Intriguing Take On Mitt Romney from Patrick RuffiniJuly 18th, 2008 | 22 Comments | Posted in Analysis, Commentary, Mitt Romney, Patrick Ruffini, The Next Right, VP, Veepstakes
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Patrick Ruffini gives an interesting dissertation on the potential for Mitt Romney to get the VP nod. Give it a read, and then come back and offer your thoughts and impressions.
Tags: Analysis, Commentary, Mitt Romney, Patrick Ruffini, The Next Right, Veepstakes, VP
Shocker: Ruffini - “Romney’s Race to Lose”December 17th, 2007 | 3 Comments | Posted in Analysis, Commentary, and Editorials, Mitt Romney, Patrick Ruffini
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Patrick Ruffini’s Analysis of Romney’s Primary StrategyNovember 10th, 2007 | 3 Comments | Posted in Campaign Finance, Iowa, John McCain, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire, Patrick Ruffini, Polls, Primaries & Caucuses, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani
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Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini has a very good article over at TOWNHALL.COM.
I can remember wondering, back in the spring of this year, why the other Republican campaigns were not running any ads in Iowa/NH. I had heard the consensus opinion that because of RG and JM’s much greater name recognition they did not need to advertise. But I can also remember thinking, I know that’s true, but it doesn’t help to explain your positions on the issues or to give the voters a chance to get a better idea of the force of your personality.
Now we can see the results of this strategic error on the part of the other two first tier candidates. MR has impressive leads in both Iowa and NH. While it would be dangerous to become complacent, the thought still crosses the mind, however fleetingly, that Mitt Romney may make election history by being the first candidate to win both Iowa and New Hampshire!
Here are some of the most interesting points in a very good article:
4. You Actually Have to Want the Job. Personally, I have no opinion on the burning question of whether or not Fred Thompson wants the Presidency or not. But you have to admit that the perception that he doesn’t, combined with some prominent un-dorsements related to this supposed lack of fire in the belly, have created their own reality on this point.
Voters ultimately respect candidates who do what it takes to win. They may not savor the particulars or the negative ads, but how you run your campaign is a proxy how you run a Presidency. If you’re dogged, if you work hard, if you consistently outsmart your opponents, that’s a powerful qualifier for the toughest job on Earth.
3. Primary Debates Don’t Matter, But the Post-Spin Does, Big Time. Regular people don’t watch primary debates — and that makes the post-debate spin all the more important. In 2004, people who watched the first debate thought John Kerry did better by a small margin. Four days later, they said Kerry won by a 3-to-1 margin. The post-spin matters.
This is all the more important in primary debates because of the small initial audience. Chances are you didn’t hear about Hillary’s last debate performance by watching the debate, but by watching the overwhelmingly negative coverage of it. Likewise, the negative reaction to Rudy’s early missteps on abortion in the debates forced him to give a sweeping address on these issues that largely succeeded in stopping the drip-drip-drip of social issue attacks that was dogging his campaign (further evidence of #8 above and getting the bad stuff out early).
2. You Can Buy an Early Lead in IA/NH for About $2 Million. Cool. Mitt Romney’s surge to the top of the pack in Iowa and New Hampshire will be studied for years to come. How did a relatively unknown Massachusetts Governor become the hands-down early state favorite? Answer: by dropping ads in these states when no one else would and being on the air uncontested for months. It didn’t take much — perhaps as little as $2 million — before Romney surged to the lead in these states. And less than 60 days until the voting begins, this early surge has not “corrected” itself.
~~John Cronin~~
One of the main leadership attributes of Gov. Romney that led me to support him and ultimately promote him is that he is a master strategist. I know of nobody who has ever challenged that amazing skill. Probably more important is Gov. Romney’s reputation for delivery. It is one thing to set out a plan or to posit a promise. It is completely another thing to deliver against that plan or promise. Gov. Romney has an amazing reputation in his career of executing against his plans. Even when obstacles are thrown at him at every turn, he finds a way to deliver as promised. The book Turnaround provides example after example of huge obstacles, problems, and challenges that Gov. Romney surmounted time and again.
As he continues to succeed against his campaign strategy, we will see greater and even more strident criticism of Gov. Romney by those who oppose him. It is already happening. Ann Marie received some pointed criticism from a couple of online sources today for her blog post below (4 down) about Ruffini. I think those other blog posts were unfounded. Without getting into the details, suffice to say that many Romney critics are missing the point. You can criticize the man for his bio or the issues he puts forward or even the man and his family. Fine, if you don’t like him or what he stands for.
