Where’s Romney’s Bio?

by Patrick Ruffini :: October 22nd, 2007 10:10 pm

I know I’m sort of questioning a big strategic assumption behind the Romney campaign here, but I really have to wonder whether the brick wall in polling that he’s hitting is because his campaign has become all about issues and not his incredibly compelling bio.

Here’s the problem.

Despite spending gobs of money, despite eclipsing Fred Thompson in the invisible primary, he still can’t quite connect with conservatives. Yes, he barely won the FRC straw poll, but only after he and the other ballot stuffing strawpoll-centric campaigns figured out they could phone it in for the in-person contest and focus exclusively on running up the score in the online vote. Filter out the online votes, and you have a pretty organic (and one sided) protest vote for Mike Huckabee.

Romney’s speeches are built on the assumption that he can out-conservative Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee by out-talking them. His words are a litany of conservative talking points.

Earlier this year, when his conservative credentials were genuinely in question, the issues-talk might have helped. But now his problem has morphed into something far worse: an authenticity problem centered around flip-flopping. And arguably, each time he opens his mouth and spouts platitudes, he only makes it worse.

Romney has done to himself what the Bush campaign did to John Kerry. The Bush team made it so that every time Kerry opened his mouth, he hurt himself, thanks to the perception that he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. Kerry couldn’t help himself by saying the right things because nobody believed what he was saying.

Romney’s situation is further complicated by the fact that issues are actually friendly terrain for Rudy Giuliani. Huh? That’s right — because people assume Rudy’s positions are liberal, when he talks conservative, that’s reassuring. When Romney talks issues, people assume he’s pandering.

Rudy has an issues problem, one that he’s trying to make go away by talking issues. Romney’s problem is not an issues problem. The flip-flopping charge is a character problem, not an issues problem. So what Romney really must do is shore up perceptions of his character.

Romney should resign himself to the fact that he won’t be able to out-conservative Thompson or Huckabee on issues.

But he does have unique qualities that make him a more appealing choice than the other conservatives in the field on other grounds. In short, his path to the nomination is to out-conservative Rudy Giuliani (and only Giuliani) and out-executive and out-bio Thompson or Huckabee.

In all the ads we’ve seen so far, where is Romney the incredibly successful businessman — the most successful one in North America according to Jim Cramer? Romney the father of five? (this one’s only made the occasional cameo before social conservative audiences). The guy who was home with his wife doing his HBS homework while George Bush was out partying? (Okay, go light on the last part in the primaries.) Or the guy who saved the Olympics?

These were all the inspiring reasons why a one-term Massachusetts governor could run for President to begin with, and instead we get awkward metaphors about three-legged stools and blue vs. black suits.

The Romneybots could probably dredge up clips to show all of this in campaign material. No need to bother. I’ve seen the clips and they’re playing in my head right now. But how many points have they really put behind bio spots in the early states? Where’s the 60-second bio spot with the soaring music?

On February 5th, Mitt Romney wants people to go to the polls saying this: “Slick Romney may be a smooth talker. He’s just telling me what I want to hear. But he was a pretty darned successful businessman. A good governor. And family man — take that Billary. And he’s not Rudy.”

Think of how Bill Clinton fought back against ultimately more serious character charges: by reframing the character issue. Yeah, he was a lying, pot-smoking philanderer. But he felt our pain.

I like Mitt Romney. But I feel icky whenever I hear him debate. He needs to remind people why they liked him to begin with.

Tagged: mitt romney strategy

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