I will start with the standard disclaimer that Mitt wasn’t my horse in the primary race. Not that I was invested very much in any of them. However, Mitt is all we have now.
And my decision to vote for him is simple: he doesn’t hate America. If you think that Obama doesn’t, you haven’t been awake the last four years.
I think if we stay awake and vigilant and pour TEA into his boots, Mitt still won’t fix everything financially, but he might put us in the road to solvency and he might very well end up being one of our great presidents.
He already is one of our great campaigners.
What? Gaffes? Too quiet? What?
Are all of you completely stupid or do you relish echoing the leftist media?
Yeah, I’ve been reading you around the net, and I keep scratching my head and wondering what world you’re living in.
Let me put it to you in the absolutely clearest way I can: Mitt Romney is running the best campaign anyone could run under the circumstances.
The circumstances are as follows: the media will not report anything he does unless they think it can be used against him. They’re not in fact reporters, they are, pace Professor Reynolds “Democratic Operatives With Bylines.”
Hence, though Romney and Ryan are crisscrossing the nation, meeting with real citizens, you never hear about it. The media breathlessly cover Obama’s appearances and no it’s not because he’s president. They did the same thing in 08. But Romney and Ryan move in a cone of silence. The only time that cone of silence is broken is when the media thinks Romney has made a gaffe. And the fact that most of those are made up tells you he’s an excellent campaigner.
If you haven’t figured out yet that the same media that would publicize a recording taped at a private function because they thought it hurt Mitt, MUST have ringers in every Romney/Ryan crowd taking recordings and MUST have reporters sifting through those to find something “incriminating” then you aren’t thinking.
The fact that with all that they’ve assembled a weak brew of “43%” (which they had to take out of context to make it seem damning) “Libya statement” (which is only a gaffe if you believe that the opposition can never criticize the administration, which must be a new standard for conservatives only) “Windows of airplane don’t open” (an obvious joke and told as such) and “he had them shout Romney/Ryan when they were shouting Ryan” (a captioned video taken from a lefty blogger’s site and disproven by other recordings of the occasion [see Ace of Spades.] the crowd was in fact screaming Romney and Romney – graciously – tried to get them to shout Romney/Ryan.) shows you what a magnificent campaigner Romney is.
He knows given half a chance, the media will demonize him, make him sound like a madman or otherwise make him politically toxic. And he has given them ALMOST nothing. Certainly not enough to give him or Ryan the Palin treatment.
So all of you out there suggesting he get angry or he go on the attack – trust the man. He might seem like he’s silent, but you know, he’s been visiting CO and the number of signs on lawns and the number of bumperstickers is growing. I never even saw one of McCain in my neighborhood in 08. (We’d have put one up the last week, but the campaign was out of signs.) Now the number of Romney signs is probably a little higher than the one of Obama signs. (Neither are very high, mind.)
And meanwhile the media has nothing to spin, to demonize Romney enough that it will wake up the Dems and get them to the polls. The fact that they’re targeting women (and telling them to vote like their ladyparts depend on it! Do we have a ringer in the Obama campaign? Professor Reynolds, what have you wrought?) with the same old abortion pap means that whatever the – extremely flawed and low-response – polls say, Obama is still trying to secure a base that should have been secure. Which means the race is very, very close or Mitt is ahead. (Shameful that in a country with a seeming free press, we should have to read tea leaves.)
And the fact they’re resorting to accusations that Romney has never hugged his garbage-man (Have you hugged your garbage collector today?) means they’re reaching and they’re desperate for anything that will allow them to control the narrative.
Don’t let them control the narrative.
Your job is not to jog the man’s elbow. Remember that after the debate, when the media will do their best to spin it as Romney saying crazy stuff, while Obama is a rock of sanity NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS.
There is no way Romney could behave, there is nothing he could say that would convince the media to declare him the winner, and if you accept the media narrative, you’ll only be conceding defeat. Roger L. Simon’s article about the media coup d’etat was right. But he didn’t tell it all. Before the regime is solidified, there is something ordinary citizens can do. There is civil disobedience. I will write more about this in another article today – for now, for NOW I just want you to remember this: Mitt is an amazing campaigner and you will NOT jog his elbow.
Because the media is what it is, you’re not getting a true picture of his efforts. All you’re getting is what the media wants you to see. Which means you’re trying to back-seat-drive a campaign on insufficient and flawed information.
