Why would millions more people tune in to watch the president’s convention speech than Mitt Romney’s? We know who the president is. Mitt Romney, not so much. Based on novelty and curiosity alone, I’d expect the challenger to get a much bigger audience than the sitting president. Why does Romney suck so much?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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He’s simply a product of a party which is, at this time, fundamentally dysfunctional. There is no foundational basis on which to build, apart from hatred of the President. And that’s probably just not enough. At least not right now. To use a biblical metaphor, it is a house build on sand.
36 million to 30 million for Mitt. Probably a significant number watched both speeches.
WRT the question, Mitt doesn’t excite the GOP base and IND find him too unlikeable to watch him give a boring speech.
I think Michelle drew them in. Then Clinton had them wondering if Obama would live up to the hype.
BTW, the other rating news was the more people actually watched Clinton than the NFL opener. And by bleeding into the local nightly news, anyone who turned to their local news got Bill Clinton instead.
Have ya’ll seen the video the local tv interview Ann Romney did in Iowa today. The dude kept asking her question and for most of them she basically refused to answer them and then proceeded to say that the message is jobs and the economy and that is the only thing she’ll talk about??? It just seems to me like the campaign didn’t prepare her for anything but jobs and economy. As if the local news wouldn’t ask her about other things too. Plus Michelle Obama has spoiled the way the media treats the FLOTUS, I think. Michelle Obama will attempt to answer whatever question and is saavy enough to just run circles around questions she knows are gotcha questions.
Ann just doesn’t seem as prepared. Seriously, you have to check out this transcript:
http://www.kwqc.com/story/19484978/anne-romney-kwqc-tv6-interview-transcript
Just more proof that the GOP is throwing this election, for President anyway.
Do you mean that literally, or is that a new definition of “throwing”?
In my understanding, throwing an election means you deliberately lose. It’s not quite the same as giving up becaue things look hopeless, if that’s what you mean.
I don’t think he’s doing either one. He’s just losing.
I’d guess that many more Democrats watched the RNC than Republicans watched the DNC – intellectual curiosity isn’t exactly a hallmark of today’s GOP. Another thing is that there’s no novelty to Mitt – he made himself known in the 2008 campaign, and he wasn’t exactly liked then either.
We all know enough about Romney to not want to watch his stupid TV show.
It’s a wonder so many watched Romney at all. If the economy weren’t still meh and Obama weren’t still black, Ol’ Mitt would be polling at 28% max (that’s 1% Romney voters plus Bush’s 27% dead enders).
Saw you earlier post about PBO’s speech last night being “just okay.” I hope you saw this:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/07/why-obama-went-low-key-in-his-democratic-convention
-speech.html
That was interesting. I felt the tone of the speech was quite intentional. I think politically charged people like us aren’t naturally tuned in to the ho hum and pretty down to earth and apolitical engagement style of the middling voter. I remember watching the debates with McCain when Obama could have crushed McCain regarding the lies about palling around with terrorists–that would have been so satisfying. But he responded fairly softly and then chided McCain for not keeping the conversation on things “Americans cared about.” Sure enough the snap polls showed he had crushed McCain in the eyes of America without committing an ass-whipping.
That speech last night was things Americans cared about. And, it looks to me like the polls are showing he got a 2 to 4-point bounce nationally, way more than Romney got.
I need to do some phone banking soon, two hours a week until the election. I just cannot sit this one out.
The whole convention was quite intentional. Better than 2008.
I don’t buy into the theory that Obama’s handlers were geniuses because of 2008 (although they sure seem to), but they aren’t dunces either, and the 2012 convention matched their style perfectly. The 2008 victory over Clinton proved that they work all angles for a victory, running laps around Mark Penn’s team in terms of working the delegate count. They also avoided any missteps after the primaries – not wasting their clear advantage over McCain but not being overly cautious either – although I’m convinced they wasted a large amount of money and volunteer time in the last few months of 2008.
What pisses me off about Obama’s electoral team is that they pretty obviously took 2010 off. Like with Clinton in 1994, there was no evidence that they did any thinking about the mid-terms or governing with that in mind.
But they are the clearly the better campaign team – by orders of magnitude in 2012 and that should be enough to make the difference given the natural advantage they have going in. My only concern is that they might dismiss the threat of vote blocking as coming from the “fringe” left and not adequately account for it.
Answer: He’s nothing more than a boring old rich white guy, not exactly a novelty in things political. At least McCain gave rise to some funny jokes. Now get off my lawn.
Watching somebody on TV means spending time with them. How many people want to spend time with Mitt?
Sorry, my curiousity about him is not that deep.
Why does Romney suck so much?
Tough to be explicit, but YOU Know IT when you See IT!
Heh. It appears that even Fox has decided Romney sucks — or at least one of the minions is getting fed up:
There’s one thing that Romney is really consistent about–being the most boring man on earth. I TRIED to sit through that speech. I have tremendous respect for the strength of will of those of you who managed it.
“Why does Romney suck so much?” Practice.