The Detroit Economic Club appears to have punked Mitt Romney. How else can you explain their decision to move Romney’s speech to the 65,000-seat Ford Field when they sold out smaller venues? Total attendance is being reported as 1,200.
The Detroit Economic Club arranged the event and sold tickets for it ($45 for members; $75 for non-members), and when two indoor venues sold out quickly, club officials moved the speech to Ford Field.
So, the idea is that your venue holds only, say, 800 people. You sell 1,200 tickets so you relocate to a professional football stadium? Really?
Of course, the DEC isn’t completely responsible for the debacle.
Beth Chappell, president and chief executive of the Detroit Economic Club, said in a statement: “The original plan was to host the Romney meeting in the atrium, which is where we host DEC meetings when at Ford Field. During our walk through with the security team there were further issues raised due to the size of the crowd so we moved the event to the field.”
As Romney wrapped up his remarks at Ford Field, he said, “This feels good, being back in Michigan,” and then reprised a riff that earned him mockery last week.
“You know, the trees are the right height,” he said. “The streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.”
No amount of planning can save a man like Mitt Romney from making a fool of himself.
Repost. You have to see it to really grasp it:
He is a strange, strange man.
* gobsmacked *
I just watched the cnn.com clips of this, and I am boggled at how flopsweaty phony and downright DREADFUL the man is as a campaign speaker.
I haven’t watched any of the debates (too few brain cells left at my age to risk them) and have been avoiding any news clips featuring his blatherings, so this was my first exposure to Romneybot.2012. I was stunned. Jaw-slacked.
Head to head on any stage, Obama will mop the floor with this palooka.
You should have seen the candidate he ran against in Massachusetts, Shannon O’Brien.
Think “Martha Coakley,” except without the air of competence. And less of an outsider.
Heh.
As a lifelong Masshole*, I had managed to expunge all that from my memory banks.
*Born in Stoneham, raised in Melrose, college in South Hadley, lived in Boston, now resident in Ipswich. Mom from Lowell, dad from Revere. Bay State all the way!
I just looked up Martha Coakley on Wikipedia. I never knew she was from Western Massachusettss! Williams College? Yuck!! Even in Western Massachusetts, people still know what a BFD the Red Sox are. How anyone could run a worse campaign than Coakley, I’ll never know. But you are saying O’Brien was even worse? Oy!!
I don’t mean to insult Marthat Coakley as a person, or as a public servant. She has been a fine Attorney General for this commonwealth.
But…well…you know the “but” already. No need to belabor the point here.
Hey Seabe my state Senator Jill Vogel made a complete idiot out of herself last week huh? Its amazing a woman would enter a bill in the Va. legislature advocating invasive ultrasound procedures and then doesn’t even know it was in her own bill. Another radical dimwit.
Not as much as this douche, as pointed out by Randy:
I also got to find out what other shameful things this dude was behind. For example, he led the charge to eliminate parole under George Allen.
Charles Blow in today’s NYT regarding the “couple of Cadillacs” quote:
Obvious pandering to a local crowd, from a guy often criticized for tacking to popular opinion.
Casual rich-guy bragging, from a candidate associated with the 1% in the public’s mind.
Drawing attention to GM, from a candidate in trouble for opposing the auto rescue.
Giving a speech in a giant, mostly-empty stadium, from an inevitable-frontrunner candidate struggling with the perception that his support is collapsing.
This speech is just a kaleidoscope of FAIL. Whenever you look at it from a slightly different perspective, you see a whole new, beautiful pattern of FAIL.
Doesn’t matter anymore. Santorum killed himself with euthanasia Dutch Grannies thing. If it was India or Phillipines it wouldn’t matter … TP’ers don’t know anyone from there. But Holland? Do you know how many Germans there are in the MidWest? They all have family in the “old country” and you better believe they will ask.
Sheesh. Talk about tonedeaf.
Is he so tone deaf that he didn’t realize all he had to say was, “My wife drives a GM car, and she loves it.”
Is that so hard? Really?? C’mon Mitt.
He was at Ford Field. Perhaps he could have said he wife drives a couple of Fords. A Lincoln would be okay, too.
I’m sure he’s got a Lincoln or two stashed somewhere at one of his “seasonal homes”. An honest oversight on his part. He probably just forgot. I often lose track of where my Jaguars are garaged and my yachts are moored. Hey, it happens to all of us, right?
I saw the speech at Ford Field on their schedule a week or so ago and wondered what they were thinking. Are they expecting some huge turnout for the announcement of a tax plan? I’m no campaign stategist, but the optics of an empty stadium would seem to be something to avoid. The Romney team is looking more and more like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
Can anyone tell me when was the last time a GOPer candidate for any office was able to fill a football stadium for a speech? And college graduations don’t count!!
Teddy Roosevelt?
More like the gang that couldn’t piss straight. Or avoid pissing into the wind. Or down their own leg.