There are so many ways I could approach Mitt Romney’s recently revealed secret speech. People will snark it to death. We can have hours of fun with this thing. If we’re feeling really mischievous, we can even torture it a little bit before we kill it, like a cat playing with a shrew. But I want to be serious for a moment. Will it matter?
The first thing that came to mind when I read the transcript was Obama’s famous comments about people clinging to their guns and their religion. Those comments were also made at a private fundraiser. And I thought to myself that the “clinging” comments must not have hurt too badly because Obama went on to win the nomination and the presidency. But when I thought a little harder, I changed my mind. Obama had already won the nomination from a statistical point of view by the time the “clinging” comments became public. By the time November came along, not only were those comments old news, but the financial sector had collapsed. Obama overcame those comments but they still exacted a price. Even today, I’d argue that people wouldn’t so readily buy the idea that Obama has a secret plan to take away their guns if he hadn’t secretly expressed a degree of disdain for gun owners. And people might not so readily suspect that he isn’t a Christian if he hadn’t secretly disparaged people who cling to their religion.
In any case, I believe that Obama’s comments hurt him and that he is still paying a small price for them. People don’t like to be psychoanalyzed by egghead Harvard lawyers and they don’t like to be disrespected. And that’s precisely why Romney’s comments will hurt him. And I suspect the damage will be greater in this case for several reasons.
First, as indelicate as Obama’s comments were, he was trying to explain to the Napa Valley Chablis Set why people in the Rust Belt feel alienated and pissed off. He was trying to induce empathy, not disdain. His intent, as opposed to his effect, was absolutely not to talk down to or make fun of the religious gun owners of Pennsylvania. He was saying that their communities have been destroyed by deindustrialization. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, was saying that everyone who voted for Obama in 2008 is just looking for a handout from the government and refuses to take any personal responsibility for their own lives. He was talking down to and making fun of the 53% of the people who put Obama in office.
Which leads to the second problem. Elsewhere in the speech, Mitt Romney makes the point that the only undecided people in the country are people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and are disappointed. They still like Barack Obama. They don’t necessarily regret voting for him. And they are seriously considering voting for him again. That is why, Mitt Romney explains to his audience, it doesn’t do him any good to attack Obama personally or repeat a bunch of Tea Party lines about birth certificates or Marxism or whatever. If he tries to make people feel stupid for voting for Obama, they’ll just get defensive. If he’s attacks him unfairly, they’ll just get protective. Romney bases this opinion on careful research about undecided voters.
And the problem is that these are precisely the people who he just insulted. It’s true that he tried a create a special carve-out for the people who voted for Obama and are not sure that they want to do so again. But there are still two problems. First, he insulted all Obama voters, whether he wants to gift retroactive immunities or not. Second, he insulted undecided voters, too.
He said, “What I have to do is convince the 5-10% of independents, who are in the middle, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”
The irony is that the millionaire attendees of this secret speech should have gotten up and left right there, since it was obvious that Romney was not going to emotionally connect with these “thoughtful” independents and make them like him more than the president. But, regardless, Romney basically said that the voters he is after are voting on the basis of their emotions, not their reasoning capabilities. And he made the point more explicit later on when he explained why he isn’t discussing his policy goals.
“Well, I wrote a book that lays out my view for what has to happen in the country, and people who are fascinated by policy will read the book. We have a website that lays out white papers on a whole series of issues that I care about. I have to tell you, I don’t think this will have a significant impact on my electability. I wish it did. I think our ads will have a much bigger impact. I think the debates will have a big impact….My dad used to say, “Being right early is not good in politics.” And in a setting like this, a highly intellectual subject—discussion on a whole series of important topics typically doesn’t win elections. And there are, there are, there are—for instance, this president won because of “hope and change.””
We can now safely predict that Romney will not be treating the debates as an opportunity to talk about a “whole series of important topics” because he doesn’t believe that that is what wins elections.
Even if he is right about that, his comments are contemptuous of the American voter, and especially the undecided voter. He believes they will make their decision emotionally based on trivialities like how much they like the candidates and how they respond to being saturation-bombed with substance-free advertisements.
So, Romney’s comments are worse than Obama’s were because the offense isn’t inadvertent. Romney has real contempt for undecided voters and anyone who voted for Obama in 2008 or who plans to vote for him in 2012. Obama had empathy for the people he was talking about. Romney’s comments also offend a much wider percentage of the voting public than Obama’s did. Romney insulted the key demographic that he needs to win, while Obama insulted a demographic he ultimately didn’t (and doesn’t) need.
But, worst of all for the Mitt-Man, Obama’s comments were revealed in April, and Romney’s were revealed in mid-September. People will still be talking about Romney’s comments when early voting starts just a few weeks from now.
So, will these comments matter? You bet your ass they will. Romney just had an atom bomb dropped on his campaign.
And, remember, today was supposed to be the launch date for Romney 3.0. He was going to reset his campaign and go negative on the president. All his research said that going negative would drive away the only undecided voters in the country, but his base was crumbling and he had to do something. Instead, he had something done to him. Without even wanting to, he just went negative on the only people in the country who might have still made him president.