Behind the Ad: Gingrich assails Romney's character
By Richard K. Barry
Who: Newt Gingrich attacks Mitt Romney
Where: Florida
What's going on: There have been so many twists and turns to the GOP presidential nomination process that I'm not quite ready to say it's over. Polls in Florida are still settling and I suppose it's still possible Gingrich could pull it out and keep this thing going for a while longer. He certainly seems to be thinking that way, based on his most recent ad airing in Florida.
The money line is this: "What kind of man would mislead, distort and deceive just to win an election. This man would: Mitt Romney."
It begins with this comment by Governor Mike Huckabee: "If a man's dishonest to get a job, he'll be dishonest on the job."
Wow. Not that it hasn't been personal before this, but now it's really getting personal. I still think Romney wins the nomination, but attack ads like this that impugn Romney's reputation as a true conservative are going to have an impact once Romney finally emerges as the candidate.
In part this is the stuff professionals like to call voter suppression. In other words, even if Romney wins the nomination, the feeling that he can't be trusted may well make it less likely that Tea Party or other hard-core right wingers will bother to come out and vote for him. They won't vote for Obama, of course, they just won't vote.
It's pretty effective stuff.
And, among swing voter, repeating over and over that Romney will say whatever it takes to get elected is not going to make him an attractive candidate. As I've said many times, I just think Mitt Romney is a lousy politician, that he doesn't understand how it's done, doesn't understand that voters need to trust the person they vote for, need to believe that the candidate stands for something.
This ad feeds into the feeling growing numbers of people have that Romney is a fraud, that the only thing he stands for is winning because rich privileged people like him, he'd like us to believe, ought to be running the country anyway. Everything else for a guy like Mitt is background noise.
Newt Gingrich doesn't care about the success of the Republican Party. This is scorched earth politics at its best and, as a Democrat, I love it. More of this please.
Who: Newt Gingrich attacks Mitt Romney
Where: Florida
What's going on: There have been so many twists and turns to the GOP presidential nomination process that I'm not quite ready to say it's over. Polls in Florida are still settling and I suppose it's still possible Gingrich could pull it out and keep this thing going for a while longer. He certainly seems to be thinking that way, based on his most recent ad airing in Florida.
The money line is this: "What kind of man would mislead, distort and deceive just to win an election. This man would: Mitt Romney."
It begins with this comment by Governor Mike Huckabee: "If a man's dishonest to get a job, he'll be dishonest on the job."
Wow. Not that it hasn't been personal before this, but now it's really getting personal. I still think Romney wins the nomination, but attack ads like this that impugn Romney's reputation as a true conservative are going to have an impact once Romney finally emerges as the candidate.
In part this is the stuff professionals like to call voter suppression. In other words, even if Romney wins the nomination, the feeling that he can't be trusted may well make it less likely that Tea Party or other hard-core right wingers will bother to come out and vote for him. They won't vote for Obama, of course, they just won't vote.
It's pretty effective stuff.
And, among swing voter, repeating over and over that Romney will say whatever it takes to get elected is not going to make him an attractive candidate. As I've said many times, I just think Mitt Romney is a lousy politician, that he doesn't understand how it's done, doesn't understand that voters need to trust the person they vote for, need to believe that the candidate stands for something.
This ad feeds into the feeling growing numbers of people have that Romney is a fraud, that the only thing he stands for is winning because rich privileged people like him, he'd like us to believe, ought to be running the country anyway. Everything else for a guy like Mitt is background noise.
Newt Gingrich doesn't care about the success of the Republican Party. This is scorched earth politics at its best and, as a Democrat, I love it. More of this please.
Labels: Behind the Ad, Mitt Rommey, Newt Gingrich
posted by Richard K. Barry at
3:21 PM
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