I hate to give Jennifer Rubin a ‘sad,’ but the Obama campaign doesn’t take advice from her or put any stock in her efforts to gauge the effectiveness of political messaging by Googling “Bain Backlash.” Ms. Rubin has been off on a little tangent lately, making lists of the five or ten reasons why attacking Mitt Romney about his vulture capitalism is a loser, or has lost, won’t win, is dumb, will backfire, isn’t working, etc.
She should take a closer look at the Obama operation. There’s a better than nil chance that the Obama campaign already knows the best message to send to a middle-aged Jersey-born, Berkeley-educated, Jewish woman with distinctly Likudist attitudes about Israel. If she’s not careful, she might just find herself thinking Obama is a better bet than Romney. Either way, she may get exposed to messaging designed distinctly for her.
The attacks on Bain are going on in a general sense, which is to say that the president and (most of) his surrogates are talking about it. But they’re testing to see which demographics are moved on the issue and the best way to deliver the message to each distinct group.
While Rubin tries to convince her readers that the Obama campaign is committing some blunder, they’re actually doing research and testing research that they’ve already done. This campaign makes very few mistakes. And all their mistakes are data for the next go-round.
But another way of looking at it is less empirical in nature. If Jennifer Rubin is squealing like a stuck pig, then you’re on the right track.
Gotta agree. They make very few mistakes. Have generally smart and good ideas anyway, but seek divergent viewpoints and research the hell out of them.
Case in point the Bain approach. They are not making Romney out to be a monster capitalist. They said if he is going to run on being a job creator he should say more about the number of jobs he created.
And you can bet they have a pretty clear number in mind.
But MUCH more importantly Obama has pointed out that heading a private equity firm is not nearly the same job as being president. And Obama knows because he got that job and Romney doesn’t.
Thats a very subtle, very presidential message and it sets Obama up to pretty much trump anything Romney does until November.
Hey Mitt. How many terrorists did you kill this month? Save any car companies? Think you can get even your agenda through Congress?
Would that number be negative, perchance?
Maybe, maybe not.
He had a few early big wins which might net him in the positive.
But later when his approach shifted to classic slash and burn leveraged buy outs to get bigger returns, few employees won out.
I hate to give Jennifer Rubin a ‘sad,’ …
Why should anyone take anything Rubin says seriously about the ways to defeat Mittens when she’s already admitted that she’s in the tank for him?
Some people learn nothing.
Romney’s history as a “job creator” at Bain was supposed to be his main selling point during this election.
Now, after these light-touch attacks by Democrats, he and his supporters are arguing that Mitt’s history at Bain is totally not a massive blight on his record that renders him unfit for the office.
They might well win that argument. Good for you, guys!
Pretty much every attack Romney uses is a lie, a readily refutable lie by someone with knowledge and political skill. I make it through some days by imagining what will happen when Mitt and his strawman arguments goes up against the real Obama in debates.. It is a happy thought. That entitled bastard can’t take a punch. Can’t even take a slap
Yeh, the man is amazingly thin-skinned for a politician, isn’t he?
Of course, he really doesn’t have that much of a background in politics, when you take a closer look. Most of his adult life he’s been a CEO type who can fire any underlings who dare to cross him.
It shows, eh?
If Jennifer Rubin is squealing like a stuck pig, the sun must have risen in the east.
Very interesting.
And please note that in the Mark Halperin interview, Romney can barely bring himself to talk about Bain. Halperin tries to get him to talk about his time there and he mostly squirms and just wants to change the subject.
4. If you Google “Bain backlash” you get 399,000 responses.
So this is empirical evidence of exactly what?
Americans are out their googling this? Hilarious.
Romney never talks about running MA and now is avoiding his job running Bain. What is “fair” game? They are so thin skinned.
I follow Axelrod on Twitter. He just had 3 tweets hammering the Bain point home.
He does really good tweets.
I think they are doing repetition until it sinks in with people.
Romney is what’s wrong with the 1%.