or an extremely bad employment report next month are potential paths for a Romney victory. However, Romney has no control over these scenarios, the likelihood of occurrance is unknown, and even if they do occur, it us uncertain to what extend Romney will gain.
Romney’s problem is not his policies, but his campaign and his character. He has one of the worst-run presidential campaigns that I’ve seen. Rupert Murdock stated in August that Romney should fire his entire campaign staff, and start over. Among Romney’s staffers and core supporters, there seems to be this delusion that mediocrity equals victory, wherein even Romney makes lots of mistakes, he’ll still win. They seem to be running a campaign more suited for a mayor or congressman, not someone trying to unseat an incumbent president.
The other real problem is that hardly anybody likes or trusts Romney. I know lots of people who strongly dislike Barack Obama, but few who strongly support Romney. Rather than Obama versus Romney, this race seems to be pro-Obama versus anti-Obama. Since the primaries, Romney has had a reputation of being an out-of-touch flip-flopper. The 47% speech is a massive problem that will haunt Romney for the rest of the race, and I don’t really think his campaign comprehends how important it is to have a good image.