Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

First, Not France

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He polls 13 points to McCain’s 28 and Giuliani’s 27 in neighboring New Hampshire. He’s got the sobriquet “flip-flopper” pasted to his forehead with Gorilla Glue. Now his proposed campaign slogan, “First, Not France,” is being mocked across the internet. Could this be the beginning of the end for Romney 2008?

These people need help. Some of them are ostensibly from Massachusetts. Watching the unfolding disaster is shifting from amusing to cruel at this point. Maybe we should step back for a moment (24 hours would probably do nicely) and give our neighbors some constructive advice from the team that won the most recent elections. What should Romney do to salvage his hopes for 08?

Here is a thought: change his Party affiliation and run as a conservative Democrat. Imagine the excitement; a political defibrillation for a campaign in the ER. Does anyone else have any better ideas for the team at P.O. Box 55899, Boston, MA.

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  2. just to watch him get his ass kicked in a general election, but I don’t think it’s in the cards. This guy is living on some other planet.

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    That Romney strategy doc is full of crack pot thinking, but this one really made me laugh:

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    The document underscores Romney’s aim to become the “only electable choice” for socially conservative voters. But the plan anticipates that Romney could face a serious threat if Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is considered one of the GOP’s leading conservative intellectuals, decides to enter the race.

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    We’ve got a couple of hundred thousand troops on the ground in Afghanistan & Iraq, Bush/Cheney are political poison, deficits to the moon, and Mitts brain trust is trying to figure out how to outflank Newt Gingrich? OK.

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    My only advice to them at this point would be to adopt a ‘George Costanza’ strategy. Whatever his crew of advisers & consultants come up with; Do the Opposite.

  3. People on the right thought Kerry was a joke, and he won th nomination easily.

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    Romney is a serious threat, and the people who ridicule him on ths blog are only preaching to the choir. Get out there and tell your friends and neighbors across the country not to vote for him, and that we know first hand how bad he is!!!!!!!

    • He was largely favored to win the nomination in the beginning… I don’t think many on the right really considered him a joke at all. In fact, the efforts they went to in order to discredit him shows they thought he was a very real threat, from the very beginning.

        • are liberals preoccupied with romney outside of MA?  i’m not so sure. 

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          new hampshire and iowa voters like to think of themselves as mavens, as those who know more than other americans about the candidates.

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          i think “hometown people” tend to want to do this, too. 

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          libs from nyc like to slam giuliani from the “we really know this guy” perspective, just as we do with romney. 

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          senators get less of a bump either way b/c they’re mostly in washington. 

          • It does seem to me that posters on this site are slightly unhinged –Ahab style– when it comes to Romney.  Perhaps this is an artifact of the locality.

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            I happen to think– unhappily– that if Romney can keep the right in the primaries in numbers sufficient to be nominated, that he would be a very formidable candidate.  And I say this knowing that the Democrats have lost two elections in a row to a candidate that was not formidable.

            • might stem from the fact that according to his own campaign, Massachusetts is grouped together with France & jihadists, as the bogeyman that Mitt should run against.

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              That’s Mitt, a one term governor whos own Lt. Gov. just got shellaced in the general election, and now he’s running against MA. He spent over 200 days out of state last year launching his POTUS run, cost us untold hundreds of thousand of dollars on State Police security, all the while he was supposed to be working for MA taxpayers.

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              You can never figure those crazy liberals, y’know?

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            • CMD,

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              1. I agree Mitt would be formidable, against HRC or Obama, with a play-it-safe + $150 mm in attack ads campaign, and with Dems traditionally unwilling to fight back. 

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              2. BMGers slightly unhinged towards Republicans?  Not that surprising.  The weird thing is perhaps that many (?) MA independents, like me, feel similarly  unhinged when it comes to Mitt. 

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              My biggest beef was his utter disdain for actual governance at the day-to-day level…that’s what I heard repeatedly from a fair number of people who worked in his adminstration. 

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              Say what you will about Newt, Mac, and Rudy, but those guys seem to truly love policy.  Mitt likes to pick rhetorical and symbolic fights and Rudy seems to like to pick real ones — to hammer the entrenched interests and get stuff done. 

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              To hear him now profess to be a turnaround guy — it DOES infuriate me, because he didn’t even TRY to do that. 

