Posted on 11/09/2012 4:02:56 PM PST by Kaslin
Mitt Romney's top campaign aides conducted a conference call with conservative journalists this afternoon, during which they assessed the damage from Tuesday's electoral loss. The participants included campaign manager Matt Rhoades, political director Rich Beeson, polling director Neil Newhouse and digital director Zac Moffatt. A few notes from the call:
Matt Rhoades, on the overall race: "No campaign is perfect, and we certainly made our share of mistakes." On Paul Ryan: "He has come away from this race with a very bright future before him."
Rich Beeson, on the campaign's strategy: "We won independents and held the base. We thought that would be a winning combination." Given the heavily Democratic electorate, it was not. On Boston's computerized 'ORCA' ground game tracking system: "This was the first time we'd ever done anything like [ORCA] on that grand a scale. We got data from 91% of precincts across the country," he said, noting that the program will help Republicans track and predict voting behavior in the future. As for reports that the system crashed on election day, Beeson conceded that there were significant technical issues: "There were glitches in the system, I don't want to gloss over that. We were able to beta test it, but not at the volume of data we needed." He said the program thought it had been hacked, which triggered a laborious process of rebooting the whole system with new passwords.
Neil Newhouse, on the outcome: "It didn't end up like we'd hoped for and expected (more on the "expected" part later). [The Obama campaign] ran a very small campaign in a very big way." Newhouse said the opposition effectively targeted specific demos in their coalition, using contraceptives, DREAM Act waivers, and student loan policies to entice key elements of their base to show up and vote. They "pretty damn well succeeded" at turning out their voters, he concluded. As an example, Newhouse pointed out that in Ohio, 160,000 more African Americans voted in 2012 than in 2008. Obama's margin of victory in the state was roughly 100,000. On the other hand, "we had fewer white voters turn out [nationwide] in this election than in 2008. The question we have to ask ourselves is 'how did that happen?'"
Newhouse, on Romney's strengths: In exit polling, voters were asked about four metrics of leadership. Romney beat Obama on the questions of (a) which candidate has a positive vision for the country, (b) which candidate shares "my values," and (c) which candidate is a "strong leader." Despite batting .750, Romney got crushed by approximately 60 points on the question of which candidate "cares about people like me." This suggests that the Obama campaign's early "kill Romney" approach -- painting the former governor and CEO as an out-of-touch, uber-wealthy, outsourcing robber barron -- worked. It also suggests that personal connection and relatability are now more important factors in national elections than experience or accomplishment. Newhouse added that the right track/wrong track statistics tightened by 48 net points from November of 2011 through election day, which helped boost the president's approval rating to non-fatal levels.
Newhouse, on the effects of Hurricane Sandy: "It was not determinative. It was a factor, it was not the factor. But it hit the pause button on our campaign and our messaging for about four or five days, and it gave Obama the opportunity to look presidential." Newhouse said exit polling indicated that about three percent of the electorate said Sandy was the most important factor (!) in their presidential choice, and that many of them made up minds in the last few days of the campaign.
Question and answer period:
The Washington Examiner's Michael Barone asked whether the birth control attacks were effective. The campaign brain trust said that HHS' contraception move was narrowly targeted at a segment of the population -- young unmarried women, whom Obama carried by 38 points on Tuesday. Romney's advisers said Team Obama knew exactly what they were doing by running the unseemly "first time" ad; they recognized they'd face blowback from some elements of the population, but thought it was worth it on balance, in order to appeal to young women.
PJTV's Roger Simon asked about Romney's bruising loss among Hispanic voters. The entire Romney team acknowledged that this was a big problem, and that Republicans need to think hard about how to reverse this trend. Part of the issue, Beeson said, was that Obama's campaign spent heavily on brutally negative ads against Romney for many months over the late spring and summer, before Romney had the resources to fight back. "By that time, [Hispanic voters] were already predisposed against us," he said. Romney's advisers also mentioned that the attack ads Obama ran on Spanish language radio and television were far "meaner, tougher and over-the-top" than "any attacks they leveled against us in English." This battle played out intensely, but off the mainstream media's radar.
I asked about the October "expand the map" strategy, which demonstrably failed. Was the campaign engaging in a deliberate head-fake by pretending that Pennsylvania, Minnesota and other states were in play -- or did they actually believe they had their core path locked up (through Virginia, Florida, Colorado, etc), and thus had the luxury of expansion? I also wondered aloud which scenario would be worse (misdirection vs. bad intel). The Romney brain trust seemed to side-step the heart of my inquiry, instead focusing on the Pennsylvania aspect. Newhouse: "The decision was not made lightly to expand the map. In order for us to go into PA, we had to have every other friggen' thing in the campaign fully funded. We went to everyone to make sure they were fully funded before we went into Pennsylvania. Every other need was met before we did that. The guys on the ground in PA, including our polling guys, were very encouraging. Our numbers were positive there. As it turns out, it was relatively close, but it wasn't as close as other target states." Beeson: "The Obama campaign saw the same numbers we did. They clearly saw it closing. We wanted to wait as long as we could to prevent them from getting that Philadelphia machine fired up in time."
These analyses make sense, but only within the context of the campaign truly believing that they were safe in other crucial must-have states -- a cataclysmically wrong assumption. When I stopped by Romney headquarters in Boston back in September, Newhouse said his team was anticipating a D+3 electorate in November. This seemed entirely reasonable to me, based on evidence from 2004, 2008 and 2010, but it turned out to be incorrect. The actual electorate this year was D+6. Post-election news reports reveal that Mitt Romney was "shell-shocked" by his loss, an outcome that can only be explained by shockingly flawed internal polling. Was that polling predicated on a D+3 model? If so, that would explain the huge disconnect between Boston's expectations and the final results. I'll reiterate that although the D+3 model seemed sensible on its face, it was the campaign pollsters' job to figure out if their assumptions comported with reality. In retrospect, their failure to do so looms very, very large.
