-— “I’m Mitt Romney. I’ll create jobs and not send them to China.” It’s a really average ad in which he is overly nice.
I’ve heard it maybe 3 times in the last week. ——
I’ve been banking on a negative ad campaign in the last few weeks. If he won’t do it, the PACs will.
There our some tough PAC financed ads running in our (MA) only contested congressional race.
What Mitt needs to do... this election is not yet won nor lost because Romney hasnt closed the sale.
Campaigns could always do better. Romney’s message doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be sharper:
1 Obama is a failed President and our economy is doing terribly.
2. Our lousy economy is a direct result of his bad jobkilling policies
3. I, Mitt Romney, will turn the economy and our country around with better policies and ideas
Clearly, there is a lot of real evidence on #1, and the messaging is
fine there. And on #3, I find the Obama campaign insistence on more
‘details’ from Romney (ie find more grist for their attacks) amazing in
that Obama has made his own campaign one about nothing - with a dash of
recycled borken promises thrown in.
Where Romney is weakest is #2. How many ads has Romney cut that point
out the 20 tax hikes in Obamacare, and point out the specific jobs lost
in the medical device industry because of the medical device tax? How
many speeches has Romney given that argue articulately for the
job-killing nature of the Obama policies, with the specifics lined up?
I’ve seen Santorum argue that, I’ve seen Newt argue that ... but Romney?
The bane of the weak moderate Republicans from GHWBush on down has
been their reluctance to ARGUE ideologically and MAKE THE CASE for
conservative policies as superior to liberal ones. This is where #2
comes in; this is why picking Paul Ryan was an exciting pick for
conservatives. “Aha!” we thought, “Someone who can articulate
conservatism!” And so Ryan has. But it hasnt permeated the whole
campaign and the ads are thin, weak, and to this conservative, often
off-key (like the claims about cutting defense spending being bad
because of lost jobs. Gack! That’s porkbarrel talk; we spend on defense
for national security, not as a jobs program.)
Romney needs to sharpen the argument and tie Obama’s egregious
taxing, spending and regulating, his killing of Keystone and his oil
drillign moratorium, etc.
to our 8% unemplyoment and worst recovery
since WWII. Bring sepcifics to bear to show how Obama’s policies have
killed jobs and hurt the economy. He needs a direct and correct rebuttal
to the misleading claims in the Clinton speech and out of the DNC. What
Romney camp fail to notice is that convention bounces disappear if the
arguments behind them are deflated.
It is not enough to say “Things are bad” since Obama has come back
with “Things are bad, but I care and the other guy is a rerun of what
got us in the mess.”
Where is Romney’s response? It’s as if lies
about Romney are left UN-answered and that’s enough. Obama treats voters
as too dumb and Romney as them being too smart.
Romney needs the 1,2,3 puch:
1. Thing are bad. 2. Obama is to blame, here is why. 3. I can fix, here is how.
If Mitt Romney gets 55% of voters to agree to that message, he wins BIG.