The only time I almost had a fatal crash was when I was driving in a snow storm, at night, with both of my kids – 7 and 3 – in the backseat, and they kept shouting what I should do “go faster,” “go slower” “watch for that car.” In those conditions, I needed my whole concentration and their – mostly irrelevant – questions, comments and suggestions made me lose that, so that I almost slid off the mountain road.
When I got the car under control, I stopped and told them, “Not one more peep from you. Don’t make me come back there.”
I’m now telling all of you “Don’t make me come back there.” (Peep all you want to, but take the war to the other side instead of your own.)
The circular firing squad I’ve been reading at conservative sites “he’s not trying” and “he’s not attacking” and “Reagan was better” (arguably true, but Reagan was an actor and knew how hot to work the camera even in hostile hands) and “I’m going to take my vote and go home” is EXACTLY what the left wants.
If you want to solidify the Media Coup D’Etat, carry on.
If not, shut up and trust the man driving the campaign.
Mitt Romney is running the best campaign anyone could run under the circumstances.
That I doubt exceedingly, but it doesn’t have to be the best campaign, it just has to be good enough, and I hope it is. Also, we’ll never know, so saying it is or isn’t is just beating your gums.
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But that brings us to the debate tonight, and we’ll see how optimal things are, which is why I came in to post a thought, if it were me up there I think I would belittle Obama by not even talking about him, talking about the Democrats and taxes and how a vote for Obama is a vote for all that bad stuff. Because it’s true, Obama is NOT the Democratic congress, he is just a figurehead for a zombie army eating the brains of the living. Vote for life, vote Republican.
It’s true. Obama could step up tonight, take a dump on the podium and walk away and the legacy media would be on fire tomorrow telling us that it was brilliant (and we’re just too unsophisticated to understand).
Well said! No doubt, prezboy will do just that!
Mr. Trouble never hangs around
When he hears this mighty sound:
“Here I come to save the day!”
That means that Obama, is on the way!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGx94VPb8V8
True. They’ve been trying to tell us how well dressed our Emperor with no Clothes has been for the past four years. Obama could start shooting people at random and they’d try to convince us that the victims had it coming and BTW, isn’t Obama a great shot!
I don’t understand why Romney even agreed to these debates under these circumstances.
Still, all he has to do IMO is show up and not say anything that scares the sacred “undecided” voters.
Other than those specific voters, everyone else has already decided who they are voting for and aren’t changing their minds no matter what happens in the debates.
The mass media is really nothing but Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda and Lies. Nonetheless, they have been very good at burying Obama’s gaffes and highlighting Romney’s truths as if a gaffe. And it seems to be working. Rasmussen has O leading Romney by 2; within the margin of error but worrisome. And that is so even in the face of what happened in Libya and Egypt, the rotten economy and Obama’s trashing of the Constitution. We can only hope there is a Dinkins effect going on here.
Agree with your excellent analysis, Sarah, and eagerly await your “civil disobedience” piece.
It’s been abundantly clear from the get-go that, except for the pathetically contrived putative “gaffes,” the apparent success of which is proof-positive that we are dealing with endemic brain damage in the general population because we didn’t get the lead out of the gasoline soon enough and are reaping the results of an urban version of kwashiorkor, the msm has R & R under a total news black-out, just as they do stories about flash mobs, innocent Jews being slaughtered by Palestinians, and dozens of other items that ought to be on front pages above the fold all over the country but are nowhere to be found. The silence is thundering. They shouldn’t survive it, and I suspect they will not.
Amen and pass the ammunition! No doubt some lefty knucklehead will call that hate speech, but I feel about that like Rhett Butler told Scarlet.
I couldn’t agree more, Ms. Hoyt. The question for all the naysayers is this – do you love America and capitalism, or do you hate them? If it is the former, work the side of right, and get out and vote. If it is the latter stay home or vote for the RBC in the White House.
Excellent article, excellent advice.
I, too, have been noticing the gradually growing crop of signs. So far, there’s not one presidential candidate sign in my immediate neighborhood. Not one. (A neighbor kept a 2008 Obama-Biden sign in the yard until it disintegrated 18 months later. The only sign this year says “For Sale.”)
However, on some nearby, higher-traffic routes, I counted two Romney-Ryan signs for every one Obama-Biden sign. (Don’t get too excited: It was literally 2 R-R signs and 1 O-B sign, total.)
I’m also seeing something new this year, signs like “Save the Republic – Vote” and “Vote to Protect Religious Freedom.”
Interesting. Signs o’ the times.
Good God Gurdy, when she said civil disobedience I got a heart flutter.
I have been turning towards Romney since late winter, not where I satrted, when convincing stories were explaining the constraints put on the man and that he puts on himself. I think we might have a closet, great president, too.
The debate represents a dangerous moment for the media where they have to allow Romney a national venue and can lose it for Obama by overplaying their hand. Will the media react to a strong Romney performance in the way a popular rendition of the devil denied would react? Will they go mad?
I agree. The question is, how can we — bloggers and others — get the message out to the true believers who, at most, watch a bit of fluff on television and read Librul publications. I try both snark and serious stuff and it does not seem to matter which. It is still preaching only to the choir. I’m delighted that they seem to agree, but they aren’t our problem.
I am afraid that’s pretty much what we are all doing. How can “low information voters” who don’t care about much beyond what’s in it for them, and the Librul true believers who encourage them, be reached and maybe, just maybe, be convinced? Have we reached a point beyond which that is no longer possible.
I just posted a semi-response to this question at my own blog, asking the same question but at greater length. I posted it prior to tonight’s debate in the hope that I may be wrong about the problem.
Suppose the old or legecy media is waging a clandestine war against the new media. Suppose that is the strategic objective and not to get Obama elected. If they can claim responsibility for his election they may demand, as payback, severe changes in the way New Media functions; defenestrate it, if they can. Causing all kinds of barriers to entry to be erected for their protection.
They could be engineering a palace coup and strting themselves up to becoming the primary palace guards.
That hadn’t occurred to me before.
I agree with Sarah. Mitt is very disciplined. During the Republican primaries he did the same thing. Steady, unflappable, disciplined. Running against Obama he can’t lose his cool, not even once. The media is every bit as bad as Sarah has portrayed.
Instead, ask yourself this:
What can I do to help the Romney campaign and defeat the most dangerous president in American history?
“And the fact they’re resorting to accusations that Romney has never hugged his garbage-man (Have you hugged your garbage collector today?) means they’re reaching and they’re desperate for anything that will allow them to control the narrative.”
Please update — he HAS hugged his garbage man…
” Mitt Romney is running the best campaign anyone could run under the circumstances.”
That is just true. Great campaigners change the circumstances. That’s why they are great.
Just not true, that is.
I have no great beef with Romney’s campaign, given that Mitt Romney is the candidate that is the material to be worked with. That doesn’t mean a better job couldn’t be done given “the circumstances” as the one constant, because it just is not true.
Interesting. What would you have Governor Romney do that he hasn’t already done or is not doing now?
Jeez Louise, I think I must be the only person on Earth who’s been for Romney from the beginning (or, at least, since Perry’s implosion).
The more you find out about him, the more impressive he is. This guy has been a saint in his private dealings and a success in his public dealings. I’m glad Sarah used the right word here, too: Discipline. The very thing I’ve noticed, too. The guy has been the Omnidroid 2000 from the start: a learning machine that notes his opponents mistakes, learns from them, re-calibrates, and then delivers the appropriate counter-attack. Just like the Omnidroid, the only thing that can destroy Mitt is, in fact, Mitt.
As Sarah has also noted, if there was something the media could nail him on, they would.* He’s given them very thin gruel to work with (can you imagine if it was Gingrich, Santorum, or Paul right now? Yeesh.). As it is, the best they can do is establish a blackout. I still run into all sorts of people who ask “what does he stand for”? They don’t even know about his five-point plan that he’s been touting for months BECAUSE THE MEDIA ISN’T BROADCASTING IT. All they put out there are any “gaffes” or “ugly attacks” and they spin them as such…and people fall for it unless they’re paying very close attention (clue: they aren’t).
Romney knows the media is playing this game and he’s not throwing red meat out there because he knows what the media will do with it: distort and amplify to 120 dB. He’s working the undecided voter -and let me tell ya, that’s extremely difficult in this environment. Especially one where the Right buys into the MSM narrative even as they’re griping about it.
Does he lack flash? Sure. Are we grown-ups here, or what? Do we want another celebrity President? I was watching (not by choice) Dancing with the Stars the other night and I realized that the vast majority of America is more excited to vote for those folks in spite of their country being at stake on November 6th. Pure lunacy driven by the MSM narrative. Still, no doubt many of you long for the Second Coming of Reagan. Guess what? We didn’t have that this year. What we do have is a guy who will indeed make a good** President and who is leaps and bounds better than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
* As an aside, isn’t it great to have a candidate with no skeletons in the closet? So glad I don’t have to listen to drivel about ex-wives, drunk driving, etc.
** I’m hedging here – I think he’ll be great. If he wins, he’ll go down in the history books as the man who pulled us back from the brink and saved the Republic. Just my $0.02.