Mitt "Most Unpopular Candidate in History" but Priebus Denies It

Chuck Todd's Swing State Statistics for September 23, 2012     Wow, back during the spring primaries who would have thought that here in September, the day after the Fall Equinox, there would be such a mutiny within the Republican Party. Back then, we might have expected trouble from Santorum or Newt and their followers, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, or the fervid Ron Paulites. But none of that is the problem right now. Now the Republicans have turned on Mitt Romney - the "good" candidate, the easy candidate, the one everybody thought was a shoe-in - because he turned out to be the "Dud" Candidate.


Huffington Post

After a rocky week that saw plenty of conservatives break away from Mitt Romney, New York Times columnist David Brooks summed up the state of affairs on Sunday.

Brooks was one of several panelists on NBC's "Meet The Press" roundtable, which dove into some data surrounding Romney's popularity.

"Look at his high unfavorable ratings," host David Gregory said. "At 50%. The highest of any candidate running in recent memory. This is an image problem that his philosophical statements in this speech in May to fundraisers only exacerbates."

Brooks did not mince words, calling Romney "the least popular candidate in history."

That quote isn't even the worst from this week! Peggy Noonan wrote on Wall Street Journal said:

. . . The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant "rolling calamity."
A lot of people weighed in, in I suppose expected ways: "Glad you said this," "Mad you said this." But, some surprises. No one that I know of defended the campaign or argued "you're missing some of its quiet excellence." ...
. . . A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn't about individual entrepreneurs. It's people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.
Mitt Romney needs to get his head screwed on right in this area.

Ouch!


Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Reince Priebus, the indomitable RNC chairman, is in a world of denial, vowing that Romney had a good week after all and is just bursting with all kinds of specific plans that he might tell us someday if the campaign goes on long enough. Something like that, LOL.

From ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

I think that we had a good week last week, I think in retrospect, in that we were able to frame up the debate last week in the sense of, what future do we want,” Priebus said this morning on “This Week.”
“I think we can look back at last week as a campaign in a couple months and say, this was the defining week in both campaigns,” Priebus said earlier, “where I think both campaigns are crystallizing around a central theme, which is going to be, what kind of future do we want for our kids and grandkids? What type of America do we want for this country?”
. . . he conceded that last week was not the “best” of the campaign for Romney.
“I think Governor Romney’s been pretty clear, it probably wasn’t the best-said moment in the campaign and probably not the best week in the campaign,” Priebus said.

I'll tell you about specifics. First of all, Mitt Romney talks about, all the time, about reducing the GDP spending from 25 cents on the dollar down to 20, reducing small business taxes from 35 to 25, reducing income taxes across the board by 20 percent.

I mean, for crying out loud, we’ve got Paul Ryan on the ticketAs far as specifics go, we're the only ones talking about how to save Medicare. The president's the one that raided Medicare by $700 billion.

I mean, we've got specifics coming out of our eyeballs.

I'm sorry, maybe its just me, but a man who looks so much like Peter Lorre shouldn't really draw attention to his eyeballs. It forced me to make this with Photobucket's edit tool (hint: Liquify) Heh . . .

Statistics Show Ryan a Risky Game Change like Sarah Palin

USA Today Gallop Poll

Only Dan Quayle in a 1988 Harris Poll of likely voters was viewed less positively than Ryan, with 52% rating Quayle as a "fair" or "poor" vice presidential choice. The Ryan poll includes all adults, not just registered voters.
. . . The poll also finds 17% of adults say they are more likely to vote for Romney in November because Ryan is his running mate -- about the same impact Sarah Palin had for John McCain four years ago among registered voters.
. . . Republicans, however, see the appeal in Ryan, who was hailed this weekend as a bold, innovative thinker by party stalwarts. The poll finds 36% of Republicans are now more likely to vote for Romney. In 2008, only 3 in 10 Republicans said the choice of Palin made them more likely to vote for McCain.

Nate Silver on 538 Blog: Ryan a Risky "Game Change"

. . . Why am I concluding that Mr. Romney would have chosen Mr. Ryan only if he felt he was losing? Because from a Politics 101 point of view, this isn’t the most natural choice.

. . .The last time an ordinary member of the House was elected vice president, and the last Republican, was more than 100 years ago: in 1908, when William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman, a New York congressman, were chosen by voters. (Coincidentally, that fall was also the last time that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.)

Politics 101 suggests that you play toward the center of the electorate. Although this rule has more frequently been violated when it comes to vice-presidential picks, there is evidence that presidential candidates who have more “extreme” ideologies (closer to the left wing or the right wing than the electoral center) underperform relative to the economic fundamentals.

Various statistical measures of Mr. Ryan peg him as being quite conservative. Based on his Congressional voting record, for instance, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.