Posted on 04/04/2012 7:34:47 PM PDT by VinL
Coming off of his primary wins in liberal Maryland and DC and a relentlessly negative campaign in Wisconsin, Mitt Romney’s campaign has signaled to the other candidates for the Republican nomination for President that there will be no let-up in the negative tenor of his campaign going into Pennsylvania and the other spring primaries. Mitt Romney As Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla noted, the “defining feature of the 2012 Republican presidential primary race” has been Romney’s relentlessly negative campaign. According to Przybyla’s research, “Since the contests began, Restore Our Future has spent $35 million on commercials attacking Santorum and Newt Gingrich” and “just $1.1 million promoting Romney.”
According to Przybyla’s reporting, Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group, Romney’s super PAC Restore Our Future aired 16 negative ads 41,612 times in GOP primary states such as Michigan, Florida and Colorado.
Romney’s negative ads, many of them factually questionable, have carpet bombed the conservatives in the race. As Romney has unleashed this wave of negativity, the campaigns of conservatives from Rick Perry, to Michele Bachmann, to Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich have withered, leaving Rick Santorum as the last conservative standing to bear the brunt of Romney’s attacks.
However, these attacks have done nothing to build support for Mitt Romney, especially among movement conservatives, and to the extent that Romney can claim front runner status it is because he has come to be seen as the “least worst” alternative by rank-and-file Republican primary voters.
Romney’s campaign has already made clear that it will employ the same hard-edged tactics that he used to crush Newt Gingrich in Florida and overtake Santorum in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin, to defeat Santorum in his home state of Pennsylvania.
Whether Romney’s slime machine campaign will work against Santorum in Pennsylvania remains to be seen – it didn’t work against Gingrich in his home state of Georgia where Newt buckled down and ran like he was running for county sheriff to neutralize the charge that he was an out of touch Washington insider.
Even if one accepts the fuzzy math that Romney claims puts him half way to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination – and we don’t – his negative campaign has left him with a substantial enthusiasm deficit, and no real base upon which to mount a winning campaign against Barack Obama.
As long as Romney relies solely on negative advertising to tear down his more conservative Republican opponents, without making the positive case for his own bona fides to be the Republican standard-bearer, conservatives will have little reason to support him.
Given the huge hole that leaves in the Republican base, the other candidates should prepare to stay in the race all the way to Tampa, knowing that if Romney’s delegate count doesn’t give him the nomination on the first ballot, conservatives whom he has failed to convince during the primaries will continue to look for an alternative until the roll is called and the last vote is counted.
Why are people voting for this weenie?
I dont care who they put on the ticker- still cant be as bad as the con man we have in there now
Mitt and the GOP have run off all the real talent.
We are screwed unless we get a contested convention.
I’d prefer the Republican nominee to be Newt but at the end of the day I don’t care who it is. I’ll vote for any of them.
FUMR!
“Many people won’t vote for him”
If he gets it, I will never put a Romney bumper sticker on or help put up signs.
But, what can we do? Obama must be replaced or the nation will not survive.
In 2009 Romney said we conservatives will not let ‘unelected’ judges....wow does that sound familiar to what Obama said in 2012..?
Wasn’t he the worst of all 8 who started out? Me thinks. Who are the GOP primary voters? I don’t want to meet them!
I have never stayed out of an election before...It’s hard but, I think God will decide this one.
Please!!!!!! Sarah Palin wouldn’t get in the same zip code, much less the same room with such scum as The Willard. Sarah Palin’s name should never be mentioned in any connection, however slight, with a low coward and unprincipled traitor like The Willard. How weak must he be to get beaten like a cheap mule in the general election? More than ten points, that’s how weak.
The most aggravating thing is that you just know he won’t do the same thing to Obama, yet there’s so much material to work with. (that’s if he gets the nomination)
Can see why Sorass likes hime...NO?
I cannot consider someone who won’t vote for the Republican nominee against Barack Obama to be a conservative or a patriot.
I can’t agree more. I find the idea that some VP nominee will suddenly set the base ablaze a bit hard to imagine if not downright insulting to those of us who see Romney as a pandering fraud. I mean how shallow and stupid we all must be. Talk about contempt for the base.
Any party with the Etch-A-Sketch candidate as its leader is no party of mine. I can not stand the sight of the man.
One of the problems about reading this site is you start thinking that all GOP’ers think like people here. Bad news is they don’t! There is a surprisingly large number of GOP’ers who have bought into the GOP elite line regarding Romney. Superficially Romney makes sense. In 2008 I bought into the notion that Romney was more conservative then McCain. (Probably my dislike for McCain biased my viewpoint!) My 80 year long time GOP Parents (GOP party workers and former local & state officials!) are pro-Romney and refuge to consider anything negative about him! At work a majority of GOP’ers I know are pro-Romney and why ‘all others are too radical or too mean and Romney is electable’. Contrary facts and arguments don’t fly, so I have given up discussing it with them.
I don’t trust this guy
1
At this point I’ll vote for the nominee and and elect anyone I can in the house and senate to keep them honest.
This country won’t survive4 more years of Obama.
He has made it clear that he will go scorched earth on us if he wins again.
You don’t want to see BO become BTO singing “You aint seen nothin yet”
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