Branding Mitt Romney
My new article, “Branding Retro Romney,” is up at PJ. It’s about the perils of casting Mitt Romney in the “Mad Men” role, as the Obama administration has been wont to do. You can comment there or here, or better yet, at both venues.
By the way, the video referred to in the piece is this one. Embedding has been disabled, so you’ll have to go to YouTube to view it.
I don’t think that piece could have been written any better by anyone.
And that clip was a grand slam.
Your piece suggested to me a possible gambit for Romney when the Obamoids try to cast him as a clueless throwback:
Remember the Hathaway Shirt Man?
I only peripherally know Mad Men. Just enough to see the title of your article and make a couple hundred neuron jumps to the same conclusion, and read the article to fill those jumps out. The secretive part has to backfire, on it’s own. That’s not like a pot calling a kettle black, it’s like the pot calling the shiny new stainless pan black. Oops. One can hope they continue with their meme, though.
By the way, how long can a group, like the obominites, remain sub-sophomorish? Wouch.
Doom: Given that the typical Obaminite’s most obvious (if unstated) lifetime goal is, as Tom Lehrer once phrased it, “to prolong adolescence beyond all previous limits”? This is me, not holding my breath.
In this campaign, which candidate most fulfills the negative Madison Avenue stereotypes of “all hype and no delivery” and “all style and no substance?”
Obama has never been a “nice guy”. Obama has been a Chicago thug with a drug habit. There is nothing nice about fundamentally transforming the USA — destroying everything obama touches.
PCachu,
Hahaha! I keep forgetting that part. Being a child from birth to death, and as irresponsible as it takes in order to… what… be free? I don’t mind them turning into lemmings, as that is their desired course, knowingly or not. I just hate the notion of being forced along or killed for being a “denier”.
The fifth-season debut of AMC’s Mad Men delivered 3.5 million viewers for its two-hour premiere. That’s up 21 percent from 2010′s fourth-season premiere…
http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/03/26/mad-men-season-5-premiere-shatters-records/
3.5 MILLION. I RIDICULOUSLY SMALL % OF THE PUBLIC. AND MOSTLY ELITIST URBANITES.
HARDLY A GOOD THING TO MODEL A NATIONAL ELECTORAL STRATEGY ON.
The more specious the innuendo’s uttered by the dems, the more obvious it is that, that is all they have and they know it. That is why Axelrod is stumbling on national TV and Obama’s minions are beginning to attack Romney’s family, before he even has the nomination.
So, the real question to be answered is, how will Romney handle it?
Romney needs to be prepared for the quite predictable attacks Obama will launch at him. He can easily identify the likely avenues of attack by noticing the themes that are already emerging.
Congressional Republicans are obstructing in Congress?
Easy response; when Obama brings up supposed Republican ‘obstructionism’ in Congress, as he surely will, Romney responds with, “Mr. President, it’s been more than 3 years since the Democratic-controlled Senate has passed a budget. Many Democrats on the Senate finance committee are skipping meetings. We have pictures proving this. I just wonder, how can anyone say they’re serious about public finances when they don’t have a budget and obviously don’t care to attend meetings on coming up with a budget?
Mr President, just borrowing isn’t working and places a terrible burden upon future generations.
Managing finances starts with a budget. If you haven’t started after nearly 4 years, why should the American people give you another 4 years?
Here’s the link:Democrats Skip Senate Budget Meeting
Amazing, less than 4 years after Obama’s election, the election of 2012 is his opponents to lose…
?? oops!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/democrats-skip-senate-budget-meeting_640414.html
Related: MIT research finds that low-information, TV-watching voters go for the better-looking candidate — 5% effect equals the incumbency advantage.
Good news for Romney (bad news for McCain). I’m too young (by a bit) to remember the JFK/Nixon election, but Nixon was hurt by Kennedy’s advantage in the looks department (though I never really thought JFK was handsome: his eyes were small and squinty, and I never went for redheads. . . )
It may be trivial, but if it’s to our advantage, I’m happy for it.
Oh, the link for that study:
http://phys.org/news/2011-07-low-information-voters-swayed-candidates.html
Just read the essay: marvelous.
And I note that Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper, said he never looked like a teenager, even when he Was one — he’d almost given up on getting a lead role because he looks like a man [not an androgynous type]. And that “type,” a recognizably adult male, has not been in vogue in show business for quite a while.
But now? Men are In.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8rPXR3YlpE
“Obama would do well to respect that ache, rather than risk invoking it.”
Obama knows nothing of that ache nor do his followers who relish Pigford, Holder, food stamps, unemployment checks, AFDC, AA, the war on poverty, college campuses, Europe, and basically, anything that provides benefits without effort or work.
So, Obama knows the ache is not his friend and cannot be his friend and he has abandoned the attempt to those who feel that ache. He will mock that ache, marginalize that ache, and live or die by the guess that that ache is a minority ache.
