Watching Charlie Baker try to mount a credible campaign for governor is almost as amusing as watching Mitt Romney try to craft a 2012 presidential effort from his wild “Say Anything” youth (by which I mean the 2008 campaign). First, the flapping hands. Then, the loss of his right wing to plucky teabagger Tim Cahill. Now, a desperate rebranding devised by political savant Rob Gray, who ran Kerry Healey into the ground at the speed of light in 30 seconds (supervised, then as now, by Baker campaign manager Tim O’Brien … “The most infamous television spot featured a woman walking alone in a dark parking garage while a narrator attacked Patrick’s efforts to try to free a convicted rapist,” the Globe observed).
Not only is it ridiculous to make the “smartest man in state government” sound like a quart of milk, this ad emphasizes Governor Patrick’s authority and power with every repetition, and in itself offers nothing positive or constructive. Baker sounds like one of the guys wandering around Harvard Square with home-made signs on sandwich boards raging against the machine — and with about as much of a substantive program.
“Disastrous,” many of the worthies at Red Mass Group predicted at the time of Gray’s appointment, and recent events are proving them right. What do you think of the two words that took “months of talking to voters across Massachusetts,” according to Baker, to organize?
Discuss
15 Comments . Comments are closed.Devised by political savant Gray or Carville?
much older than Carville...
The "Had Enough?" slogan goes back to the 1946 Campaign. Not exactly a "new" campaign slogan.
Of course, I do remember reading that this worked out well for the Rs in 1946...
And they rode that wave through 1948...
...to elect Tom Dewey as President (at least that's what the Chicago Tribune said!)
There are a lot of statements to pick apart in his ad ....
and it will probably do a lot of good to do so.
But even with the whimsical music it's still negative. Does he even know how to run something positive about himself?`
Another good post on the topic ....
Mass Liberal
Baker isn't trying to win votes frmo political partisans on BMG.
Baker is still a relative unknown in Massachusetts. He just needs a gimmick to go around through towns and introduce himself. That what this tour will do - and its a nice standard message that will play well with conservative voters.
I know its not a convincing message to readers on this board - but I'm pretty sure its going to work well for Baker. At this end of the next three weeks hopefully we will see another poll.
Baker's unknown/no opinion numbers should be down. Whether that converts into high support numbers for Baker will tell us if this campaign was successful.
I don't think the Baker campaign is sweating any bullets that the message doesn't play well to hardcore democrats.
He's introducing himself?
I think people already know him by his work over the past 6 months of the campaign. He's the guy with the attack ads, and it hasn't fared well.
What he is doing is repackaging the attack with nice music and putting it together is a more whimsical way. It's still an attack. I guess that's who he is.
The job here is to pick apart the new attack and add some facts to the whimsy.
Latest Rasmussen Poll has his unknown/no opinion still above 40%
He may be well known to political wonks like us, but to a very large number of voters he is unknown. Facts and data confirm this.
Of course the RGA ads have been a negative introduction to Baker for some. I think that's why we see Patrick benefiting from the RGA ads more than Baker.
"Had enough" is a slogan I think will resonate with a lot of Massachusetts voters.
What I think is hilarious is the constant refrain from opponents of Baker that he is "making a mistake" every time he does something right.
I think there is a case to be made that the RGA ads backfired. But not the "had enough" tour. We'll have to wait for the polls in a few weeks to see.
My sense is that he is still not defining himself ...
he is still on the attack. Are you fed up with this or that is his new ad. What he is not doing is defining himself. What is he going to change? What is he going to do to counter the legislature? What are his reforms? How will he pass those reforms? Then he needs to get ready for the counter arguments about reforms that he championed when he was in the Welducci administrations (short answer: none). He is not doing any of this, instead he's going after Patrick and Cahill again. With his call to fire them and offering nothing else.
The numbers you quote are pretty high for unknowns at this point in the race. The problem with Baker's approach is that he's letting others like Patrick define him since he is not doing it himself. Patrick is already up there saying that he should stop the attacks and disavow attack ads that have aired to his benefit. If Baker is not going to engage the voters, Patrick can continue doing this.
Sounds to me
Like the antithesis of another slogan from a past campaign:
Together We Can
One breeds hope and optimism, while the other stirs up anger. Sounds like the Republican playbook has been opened to page 5.
Both slogans do nothing to define the candidate or say really anything.
They each go after the opposite emotional response in people.
Quite telling actually.
Together We Can
Translates into "You do it for me, I'm too important to vote".
That playbook
It didn't work so well for Ms. Healey, but it did increase Republican strength in Congress in 2002 and 2004 and it got the worst president anyone can remember re-elected.
It's not a good yardstick to think "That sounds stupid to me; that's going to fail." George Bush sounded stupid to lots of people — even in 2000.
I Hate To Say This Bob
But you're spot on with your analysis. Probably why I'll leave that race blank on my ballot.
I LOVE NICEY-NICE, TAX CUTS, TAX CUTS, TAX CUTS
Here's how Baker is going to do it:
He's going to say that he is for tax cuts, fill it in with "old mom and apple pie" and say things like "Had enough?" that any challenger would say, regardless of anything else.
It doesn't matter what he has done at the Big Dig, at Harvard Pilgrim, or anywhere else. Just say "tax cuts", do mom and apple pie in an acceptable/tolerable form, and they will vote for you.
Of course, there will be no tax cuts because the state is in the hole. But, it gets them to vote for you.
Meanwhile, Patrick is trying to go after the health insurance companies that want to jack rates. For most of the people much more money would be saved by keeping insurance rates down than by some MINI-MINI-MICRO tax cut that Baker could actually implement, at best.
Michael Scott = Michael Steele = Charlie Baker
Great take on Charlie Baker's extravagant campaign spending spree by Rachel Slajda yesterday in Talking Points Memo. My favorite line is her introductory paragraph:
Isn't Charlie's campaign spending spree just like something out of The Office? Paying for an American Gladiator-style jousting arena? Renting a mechanical bull? Hey, Charlie B, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do to make my dream come true?
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