Politics

Romney enters debate needing Massachusetts-like comeback

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
W. James Antle III Managing Editor
Font Size:

As Mitt Romney heads into the first presidential debate Wednesday, he is in familiar territory. Ten years ago, Romney prepared to debate his rivals for governor of Massachusetts while he was down in the polls, disliked by many voters and distrusted because of his wealth.

Romney came back and won that race.

But by mid-September, it appeared that Romney had blown what once looked like an easy electoral victory. When Massachusetts Republicans traveled hat-in-hand to Utah to persuade Romney to come home and run for governor, polls had showed him beating every Democrat in the race. Now he was trailing state Treasurer Shannon O’Brien, who had won the Democratic nomination.

Like the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Romney’s Massachusetts campaign had focused on “humanizing” the candidate, making him seem more likeable.

Ann Romney talked about their first date, saying that her future husband picked her up in ”some goofy-looking car” and then ran out of gas on the way home.

The Democrats went so far as to fact-check this saccharine ad, putting out a press release titled “Romney Actually Drove Cool Car.”

The spot also featured a shirtless Romney in a bathing suit at the lake with his sons. It was quickly pulled.

Romney held “work days” where he helped fix cars, pave roads and pick up garbage, all designed to to combat his image as a rich guy who doesn’t understand regular working people.

When the footage was used in a campaign commercial, radio talk show hosts mocked it as the “Village People ad,” with Romney playing construction worker and policeman. (Massachusetts politicians didn’t yet pretend to be Indians.)

Humanizing Romney wasn’t working, so the campaign tried a different pitch.

Instead of portraying Romney as someone who could do every blue-collar job in the commonwealth, they focused on his ability to do the job he was actually running for — particularly his ability to close Massachusetts’ large budget deficit.

While the Republican Party label was a liability in the deep-blue state, the Romney camp scored points by reminding independents — by now a plurality of registered voters — that their opponent was a partisan Democrat.

When O’Brien called herself a watchdog of the state treasury, they went up with ads depicting her instead as a sleeping basset hound letting the old boys’ network on Beacon Hill spend taxpayer dollars with impunity.

Romney relentlessly attacked her record, delivering some of the sharpest lines himself. While some of his lines would come back to haunt him when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination — such as when he repeatedly denied he took the “position of a pro-life candidate” and mocked O’Brien for suggesting he had once accepted the endorsement Massachusetts Citizens for Life — Romney was a skilled, aggressive debater.

It was O’Brien who perhaps had the biggest debate misstep, during a one-on-one encounter with Romney that excluded the third party candidates for governor. She wanted to reduce the age at which a young woman could obtain an abortion without parental consent to 16; Romney wanted to preserve the current law.

Moderating the debate, NBC’s Tim Russert asked O’Brien why she would support a minor being able to have an abortion without parental consent at an age where she would need her parents’ permission to get a tattoo. O’Brien replied, “Want to see my tattoo?”

That is one of the reasons the Massachusetts governor’s race — the only election Romney has ever won — isn’t entirely applicable to the 2012 campaign. Barack Obama isn’t Shannon O’Brien. Obama is an incumbent president, while O’Brien was a one-term state treasurer who had already lost a previous statewide contest to a Republican.

A struggling gubernatorial campaign is also easier to turn around than a presidential race, because of the multiple battleground states and media markets. One of Romney’s 2002 advisers told the Boston Globe that running for governor was like operating a Jet Ski while a presidential bid is more like an ocean liner.

Moreover, a decade ago Romney didn’t have to protect his right flank. He could hit Democrats for being too liberal on taxes, crime and the death penalty while at the same time echoing predecessor Michael Dukakis that elections were about competence, not ideology.

Today Romney is running as the nominee of a party whose members see him as insufficiently conservative, forcing him to constantly reassure his base.

Yet if Romney turns in a debate performance that is confident and hard-hitting rather than warm and fuzzy, it may be with Massachusetts in mind.

Follow Jim on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel