Posted on 07/17/2007 6:41:56 AM PDT by RightPhalanx
Politico's Jonathan Martin reports on Mitt Romney's newest campaign commercial, "Ocean." The new ad comes amid many reports of how much money Romney and all the other campaigns are spending. The breathlessness of the reporting doesn't allow the key questions to be asked: "What are the candidates getting for their dollars?" and "Is the campaign hitting its targets in contributions and expenditures?" In Romney's case we know he's patiently built a small lead in Iowa and New Hampshire, and from "Ocean" we get evidence that he's implementing a new step in a carefully conceived plan and doing so with the sort of innovative appeal that those who have observed his business life expected from the first day of the campaign.
"Ocean" is interesting on a number of levels. First, its substance --a concern for the degraded culture in which American children grow up-- is powerful, and not just for Republican primary voters, but for all parents and people who love kids. Second, its visual approach is unique for the cycle. Over the decades the presidential television spot has become more and more direct, and less and less interesting. "Ocean's" got a chance at being memorable in the way very very few ads turn out to be. Finally, the ad reminds people that among Romney's achievements is a wonderful family, and that he truly does believe the words he speaks.
The ad appears two days before Romney speaks at the Lincoln Day Dinner in El Paso County, Colorado. El Paso County is home to, among other groups, James Dobson's Focus on the Family and Young Life, two of the region's many evangelical organizations. The message of "Ocean" is one that every evangelical can agree with and applaud. Martin speculates that "this ad is yet more evidence of Romney trying to 'close the deal' with social conservatives," but while it certainly helps remind conservative voters of Romney's core values, I expect this theme to remain front and center throughout the general campaign if Romney is the nominee. The argument about the culture's decline and its impact on children is one that media elites regularly hoot at but which always resonates with soccer moms and coaching dads. Romney's putting out a notice that this will be an issue for his campaign, and seeing their agenda as part of the roll out of Romney's agenda is very reassuring to many social conservatives.
As is the sense that this campaign has a plan. Visit the Romney website if you haven't done so recently. Along with Rudy's, Hillary's and Obama's, it is quite obviously the product of a campaign that understands the virtual campaign as central to success in 2008. (Fred Thompson's unofficial campaign has a clunky site that underscores the disadvantage of not being a full fledged candidate in a race that has been full fledged since January.) A presidential primary campaign is not a bus ride with reporters along or a series of press conferences, but a short-lived $100 million dollar sprint which is already about half over. Iowa voters caucus on Monday, January 14, 2008 and by midnight on Super Duper Tuesday, February 5, both parties will have their nominees. To get to the nomination, the candidates have to have built and implemented a complex and comprehensive plan, and Romney's team gives every indication of having done just that. When Romney loaned himself $6.5 million in Q2, I assumed it was because that's what the plan called for to have met its goals, and that his personal financial commitment is to assure that the plan is implemented at every stage. Reviewing the ruins of the McCain campaign and you read accounts of successive blueprints drawn up and torn up in a sort of a carnival of lousy planning. (Here's another article from Martin on that subject.) All you hear coming out of Team Romney is the message, from the candidate or his many surrrogates. That's the sound of a campaign running on all its cylinders.
Last week a friend in Colorado, a very successful businessman long active in Rocky Mountain politics, e-mailed me that after close study he was going to send money to Romney as the best chance the GOP had in 2008. I suspect that is happening again and again as the Fred boomlet begins to flatten against the realities of what is necessary in 2008 --energy and extraordinary discipline. The Rudy-Romney race is far from over, and Thompson still could show the sort of planning a campaign in the new millennium requires, but the time for the Tennessee senator to get in and get organized is very short.
Why? Consider that when Florida changed its primary to January 29, in reality it announced that absentee ballots would be available long before that, and that "early voting" in the Sunshine State would get underway on January 15 --the day after the Iowa caucus results are in. California's absentee ballots will be available from early January forward, and 47% of the ballots cast in the last California primary --June, 2006-- were by absentee. Building an absentee ballot "chase" program is expensive, and all of those ballots in all of those states will be greatly impacted by the results in Iowa and New Hampshire, which increases the importance of those states beyond their already high value in the 2004 cycle.
All of which suggests that the strategic contributor --the donor who held back to see what happened early on and which candidate put together the best team and rolled out the most coherent plan while demonstrating in the early debates the stage presence and the early commercials the innovation that would be necessary to get to the main event-- might still pick Rudy on the basis of the national polls, but the donor who is really interested in making one contribution to the one candidate who will get the nomination and possibly the White House is looking very hard at the very professionally run Romney campaign.
~”I’m going to be a maverick on this thread and actually talk about the ad.”~
How -dare- you discuss the issue! You’re just trying to silence us!
Right! OTOH John F. Kennedy would have been a better president had he been a better Catholic. Richard Nixon would have been a better president had he been a better Friend. Harry S. Truman would have been a better president had he been a better Baptist. . . See a pattern here? Living the precepts of one's religion generally makes one a better person (Radical Islam excepted) and a better leader.
All that said, I agree. I wish Romney were a better Mormon. 'Course, I wish I were a better Mormon too.