All polls have to be taken with a grain of salt, and its way too early to pay much attention to them, but this poll reflects what I hear in my Iowa college town:
http://tinyurl.com/3zjx4qt
Romney has been successful in a field where it was easy to measure success or failure…did the company make a profit and grow or not, based on the audited financial results. He knows how to focus on achieving a goal.
His goal now is to get elected president. His campaign team seems to be smart about how to achieve his goal and aren’t interested in how much certain groups (such as ultra-conservatives or ultra-liberals) love or hate him.
I think his approach against Obama is spot on. When the Dems bring up some idiotic meme, he just smiles and laughs at their silliness and gets right back on the theme of his campaign…Obama’s crappy record, the need for jobs, and the need to reduce the debt.
He’s being careful not to alienate independents and even is careful not to insult independents and some liberals who voted for Obama in 2008 by implying they were stupid to do so. That would just make them mad and make them want to vote for Obama again.
Instead he says things like “He’s a nice guy (implying that I can see why you might have liked him and voted for him) but he’s in over his head.”
I think Romney has a damned good chance at whipping these adolescents.
Let’s go find some hippies and start some whippin now. C’mon, haven’t you dreamed about it? They start their loud mouth bitchin and you dream of punchilng em straight in their fat face then you stomp on their foot and knee them in the nuts. I call this the top, bottom, and everything in between. If they ever protest again, God bless em. This is the Chicago way, the Obama way, and the proper response when authority has become to feminized to protect its citizens. It’s actually a better response than buying guns, although I agree with that, because this response is public and should be communal. If the police and our justice department, whom we hire and pay to enforce our law, won’t do that, doesn’t our Declaration of Independence acknowledge that the basic right of self defense against tryanny demands defiance and violence. It matters not whether it is state sanctioned because a state can never violate God given rights of life, liberty and property.
Amen.
“Let’s go find some hippies and start some whippin now. C’mon, haven’t you dreamed about it?”
No, Curtis, I haven’t dreamed about it. I wasn’t raised to start fights over what someone says. I was raised to fight when someone starts a real, physical fight and to do whatever it takes to remain standing.
The world is filled with many ignorant people and some truly stupid people who say ignorant and stupid things. I don’t want to stomp on them. I want to live in a society where they are not allowed to vote because they are ignorant and stupid. I want to live in a society where they truly suffer for the consequences of their actions/choices.
“.. doesn’t our Declaration of Independence acknowledge that the basic right of self defense against tryanny demands defiance and violence. It matters not whether it is state sanctioned because a state can never violate God given rights of life, liberty and property.”
Ignorant and stupid people are not the tyrants, they are the lackeys and cannon fodder of wannabe totalitarians. And, as a piece of friendly advise, I suggest that before you start your revolution you should make sure you have the wisdom of Jefferson and Madison, and the stamina of Washington.
😉
Good advice and well taken.
Well do you mention the stamina of Washington, a stamina not well known or credited, but a stamina without which this country would not have been born. I am hoping that Romney is that category and I am believing that he is.
Still, I wonder, what fire must have burned in Washington’s heart. Was it his love of Virginia and the country he surveyed, or was it the callous and cold rejection of him as a colonial? He is the central mystery. Most say it is Jefferson, but I say not. It is Washington and his hidden ambitions and hatreds of those who rejected his service, offerred so idealistically and heroically, when young, and given such short shrift.
He was rejected and in his rejection, founded a new country that accepted him, and then, some 200 years later, rejected him again. It is because the enigma and mystery that is man is less capable of definition than a country.
But I do appreciate the check on aggression. If I be Tom Paine, you be Franklin.
If you spend any time on youtube reading comments you’ll notice a ground swell of young people (who can’t spell, thanks to govt education) making note of the quality difference in music before PC indoctrination gripped the country.
What they really detect is how much more creative and vibrant a society is when the culture rises out of the folk. The whole phenomenon of amoral progressive control freaks applying peer pressure dynamics in defining what’s hip and acceptable, should have never been.
Curtis – we should have an ale somewhere close – say South Gary. I’m sure we’d get along. We can talk about things like using my identity. It will be a blast.
The Kodak Carousel. I still have one, filled with now fading slides. Our family spent many a pleasant time viewing the slides of our camping trips, our moves, our celebrations, our life. Yes, it was a time machine. Travel back to those happy days of yore. Now the slides are all on a CD. Watching them on the computer isn’t quite like sitting in the darkened living room and projecting them on the screen. The slides evoke a magical time. A time that can never be regained. We were young and vital. Life was an adventure. The future held endless possibilities. Men did the fighting and most of the earning. Women kept things together and nurtured children. The Federal government was mostly involved in defending the country. The military was much bigger and more in evidence than today. Education was still a local issue, and welfare meant churches and charities helping on a local level.
Oops, sorry, the time machine had me there for an instant. We can’t go back, but maybe we can go forward to something better. Romney may be retro enough to move us in that direction.