Houston--We Have Lost The Narrative

You would think that Romney could do a victory lap once Santorum threw in the towel but instead he got himself embroiled in a whole controversy over the war on women. The fact that President Obama controls the 'language of the debate" is a big, big plus for the incumbent.


Yesterday started off with Romney being asked whether he supported equal pay for equal work. He couldn't answer and said he would get back to the reporter. Then Lilly Ledbetter blasted out an e-mail criticizing Romney. Then we had Romney's spokeswoman, a new add-on, say of course he did. Then Romney decides to do his usual--I am not waging war on women--It's Obama and then he claimed that over 93% of those who lost their jobs in the Recession were women and of course it was all Obama's fault. The Democrats pounced with everything from graphs to economic data. 


So ending the news cycle, we have Polifact claim that Romney's statement was mostly false. The Romney campaign demanded Polifact retract its statement. Then we had Romney's women surrogates come out and say how Romney is for women. The big problem here was that all of them voted against equal pay for equal work.


The Democrats made one slip up by saying that Ann Romney hadn't worked a day in her life. This allowed Ann Romney to join twitter and proudly proclaimed she made a choice--save that word for later--to stay at home and raise five sons--all of whom never served in the armed forces. Today Ann gets to defend herself on Fox News but she is still trapped in Obama's narrative.


How long ago was it that we heard Romney was the turn-around guy and the successful businessman. It feels like months because he has been dwarfed by the primary language about who is "Not Mitt". To date, he has no definition, no identity and no overarching agenda. And the Obama campaign is happily filling in the blanks for you.


Buzzfeed tallied up the approval ratings for all the challengers since 1996. Romney is in the worse and weakest position of all challengers. Basically, all the challengers came out of the primary process with net positives--Dole at 22, McCain at 19 and Obama at 18. Romney is the first to come out with a -12.


It's clear that the Romney people are hypersensitive of the gender chasm--not gap--between him and Obama. We haven't even approached the issue of reproductive rights yet and Ann Romney dropped the toxic word--choice--for future debates. 


The pollster for PPP opined that Romney is in such a deep hole for climb out of--he is far behind in key demographics and is challenging a President, who basically sits on his 2008 victory, minus Indiana and Iowa. He thinks this would take an enormous effort to crawl back, especially when you have to also pacify the Right.


The Romney campaign told the New York Times that the length and expense of the primary process cost them two months in creating a ground game and an organization. The Obama campaign started creating its ground game in the Iowa primary and has moved relentlessly forward with their efforts, even opening up offices in states which no one thinks are in play.


Remember Ohio. Rasmussen, whose polls always favor Republicans, had Obama beating Romney 48 to 40 there about a month ago. Yesterday, his new poll shows Obama beating Romney 51 to 40. No Ohio, no Romney win. Period.


While Romney was caught in his underwear yesterday with women's issues, Obama had fun with the Buffett rule, which he has renamed the Reagan Rule for the former President's support of the same principle. While the Buffett Rule has literally no chance to pass Congress and only serves to make the President's point about inequality, Romney bought in and claimed that the Buffett rule would benefit Warren Buffett. Not. 


But that hasn't stopped Joe Biden from now coining the Romney rule and flying off to New Hampshire showcasing the difference between President Obama and Romney. Throughout the campaign, watch where Joe Biden goes. He is stopping in small electoral states to prevent any loss there.


So today, the Obama campaign has celebrations for the sixth anniversary of Romneycare, which includes Deval Patrick in Massachusetts actually hosting such a party. 


So far in just a couple of days, the Obama campaign's reflexes have been sharp and they have responded instantly to Romney's miscues. It's clear to me that the Romney campaign is not ready for prime-time. It has come off as bumbling and not able to counter-punch.


This seems to be true about the feared Karl Rove. For every ad, the Obama campaign has countered by identifying whose behind Crossroads America's funding. But even with this torrent of negative ads by Rove,it's sort of pathetic that his biggest weapon is gas prices.


Perhaps the Romney campaign will find their sea legs. None of them have ever run a national campaign before. But so far--and it has been months--they have had no message--just that Mitt was inevitable. 


Right now the Romney campaign is trapped in GOP World and the Obama campaign is making sure you remember how extreme Mitt got during the primaries. Romney still has to make peace with his rivals before the party can be unified. And this morning a mine was laid on that path--a majority of Republicans do not believe the Afghanistan war was worth fighting. This plays into Ron Paul's campaign and undercuts Romney's desire to be the champion of the neo-cons. So all this has to be sorted out before Romney really starts the general election campaign and by then he will be behind the Eight-Ball.


Romney has enormous financial advantages--$200 million from the oil industry, $100 million from the Koch Brothers, $200 million from Karl Rove's outfit, as well as $100s of millions in his own Superpac. All of this will be thrown at President Obama. But the point of negative ads are to push up your opponents' negatives so as to be able to persuade independents to vote for you. 


Here we have seen the dynamics of Romney's attack machine--they have been effective at squeaking out victories in Republican primaries but at an enormous cost to Romney's favorability rating. If he does unleash an aerial attack on Obama, which everyone expects, watch his negatives go through the roof.  And we still don't know why he is running for President. 


The other aspect of the money juggernaut is that he has no control over it. He can not legally direct these people--and they are all cranks and very old white men--how to orchestrate attacks on Obama. So we start the general campaign without a ground game or organization,a total lack of control over the behavior of your allies, a lack of unity in your party,and a lack of message. I wouldn't want to be there.


The general objective for the Romney campaign is to strip away 100 electoral votes from Obama's 2008 totals. Right now he has to pray for a terrorist attack, Israel bombing Iran, an economic slowdown. He is total dependent on things outside his control.