Finally, Joel Pollak from Breitbart asked if the campaign's gurus felt like they'd let down the American people, particularly Romney's supporters. The takeaway line from a relatively broad answer to this (admittedly tough) question came from Neil Newhouse: "There's a sense that we let Mitt Romney down." If the candidate truly expected to be delivering a victory speech on Tuesday night, even as he was in the process of losing the popular vote by two percentage points and the electoral college by a wider margin, Newhouse's assertion isn't too far off.
UPDATE - Here is Jen Rubin's WaPo write-up of the same call.
This is the key. This is why all those working-class white voters just plain didn't show up. We had the election in the bag. It was ours to lose. They were never going to vote for Obama no matter what. We only had to come up with an acceptable candidate. And we didn't.
Many of us saw this coming in the primaries. FR helped lead the charge in fighting against a Romney nomination. Why nominate a candidate with 1%'er baggage in a season when class warfare, income inequality, Wall Street distrust and corporate bailouts had already ticked so many people off? What was so great about Romney that made it worth trying to overcome that baggage before even beginning to get our political message out?
Problem is the beltway blue bloods that run the GOP are completely tone deaf to the perspective of the common folk in flyover country. They may have believed Romney was a great candidate. But they are totally blind to the distrust most people have towards people who got super rich by pushing big money around in things like corporate buyouts or stock trades, as opposed to someone they could respect who built a successful company from the ground up, became a rich and famous star through pure talent or came up with a brilliant new invention.
The long primary wouldn't have made a difference. There was no way Romney was going to be able to "define" himself in any way that could overcome the Democrats' negative highlighting of his business career. If you were involved in numerous companies that shut down and created bitter employees to rail against you in ad after ad, that's a little too steep of a hill to climb. Besides, whatever Romney did to define himself in this campaign didn't work out too well. It wasn't the "lateness" of his effort, it was the poorness of his effort and the incredible weight he would have had to lift to make himself seem like he could relate to the common man.
I’m looking into my crystal ball for the spelling of the next GOP candidate’s name, it is too fuzzy to make out for sure, but I think it is spelled, “anybody, anything, except for a conservative”.
We're sick of the "reach across the aisle" types and are yearning for someone willing and able to kick a$$ and take names.
but but but he has such nice hair and it was his turn too.
We lost 2006 over sexual matters ~ to wit, too many gay Republicans doing their stuff in public.
When it comes to sex and smarminess and homosexuals and bastardy and every sort of calumny and corruption the Democrats are unexcelled in this country. We need simply do realistic portrayals of real Democrats lying, cheating, stealing, catting around, raping, robbing ~ sitting in jail.
The numbers are on our side.
Romney should have called Obama a failure to his face at the second debate and told him flat out that he was elected to fix things, not to complain about his predecessor. He should have invoked Ronald Reagan. Reagan inherited a worse financial crisis with both high unemployment and rampant inflation. Yet, Reagan was immediately blamed for the country’s economic ills. He did not have an adoring press to cover for him. Reagan never blamed Jimmy Carter. Instead he rolled up his sleeves, got to work and fixed things. He didn’t take exotic vacations and play golf all the time. He held cabinet meetings, worked with Congress and held regular press conferences — remember those? I actually miss Helen Thomas because she reminds me of the time when Presidents of either party had the decency and accountability to go a few rounds with the press.
I will never give those traitorous Obama-voters-by-default any excuse for what they did. Those idiots are being turned out of their jobs by the thousands right now. But at least they got to make their statement against the rich guy by staying home and not voting for him.
Crack political correctness down the middle everyday and turn the left into outraged Berserkers. Day after day after day...
We would get the youth vote.
So they completely ignored history. This isn't anything new, they've been important for along time for the electorate. Clinton didn't say "I feel your pain" for nothing.
Just today, one potential Democrat Presidential candidate, Petraeus, was sent home to make pot holders. John Kerry went after Hillary Clinton. They’re trying to determine their candidate right now.
Romney lost because the fix was in. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
We need to stop the “post game analysis” and consider the reality we face - indeed - the reality that pundits and news folk are all leading us away from because it is unthinkable.
No one is really discussing fraud, they are in fact avoiding that discussion, poo pooing it even.
WHY? What entity controls this country?
Romney had the votes. I know it, you know it, he knew it, the RNC knew it, the democrats knew it.
He had the votes!
Romney had the votes. I know it, you know it, he knew it, the RNC knew it, the democrats knew it.
He had the votes!
Romney had the votes. I know it, you know it, he knew it, the RNC knew it, the democrats knew it.
He had the votes!
Romney had the votes. I know it, you know it, he knew it, the RNC knew it, the democrats knew it.
He had the votes!
Romney had the votes. I know it, you know it, he knew it, the RNC knew it, the democrats knew it.
He had the votes!
Mitt did learn to warm up a little as the campaign season wore on. He told heartwarming stories even if he did not emote very well.
I think he poured on the power too late.
We lost 2006 because we spent years spending money like Democrats... we only got the house back in 2010 because Democrats proceeded to spend like Bolsheviks.
Mark Foley had a lot to do with the loss and you know it. Don’t try covering up for him or his little friends ~ the Republicans who vote do not tolerate that behavior. Democrats don’t care but they know how to stir up the Republican voters to just stay home.
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