Is Romney bracketing McCain?

April 16, 2007 – 7:14 am

Much earlier in the campaign, John McCain would spoil Mitt Romney’s events (here and here). Now, I wonder if Romney is doing it to McCain. Two weeks ago, McCain announced three policy speeches. Last week was Iraq. Today is the economic. Later on, there will be domestic policy.

So, last Tuesday, a day before McCain, Romney gives a fairly pedestrian speech on foreign and defense policy. And yesterday, Romney issues a press release on economic policy, something he is much better at, and gets a story in the AP about his own policy. Again, nothing particularly new, calling on the GOP to implement … its position when we get back in the majority in the House.

The purpose is, of course, to get in the news stories and get in the morning clippings for the reporters. I think it is working.

Is Romney doing this to Rudy Giuliani?

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Rudy on how he wins

April 5, 2007 – 1:09 pm

"In a loud voice" that perhaps reporters weren’t supposed to hear, Rudy Giuliani says that the social conservatives will be split and that he will form a coalition of the remainder:

In a voice loud enough to be overheard on the other side of the room, he outlined his view that the other candidates would divide up the "right-wing," voters, as he called them, leaving him to consolidate the moderates and the economic and military conservatives who aren’t fixated on social issues.

It’s a strategy. It’s what I talked about as a possibility in Iowa. Rudy wants as many candidates as possible. That is why it is so important for him to be the fiscal conservative candidate, as he expressed in New Hampshire (at the same house party, I believe)

So perhaps Rudy thinks that this kerfuffle over public funding for abortion doesn’t bother him so much?

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What do the March polls say? What do they mean?

March 8, 2007 – 9:40 am

Almost all the big polls are now out, along with some important analysis. So let me dive right in.

There are clearly three tiers of candidates from the polls. The picture at the right from Gallup clearly points these tiers out. First is Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. They have similar likability, and in recent weeks, it appears that Rudy has taken support from McCain in the polls. The second is Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Both of these candidates appear to have relatively high "unfavorables" and even large numbers of Republicans who do not want them to be the nominee. And the third tier is people who no one has heard of. These are Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, etc.

Now, these differ from the conventional wisdom in Washington that places John McCain first, Rudy Giuliani second, and Mitt Romney third. Another poll found that Romney is leading about Republican National Committee members. So there is a clear disconnect between the opinions of "insiders" and the opinions of the masses. What is going on and how do the various campaigns understand these polls?
Read More »

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Can the Romney Rehab plan get him back on the wagon?

March 6, 2007 – 6:27 am

The Mitt Romney team, recognizing that the wheels were coming off the train, told the Politico what their plans were. I have a little review of the plan

First, according to Roger Simon, they want to "game the system". At least as reported to Simon, focusing on the long-ago-settled CA winner-take-all-by-congressional-district, this is a little diversion. The calendar games are gaming the system. The question of what to do with post-Feb. 5th primaries is gaming the system. The talk about being efficient in targeting CA congressional districts is not so much, other than GOTV resources. Ultiamtely, there aren’t that many media markets in CA, as 60% of the population live in LA, Orange, and San Diego counties. When Romney tries to game the system, I would pay much more attention to start party rules changes. Those are done by the party insiders.

Second, he’s going to make sure that he attacks John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. That’s news? These are the nasty, negative guys. They’ve been attacking Rudy for his family life. Mitt Romney will even personally lie about his opponents.

Third, he’s going to try to buy another straw poll, Ames. Again, is this a surprise? He blew a lot of cash on CPAC. And he blew a lot of cash on SRLC last year. Winning straw polls was Phil Gramm’s strategy. He had more money than God, won every straw poll, and is now John McCain’s policy director. Winning straw polls doesn’t make you president.

What’s new here? Isn’t this repackaged strategy that isn’t working?

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Advice to Romney: Don’t attack Rudy

February 28, 2007 – 7:10 pm

I don’t watch TV much, so I miss a lot of stuff. But Kavon Nikrad at Race4 2008 notices that Rudy Giuliani’s campaign thinks that Mitt Romney is preparing to whack them.

To do so would be a big, big mistake. Rudy is a hero. It will slime Rudy, but it will also slime Romney, perhaps even more. That’s what happened when Romney tried that against Sam Brownback (here, here, and here).

Furthermore, there’s a deeper issue. The only people who can attack Rudy are people who have impeccable stature within the conservative movement. As Blog PI pointed out in a somewhat different context, there’s a bond between Rudy and the GOP base that Romney just doesn’t have. By attacking Rudy, Romney will even further endanger his relationship with that base.

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Season starting too early? For whom?

February 14, 2007 – 4:42 pm

Yesterday the Politico published an interesting article about an interview with Karl Rove. The emphasis of the article was:

"I think it is going to mean that people develop a persona earlier and wear out their welcome earlier than they would," he told The Politico in an interview. "I think there’s going to come some point this year where people are going to basically be saying: ‘I’m largely disinterested in the contest.’ ‘’

I think that this has to be understood in proper context. I think that Rove’s point is that too much campaigning will make it hard to both maintain attention and maintain an image.

If that is the question, the problem for campaigns is: How do we stay in the headlines without campaigning all the time?

Right now, at least on the GOP side, only John McCain has an effective answer. And that’s probably why he isn’t in a rush to formally announce for President. His leadership in the Senate gets him headlines and puts him at the forefront of most of the debates, whether the debate is Iraq, immigration, spending, or anything else. Like a sitting President, McCain will be able to avoid campaigning by doing things that provide him the mantle of leadership.

Compare that to Mitt Romney, former governor of Michigan Massachusetts. Why would people be interested in what he had to say if he weren’t running for President? For Rudy Giuliani it’s a little different. People are interested in what he has to say on security and leadership. He simply needs to "be".

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More on the Rudy strategy

February 7, 2007 – 3:03 pm

I have, for a long time, wondered what the Rudy strategy was. At one point I speculated that he was just a regional candidate. I think I was wrong.

A couple of nights ago, I was having beers with some friends  — that’s what we do in DC — and someone connected with the Rudy campaign articulated Rudy’s strategy. It is quite simple.

  1. Survive through to Feb. 5.
  2. Kick butt on Feb. 5.

The reasoning here is that Rudy’s name ID, with some credible but not super organization in early states, will be enough to carry him through to Feb. 5. Then February 5 is a big money day, which he can compete in, the field will be thinner, and his opponents will be more beaten up.

This is interesting, but there’s one flaw: the expectations game. John McCain wants to be #2 to Rudy in the polls and have the insiders question Rudy on social issues. That way, Rudy gets beaten up by everyone and has to perform as the front runner.

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Romney’s success and where to go from here

January 9, 2007 – 11:51 am

Mitt Romney had a gangbuster day yesterday. He raised a lot of money. His top-notch staff handled the press beautifully. We can expect a series of announcements in the next couple of days about people he has signed up to maintain the momentum. Senator Jim DeMint, it seems the last non-McCain Republican in South Carolina, endorsed Romney yesterday/today. Romney now has several objectives:

  1. He has to convince Rudy Giuliani to stay out. Rudy covers McCain’s left flank, keeping McCain from being "the moderate", and polls indicate that he actually takes votes from Romney. Romney’s $6.5m pull was a statement to Rudy that he needs to start doing better than $800k in his hometown.
  2. He has to convince the 2nd tier candidates, who Caucus Cooler calls the "Credible Conservative Alternatives", that there is no getting through him. Earlier, I discussed that Romney is getting hammered from the right , nearly daily from Brownback, so much because that’s where the 2nd tier candidates are getting their votes.
  3. He has to convince donors and party leaders that John McCain hasn’t locked this up. If I were Romney, I would be announcing high-profile people in each of the early states and more congressional announcements.

Probably, the next big event in the Presidential schedule will be the RNC Winter Meeting in DC the 17-20. The next real test will be how Romney performs at that meeting, in the one-on-ones, and what he does about the momentum that McCain has generated in that group.