If you really want to know what President Romney will be like as a leader, probably the best example is that of when he led the Olympics rescue. Read “Turnaround” if you want a candid, unvarnished look under the hood at his leadership style. He took on that challenge having absolutely no experience in sports management.
But probably more important is what he plans and promises. GMR is a master strategist whose reputation is one of solid execution against a plan. Basically, whatever GMR plans or promises, he delivers. Without exception that is absolutely true. It was always true in his business world, his church leadership, his leadership of the Olympics rescue, and his leadership as governor. Clearly, his campaign leadership is amazing as well.
So the bigger questions are these: “Do I like what Gov. Romney promises me?” — “Do I like what Gov. Romney tells us his plans are and how he will execute those plans as our President?” If I don’t like what he is saying, GMR is not my candidate. Because his reputation is such that he will deliver what he promises. Sure he will be hampered by idealogue liberals, but he has the reputation of executing to his plans under every imaginable obstacle. Just look at the first year of his taking over the Olympics. There were enormous, unbelievable obstacles coming at Romney just about hourly those first days. Romney could easily have failed in many ways that first year. I honestly believe that most above-average executives would in fact have failed given the same set of circumstances.
Many pundits and other “experts” are completely missing the point about Gov. Romney — I think. They all seem to have answers for him. He should do this or do that with his message. His bio is more impressive than the issues, etc. What it all comes down to is his plans and his promises. There are really only two Republican candidates left effectively (click here to see why I state this —-> Two Man Race). Either you believe what Giuliani is promising and planning or you believe what Gov. Romney is planning and promising. If neither, then this post does not matter to you at all. But the fact is that Gov. Romney has an amazing reputation for delivering exactly what he plans and promises, and usually quite a lot more. By the way and since his “issues” have been mentioned, what other candidate even have detailed plans? Exactly. It is one thing to complain about policy or issues, but to complain about too many? Gov. Romney is by far the most intelligent of all the candidates and it is reflected in part by what he has revealed in plans for this nation.
For those who may not like this or that about Gov. Romney, just ask yourself if what he is planning appeals to you. If it does, then you can bank on seeing it implemented if he is elected President. It is that simple. If you don’t like what he is planning, then vote for the less qualified and less able to execute. No other candidate has the reputation for delivery that would even compare to Gov. Romney. As far as I know, he is the only Republican candidate who has asserted publicly that Hillary Clinton will not be President and that the White House will remain with a Republican. I believe that statement is based on his confidence and abilities to defeat her in a general election. I am frankly tired of so-called pundits and “experts” who say they do not believe what Gov. Romney says. In effect they are telling us they like what he is saying; they just don’t believe he can deliver. Well, they are flat wrong. I choose to side with his reputation on that angle. The cheap shots are getting really old.
Either Romney’s plans for America appeal to you or they do not. If they do not, support and vote for another candidate. However, if his plans for America appeal to you, then stand up and get behind him and help push, because when he is President he will in fact deliver exactly as planned. I for one will never support a candidate whose plans for America include protecting abortion; nor will I ever support a candidate who has a poor record of leadership or execution (all the rest).
~ Vic
Patrick Ruffini writes, “Where’s Romney’s Bio?”
First he states:
I know I’m sort of questioning a big strategic assumption behind the Romney campaign here, but I really have to wonder whether the brick wall in polling that he’s hitting is because his campaign has become all about issues and not his incredibly compelling bio.
I disagree with this assessment. Romney’s campaign from the very beginning has promoted his experience as a businessman, at the Olympics, and as Governor while also putting forth great ideas of ways to manage our country better. First, lets go to the bio question.
Has Ruffini never seen this campaign video?
I think the video sums up the bio piece quite nicely. And it’s not like this was the end of telling his story, and who he is and where he came from. There have been others as well.
Furthermore Mr. Ruffini goes on to say:
Despite spending gobs of money, despite eclipsing Fred Thompson in the invisible primary, he still can’t quite connect with conservatives. Yes, he barely won the FRC straw poll, but only after he and the other
ballot stuffingstrawpoll-centric campaigns figured out they could phone it in for the in-person contest and focus exclusively on running up the score in the online vote. Filter out the online votes, and you have a pretty organic (and one sided) protest vote for Mike Huckabee.
