Wednesday, July 18, 2007

MITT ROMNEY

Talkin' Ads, Straw Polls, and Race Stuff with My Romney Guy

I'll have more in this vein later today, but for now, some highlights from my discussion with my Romney guy:

On the "Oceans" ad: "The people in Iowa and New Hampshire who are going to see this have already seen six others. These voters recognize [Romney']s voice and don’t need to see picture of him. We've laid the groundwork so that when voters in these states see the spot once, they're going to get it immediately."

On the makeup story: "It's just so dumb. It’s a fee you pay. This is different than Naomi Wolf telling Al Gore what colors to wear to be an alpha male. He's going to be on stage, somebody needs to powder him. It's a per diem, you just pay ‘em for a day. A lot like makeup people on a movie, they may only be working 40 minutes in whole day. But you pay 'em for a whole day, and then you've got them for the whole day."

On the Ames straw poll: "I don’t know if I buy Patrick Ruffini’s argument that Ron Paul is going to come in second. And if Paul does come in second, it doesn't mean that the straw poll is now this wacky non-event. If he comes in second, it means the entire second tier [of GOP presidential candidates] just vaporizes. Goodbye, Huckabee. Goodbye, Brownback. If they can't organize well enough to beat Ron Paul in a straw poll, they're not worth taking seriously."

On primary strategies: "Everybody's trying to do something that's never been done before. Romney is trying to win both Iowa and New Hampshire, and nobody has done that who wasn’t an incumbent. Rudy's try to win the nomination by everything else except Iowa and New Hampshire. Thompson? Who knows, he may not even get in in time to really compete in those organization-heavy states. Who knows what his targeting scheme is? Maybe he thinks his process begins in South Carolina. Everybody’s trying to thread the needle in a way it hasn’t been done before. I look at it and see Romney, who is well-known in New Hampshire for being the governor of a neighboring state, and who earned his lead in Iowa the old fashioned way. If anybody is the guy who can win both, Romney’s the guy."

07/18 01:29 PMShare