Throughout the election, I was complaining at the lack of ads for Mitt Romney. I am in Florida which is a swing state and barely saw Romney ads until late October. The ones I saw sucked. Well I turned out to be correct, an independent study shows that the Obama Regime had a more effective ad campaign.
Senior Republican campaign operatives who gathered over beer last week in Alexandria for a post-election briefing were taken aback by what they were told. A nonpartisan research firm presented data showing that President Obama had far outperformed Mitt Romney in managing the largest single expenditure of the campaign: television advertising.
Romney’s spending decisions on advertising look like “campaign malpractice,” said one person who had reviewed the newly circulated data.
Obama and his allies spent less on advertising than Romney and his allies but got far more — in the number of ads broadcast, in visibility in key markets and in targeting critical demographic groups, such as the working class and younger voters in swing states. As the presidential race entered its final, furious phase, for example, millions of college football fans tuning in to televised games saw repeated ads for Obama but relatively few from the Romney campaign.
[....]
That contrast is among a series of revelations creating a stir in recent days as GOP consultants conduct postmortem meetings to review what went wrong in Romney’s surprisingly lopsided loss. To some Republicans, the ad-buying strategy reflected other problems with the campaign, including an insular nature that left it closed to advice from the outside. Romney campaign officials rejected the criticism, saying they pursued a deliberate and careful strategy that allowed them to closely monitor expenses while buying the ads they needed at a fair price.
Romney ran a terrible media campaign. He was overconfident and paid the price.
Tags: campaign finance reform
I worked for the Romney campaign here in Florida. I spent dozens of hours walking precincts and hundreds of hours on the phone talking to voters.
It won’t surprise you to learn that in Florida the Romney campaign hired the most feckless advisers possible. It’s almost as they WANTED TO LOSE. I got the impression they WANTED TO PISS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS down a toilet. If you want to find out the best way to lose a campaign it’s best to hire professional losers: Charlie Crist’s campaign staff.
Here’s my tin-foil hat conspiracy theory: the campaign staff was in league with the Obama campaign. Perhaps not a far-fetched as it sounds. In August, Charlie Crist endorsed Obama. Could Charlie Crist’s campaign staff share the political leanings of their former employer?
As thousands of Romney volunteers walked various precincts they often encountered homes where nobody was at home — especially if it was during a weekday when most people were at work. We were instructed NOT to leave a door-hanger with campaign literature. I was very miffed and complained. “Why spend 40 cents (times millions) to send a mailer which ends up in the trash, when you’ve got thousands of volunteers going door-to-door that can deliver it for free?” (Actually ‘miffed’ is probably an understatement — you probably have no idea how hot and muggy it is walking through Florida neighborhoods in June, July, Aug., Sept… Maybe ‘livid’ is a better word).
The campaign staff told me there was a method to the madness. “Besides, door-hangers often end up in the trash too”. So why are we walking precincts in the first place?
We were told that our purpose was to interview the ones at home and put an oval indicating voter preference on our walking logs. The sheets were collected and Fed-Ex’d to Tallahassee where they were scanned into a computer running the “ORCA” program. This computer program was supposed to magically get out the vote on November 6th.
The ORCA program was not a killer whale, ORCA was a beached whale.
PIMF: “It’s almost though as they WANTED TO LOSE.”
Does anyone else here have campaign stories they’d like to share?
@ Fritz Katz:
@ Fritz Katz:
oh my!!!
@ Fritz Katz:
I don’t doubt what you wrote.
I guess Romney hired shit advisers -- were they recommended to him by Karl Fat Bastard Rove?
Speranza wrote:
These were Florida advisors. You know who is from Florida! Hint: Porky!
@ Fritz Katz:
I heard that also. That seems to be basically a logical appeal to authority, to an authority that turns out wasn’t an authority on anything special. In the communities I inhabit, the 2012 election was way more active for independent voters favoring Romney. It was like a 1000 percent difference. 2008 was the polar opposite. The shift should have given Romney the easy win
In hindsight Romney seemed to talk like a boardroom executive. He could rally his lieutenants but needed them to rally the troops. In business, he had plenty of good lieutenants that could translate his message. In politics he had none.
@ darkwords:
Most the Florida operatives had been affiliated with Jeb Bush. I think they made him lose so they can get Jeb in 2016.
@ Rodan:
Bite your tongue. We sure as heck do not need a third Bush President. We need Newt, Jindal, Perry, Walker, Guiliani, or one of the other esteemed members of the Conservative Brand, with actual bona fides.
@ 9 Rodan: There were probably 1000′s of democrats trying to volunteer to work for the Romney campaign. There were probably wackos trying to get on board so they could be outrageous.
@ Flyovercountry: I like Barbara Bush the twin.
Flyovercountry wrote:
- Newt just likes to run his mouth.
- Jindal, never trusted him, and he was too quick first to suck up to Romney and then to stab him in the back.
- Giuliani [pronounced "Juliani", not Gwiliani; he's Italian, not Welsh-Roman], I don’t know why he ran in 2008 in the first place, but I never really trusted him over the whole of America either (for different reasons than Jindal).
Walker is awesome. He won’t win an election in Free Shit America but he is awesome. If there is another Revolution I want him to be the next George Washington.
Zimriel wrote:
I have to take this back. He won in Wisconsin which voted Obama. If he runs in 2016, he could well convince enough nonvoters (like me) that his election will matter -- which Romney’s didn’t -- and bring us back into the Right fold.
Flyovercountry wrote:
The sad part is that The Establishment and the Santorum wing will back jeb Bush.