What a mischaracterization he has going on here.
If you’ll read this post from Evangelicals for Mitt it explains how the poll turned out and why. I don’t know why Patrick has decided to keep this mischaracterization going even after this was already explained now at least two or three days ago.
Then Mr. Ruffini drones on about how Governor Romney can’t be as conservative as Thompson and Huckabee…
Romney’s speeches are built on the assumption that he can out-conservative Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee by out-talking them. His words are a litany of conservative talking points.
Earlier this year, when his conservative credentials were genuinely in question, the issues-talk might have helped. But now his problem has morphed into something far worse: an authenticity problem centered around flip-flopping. And arguably, each time he opens his mouth and spouts platitudes, he only makes it worse.
Romney has done to himself what the Bush campaign did to John Kerry. The Bush team made it so that every time Kerry opened his mouth, he hurt himself, thanks to the perception that he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. Kerry couldn’t help himself by saying the right things because nobody believed what he was saying.
Romney’s situation is further complicated by the fact that issues are actually friendly terrain for Rudy Giuliani. Huh? That’s right — because people assume Rudy’s positions are liberal, when he talks conservative, that’s reassuring. When Romney talks issues, people assume he’s pandering.
Rudy has an issues problem, one that he’s trying to make go away by talking issues. Romney’s problem is not an issues problem. The flip-flopping charge is a character problem, not an issues problem. So what Romney really must do is shore up perceptions of his character.
Romney should resign himself to the fact that he won’t be able to out-conservative Thompson or Huckabee on issues.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, lets take some of the conservative issues.
If you go to this link, it spells out in depth Governor Romney’s agenda.
Lets list them (be patient these are PDF documents):
All of these are very conservative issues, and ones where Governor Romney excels. He has a pattern of successful leadership over and over again.
Next Mr. Ruffini goes on to say:
In all the ads we’ve seen so far, where is Romney the incredibly successful businessman — the most successful one in North America according to Jim Cramer? Romney the father of five? (this one’s only made the occasional cameo before social conservative audiences). The guy who was home with his wife doing his HBS homework while George Bush was out partying? (Okay, go light on the last part in the primaries.) Or the guy who saved the Olympics?
What about this ad Patrick, it does a pretty great job at highlighting his accomplishments.
He finishes off with this analysis:
The Romneybots could probably dredge up clips to show all of this in campaign material. No need to bother. I’ve seen the clips and they’re playing in my head right now. But how many points have they really put behind bio spots in the early states? Where’s the 60-second bio spot with the soaring music?
On February 5th, Mitt Romney wants people to go to the polls saying this: “Slick Romney may be a smooth talker. He’s just telling me what I want to hear. But he was a pretty darned successful businessman. A good governor. And family man — take that Billary. And he’s not Rudy.”
Think of how Bill Clinton fought back against ultimately more serious character charges: by reframing the character issue. Yeah, he was a lying, pot-smoking philanderer. But he felt our pain.
I like Mitt Romney. But I feel icky whenever I hear him debate. He needs to remind people why they liked him to begin with.
First off, I am not a Romneybot. I never have been. I am not employed by the campaign, nor told what to do on his behalf. It all comes from within, and I think that it’s ridiculous for you to characterize everything that’s been done in the Romney grassroots as “robotic”. We work well together, we get things accomplished. We really have our stuff together collectively as a grassroots, but we are marching to the beat of our own drums here.
As for this talk of “Where’s the 60-second bio spot with the soaring music?”. Governor Romney has campaigned relentlessly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other early primary and caucus states. Every single member of his immediate family has fanned out across the country to campaign for him. His wife goes and speaks, his sons, his daughters-in-law. I’ve never seen a candidate with such familial support as Romney. People in those early states see that. He doesn’t need a campaign commercial to prove his worth to them. They see it every time he comes to visit.
As for Romney being slick, well, you go on believing what you want to believe Mr. Ruffini. In the end though, Governor Romney is going to be the strongest person and the last one showing for the nomination. With the exception of losing to Ted Kennedy (which he really gave him a run for his money), Governor Romney’s been successful in every endeavor he’s put his mind to. I don’t see this being any different. He has the intelligence, the team, the organization, and the grassroots to back him up. It’s unfortunate that you can’t see that.