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              He won a few hands in 2002, tried to double down building the R party in MA, busted bigtime, then shut it down to $5 a hand from 2004 on, just killing time until the Foxwoods bus came to take him home.*

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              *Official entry in mangled metaphor competition. 

      • In Feb. of 2004, Kerry had to take out a Six Million dollar mortgage against his home in Louisberg Square, because his fundraising was going to poorly.  Howard Dean was still a force.  Gephardt.

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        Hindsight is 20/20 – John Kerry was NEVER an early favorite to win the nomination.  He wouldn’t have if Kennedy hadn’t given him his very best staffers, his virtual right arm, to get the campaign back on track after Bob Shrum had done such a swell job.

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        That is what makes me so happy to hear y’all dismiss Mitt!

        • I will admit that the early polls (notoriously unreliable) showed a wide open race with Dean probably the early facorite and Gephardt, Edwards and Clark still hanging around.  And Kerry wasn’t yet prepared to tap in to the Internet-based organizing that Dean used so well.

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          But Kerry was the frontrunner all along.  As early as December 2000 (when I was in D.C. and more tuned in to national politics), he was widely considered by most insiders to be the likely ’04 nominee.  Dean came out of thin air but I was one of many who believe strongly he was little more than a fun idea. 

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          Kerry had (like Romney) the best hair of the field and the most money (over $41 million in the bank as of Feb. 2004).  By contrast, the Dean campaign never regained its footing after Iowa and by February 2004 had used up almost all of the $40 million total in campaign money he had raised.  No other candidate – Gephardt and Edwards included – were ever really a factor.

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          You can say it’s 20/20 hindsight but I (and many others, especially the party establishment) were always confident that Kerry would be the nominee. 

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          For the record, I’ll state right now that I believe Romney will be the Republican nominee.  He has the most money and the best hair, too.

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          • He may not have lead the polls, but “front-runner” status is largely subjective and often the media/dc elite call it like they see it. John Kerry, that year, was their guy (even if DCopoly doesn’t really like the guy). No one should be shocked he won the nomination, the job that insider democrats did to discredit Howard Dean was waaaay more than anyone else. I say that as someone who didn’t support Howard Dean.

  4. God..  someone might want to ask him to do a little demographic research about what language many New Hampshire people’s grandparents spoke.

  5. This whole characterization of europe and france as a bunch of lefties is soooo tired. Furthermore, the right-wing anti-gay anti-immigrant guy is leading in the polls in France right now.  Let’s all hope Segolene Royal can catch up to be the first woman (and a socialist!) president of France!!!

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    Daily updates and France election polls are here:
    http://frenchelectio…

  6. From Slate

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    So, how are Romney’s flip-flops and business success connected?

    ….Such hypocrisy, which turns off voters, is something like a job requirement for CEOs. In the executive suite, abandoning deeply held attitudes and reversing positions are job requirements. How often have you seen a CEO proclaim that a struggling unit is not for sale, only to put it on the block a few months later? A CEO will praise a product to the skies one day and then cancel it the next. He’ll boast, sincerely, that his company is No. 1 in the industry and then, when he quits the next day to run a rival, claim that the new firm is tops.

    CEOs take their cues from Mike Damone of Fast Times at Ridgemont High: “Act like wherever you are, that’s the place to be.”

  7. I’ve never thought Romney had much of a chance, and if anything, my opinion of his prospects has been increasing over the past half-year (from “no way!” to “maaaybe… naah.”)  However, there is one thing he should do: Set himself up to take advantage if the stronger contenders stumble.  That’s exactly what Kerry did in December 2003 – January 2004: his fate was not really in his own campaign’s hands, but he did all the right things to take advantage if Dean’s campaign stumbled, and then it did and he did.

  8. First, Not France.  Ok, and then what will we not be next, Luxembourg?  Swaziland?  Peru?

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    Also, FYI, we’re already Not France.  Is Mitt 2 steps behind, or what? 

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    Trying to define your country as the anti-France reminds me of  the sort of men so insecure in their masculinity that they define themselves as not-women.  Do not-American-women live in Not-France?

    • Swiss accidentally invade Liechtenstein
      March 2, 2007

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      ZURICH, Switzerland –What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

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      According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

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      A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

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      “We’ve spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it’s not a problem,” Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

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      Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

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      Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. “It’s not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,” he said.

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      Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington DC, doesn’t have an army.

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      • …Liechtenstein is to Switzerland what Monaco is to France.  Essentially, an appendage.

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