Mitt may use this opportunity to express to voters "I'm just like you. I feel powerless sometimes against all this filth! But we can make a difference. Here's how..." This strategy will help make a connection with him and the moms and dads in this country who care about the influence of sex and violence, and it takes away the criticism that "he's too perfect". Hey, he's not perfect. But its not as if he was producing, directing, or starring in any of these movies! Now that would be something!
Are we talking about the same Mitt Romney, the guy who's "too perfect"? His family is "too perfect". We wish he had some major defects, so he could have that "Clinton connection" with average Americans: "Hey, Bubba is boffing his secretary just like I do!".
I think this argument fails to take into account that Mitt's ad is talking about children and the porn viewers at Marriot are adults. Apples and oranges.
It's not about legal, adult activity in the privacy of one's hotel room.
First things first. Let's fix the things we actually have some control over.
He's talking about limiting easy access to porn on the kids' home computers and such. He's talking about parents taking more responsibility for what their children are viewing on the computer, TV and at the movies. He's talking about what goes on within the walls of the American home.
I know that my Mormon friends monitor their children's activity much more closely than other people I know. It is not easy. It's hard to stay on top of it, but it can be done. I know that there are companies that provide movie rentals with all the sex, violence and profanity removed so that kids can view the movies their friends are watching without being exposed to the filth.
I think parents have let their guard down. More and more anything goes for the kids. I see it in what the moms let their daughters wear and what the dads let the their sons watch.
Romney's ad is a reminder that we are all in this together and that we have a job to do. American parents can (and should) do a better job. He's willing to raise the bar and take a leadership role on this issue.
Beautiful ad.
That is an unfair charge too. This is not a "newfound enthusiam." Remember, he fought the 85% liberal legislature in Massachusetts for the past 4 years in the name of family values and protecting children:
He supported parental notification laws and opposed efforts to weaken parental involvement
He fought to promote abstinence education in public school classrooms with a program offered by faith-based Boston group Healthy Futures to middle school students.
Romney vetoed the bill providing state funding for human embryonic stem cell research
Romney vetoed a bill that provided for the "morning after pill" without a prescription because it is an abortifacient and would have been available to minors without parental notification and consent
He vetoed legislation which would have redefined Massachusetts longstanding definition of the beginning of human life from fertilization to implantation
Governor Romney demonstrated his commitment to school-choice by vetoing a bill that would have canceled funding for Massachusetts' charter-school program.
Romney's Pro-Family Record
LOL. You make some good points, but Mitt didn’t control the Marriot and he has no intention of the government controlling The Children. He’s talking about empowering parents and strengthening the American family.
It's not an issue of the board being powerful or powerless. It's an issue of board involvement. No board gets involved in such small matters. I don't know the specific case, but I highly doubt it was Omni's board that made the decision; it was most likely someone in management.
~”Personally, I’m sick of The Children. I think we should send The Children out to get jobs and someone should smack them up side of the head and tell them to shut the hell up, do their homework, and eat their vegetables and maybe they can play a few board games or read a wholesome fictional book, preferably classical literature, before going to bed early.”~
I must admit, that made me laugh. Careful about that whole “telling the truth” thing!
The porn industry=the "adult bookstore" down the street, the porn Web site, the "adult video" bought direct, or the "adult video" watched indirectly via cable, satellite or the local hotel room. All of the above are porn outlets in the porn industry. So it's not a matter of "controlling what adults do in their own hotel rooms." If the hotel industry/porn industry is the porn venue, then Mitt, by virtue of being a BoD member, has been overseeing the porn industry.
(And isn't it nice to know that 10% of the $ earned by Mr. Marriott from this enterprise thru the yrs has wound up in the LDS church?)
"Under Governor Romney's leadership, Massachusetts' fourth and eighth grade students ranked first in reading and tied for first in mathematics.
In 2004, Governor Romney helped ensure more students received a higher education by establishing the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship Program to reward the highest performing Massachusetts high school graduates with a four-year, tuition-free scholarship to state universities or colleges. In three years, more than 14,000 top-scoring high school seniors have been awarded these scholarships."
Governor Romney strongly supported a successful ballot initiative that replaced the state's bilingual program with English immersion. (Romney Vows to Protect English Immersion Law, May 1, 2003)
Governor Romney demonstrated his commitment to school-choice by vetoing a bill that would have canceled funding for Massachusetts' charter-school program. (Romney to Veto Charter School Moratorium, June 23, 2004)
Governor Romney: "At some point, I think America -- and, importantly, the minority communities -- are going to say, 'it's time to split with our friends, the unions and the Democratic Party, and put our kids first here.' Unequal educational opportunity is the civil rights issue of our time." (Tulsa World, March 7, 2006)
Wow, he is a multi-tasker -- "overseeing the porn industry" single-handedly, while saving the Olympics and making millions.
Is his support for the assault weapons ban and all that Reaganesque, too?
Or did I miss something?
And again, I would like to hear his answers, not yours, as nice and well-meaning as you probably are.
“If we get serious...” and then what? Is the current resident in the White House not serious about these issues? If Romney knows something, pony up.
The purpose of the ad was not, IMO to introduce him. It says nothing about who he is or what he’s done. It talks about specific things. Why is it too much to ask for specific answers?
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