Wednesday, March 21, 2012
I'm leaving the Etch A Sketch posts up. My contrarian take clearly appears to be wildly off the mark, but I'm not pulling any of it down or apologizing for it because I still think it's an inside-baseball scandal, and I think we're about 48 hours from the first "Romney was unfairly maligned because Fehrstrom just said what everyone knows is true about running for president" bits of punditry. And Romney's survived worse.
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7 comments:
Even if you're wrong, you've got nothing to apologize for. You call 'em as you see 'em.
Eh, by itself it's nuthin much, but it's another brick in the wall; and an Etch-A-Sketch is a really easy prop to use in anti-RMoney ads.
I agree that there's nothing to apologize for. And it's probably true that no one thing is going to do Romney in. What will do Romney in is the cumulative effect of everything that he does. Drip drip drip.
Put it this way, they could easily decide to spin it the way you've described it. On the other hand, that comment seems to perfectly confirm the number one image of Romney that even low-info voters have.
Steve, as one of your more frequent disagreers, don't worry. You are advocating a logical and possibly correct point of view. I don't hold it against you that could be wrong. I could be wrong. I just hold with those who say this plays into the mass media Romney stereotype, and that has the potential to create real damage.
Just to extend the Etch-A-Sketch analogy, Romney and his team have been making these sorts of, er, odd statements for as long as they've been campaigning. And indeed, lo and behold, Romney is still the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and Mitt will likely be the Republican nominee. And most swing voters aren't paying attention now and won't be paying attention until September at the very earliest. So if it's true that Romney can just turn over the Etch-A-Sketch and clear everything before the general campaign starts, then this would make Romney a very dangerous candidate.
Problem is that Romney's been campaigning for president for what, six plus years now? That's an awful lot of time to hone your skills and practice keeping on message and not going off the reservation. Romney and his team are about as good at avoiding mistakes now as they ever will be. And it's not going to get any easier for Mitt either. (Let's just say that, after mid August, Mitt better not have any town hall forums where angry grannies can ask him what he's going to do about Saul Alinsky's Muslim-socialist indoctrination of our children. Ya think that Romney will choose to take a principled stand then, after all this time? He's trying to run a campaign here!) In October, we likely won't hear a whole lot about what Mitt and his folks said and did back in March, but that will only because Mitt and his folks will have produced much more recent specimens for the general election crowd to evaluate. Try as he might, Mitt will continue to be who he is, the press can do only so much to hide that, and Mitt will likely become such a joke that the press won't want to hide who Mitt is. (Think Dan Quayle rather than George W.)
I kinda see it like ploeg does. Standing alone, the EtchaSketch remarks are ephemeral at best, but far from standing alone they're familiarly cackhanded; and if the candidate and his handlers are both, at this late stage of their game, persisting in these malutterances, one begins to conclude that they're just not up to playing at this level.
Somewhat along similar lines, it's pleasant to see two blowhards at odds, i.e., the simmering Peter King-Chris Christie spat. CC keeps telling PK (as he tells anyone & everyone who dares disagree with him) to shut up, but the equally obnoxious PK just won't do what CC tells him! Quel impertinence!
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