A number of people are saying that Romney’s flip-flopping will kill him. As I have argued, that’s just not true. It will hurt him, but the amount of money that this guy will be able to raise makes him a juggernaut. The question will be how he does with voters. It will be interesting.

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Comparing McCain and Romney in the press

January 5, 2007 – 10:35 am

The recent stir-up involving the Vanity Fair article about John McCain and Mitt Romney dodging hard interviews have made me think a little bit about the strategies of the two campaigns regarding the media.

Romney is clearly building his own media apparatus. He has donated money to National Review, recruited his Great Disciple K-Lo, and done some good outreach to blogs, but has substantially ducked the main stream media. Hugh Hewitt has written some apologetics explaining why ducking the media is good. Romney is clearly only talking to the media when he can control it. One blog is even celebrating this deliberate snubbing of the media.

By contrast, McCain is doing what he’s always done. Giving the media a lot of access, and getting kicked around for some of it, especially the Vanity Fair piece. He even did a profile with Variety about his favorite movies.

This obviously speaks to the strength of the two candidates. But don’t the papers still drive the news cycle? Can Romney really afford to totally skip the mainstream media?

I think that it also speaks to the differences in confidences about the individuals. McCain is not much of a gladhander, but he thinks that once people get to know him, they’ll like him. Deep down, McCain believes that people will like the real him. Whereas Romney has been very careful about parsing his statements in these. He wants to deliver his message, but not have much of a freeflowing interaction. One wonders how we would know what "the real him" is anyways. And this is why the flip-flopping is dangerous for him. If all we have to work with is his tightly delivered messages, and they aren’t even coherent, then what are we to work with?

I think that this is a larger problem for Romney.

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Giuliani plan leaked; what’s next for him?

January 2, 2007 – 9:51 am

Rudy Giuliani’s campaign plan was leaked. Outside the Beltway says that it is not a big deal, but I disagree. First of all, it shows places that Giuliani has failed to match his plan. For example:

Two of the top figures on Giuliani’s list, New Jersey mega-fund-raisers Lew Eisenberg and Larry Bathgate, have already signed on with McCain, as has another Giuliani target, FedEx CEO Fred Smith.

In a memo that appears in the dossier, Giuliani aides Dickerson and Roy Bailey urge him to court financier Henry Kravis particularly avidly.

"You need him to be a Wall Street industry leader," the memo says.

McCain announced Kravis’ support last month.

You will recall McCain trying to scoop Giuliani’s fundraising glory last month when he had a $800k fundraiser, which Matt Lewis described as disappointing. Elsewhere in the article, it says that Giuliani needs to raise about $25 million in the next 3 months. The plan also has Giuliani missing targeted pickups in the staff game:

The plan also anticipates his recruiting top GOP fund-raiser Cathy Blaney in New York on a retainer of $260,000 and her Florida counterpart, Ann Herberger, at $216,000. But between the plan’s preparation in the fall and today, Blaney became the chief fund-raiser for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, while Herberger reportedly has signed on to the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

I would add the fact that there are numbers associated with these might make it harder to bring on new staff. Another part of the document was a partial analysis of Giuliani’s weaknesses:

On the same page is a list of the candidate’s central problems in bullet-point form: his private sector business; disgraced former aide Bernard Kerik; his third wife, Judith Nathan Giuliani; "social issues," on which is he is more liberal than most Republicans, and his former wife Donna Hanover.

Outside the Beltway argues that their release isn’t that important. For the most part, I agree. However, the article does point out that his private sector business dealings are a big deal. Today, the New York Post ran an article about those (coincidence? Probably not). The article notes:

Rudy Giuliani is weighing whether he’ll change his level of involvement with his consulting company - which has clients that could present potential conflicts and provide fodder for opponents - if he runs for president, aides told The Post.

The effect of all of this is that Giuliani has to redouble. We now have a plan to measure him by that he is already behind on. If he can’t raise the money or hire the staff or build the donor base, we will all know it. It could make it harder for Giuliani.

Update: Human Events mentions that some people think this could be fatal.

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