Posted on 02/25/2012 4:56:33 AM PST by jimbo123
Mitt Romney set out Friday to deliver a sweeping and sober vision for how to revive the economy in a major policy speech. In the end, he delivered something else: an unintended lesson about how poor visuals and errant words can derail a candidate's message.
In an unusual choice, Romney gave his speech at Ford Field, a 65,000-seat indoor football stadium. The speech appeared perfectly normal to the television audience. The audience of about 1,200 people filled the screen as they applauded.
But that is not all that matters in the age of Twitter and the Internet. Before Romney had uttered a word, reporters were posting pictures showing the stadium from every angle — almost empty, except for chairs on the turf, near the 20-yard line.
On the Web, a storyline began to take hold that undercut Romney's words: big speech, tiny crowd.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Leftist tactics my ass. Its equal treatment.
Whine about it all you want, you know Obama and any other RINO candidate would get the exact same treatment from FReepers.
Leni
Wanna bet that "reporters" would have stuck to the White House approved shots if a Democrat had spoken here?
Romney didn't pick the venue, the Detroit Economic Club paid for this. Yet Romney gets pummeled everywhere.
Maybe Team Romney should blame George W Bush for the stadium debacle.
A couple of greek columns here and there and I think he could have pulled it off....
“Detroit Economic Club”
Now that’s an oxymoron.
I am all for this, but let’s be honest: this happens to Obama, too...but the media doesn’t focus on it. Only on Republicans will this be reported when it happens.
The only similar picture I recall was from a few years ago. Cindy Sheehan, that woman who was praised by the media for hating Bush, held a protest event. Some conservative blog (maybe the people at the Weekly Standard? I don’t remember) published a “wide shot” of the event. For every “average citizen” in attendance, there were probably 8 or 9 “journalists”.
And many times Santorum was lauded for his approach in Iowa: speaking to even two or three people at a time, regardless of the venue.
Can you help me out? I think I've missed something about the trees comment. Other than just being a dumb statement, is this in reference to something else, a different joke from elsewhere?
They should have promised a free rock concert along with
Mitt Romney: “Michigan’s Trees are Just the Right Height”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/2848349/posts
The odd thing is that it sounds like he went with the same bizarre comments last night.
I've seen better speeches given by our 5th graders running for student council!
Oh BS and I’m not whining about it, I am disgusted with the whole thing.
It’s not equal treatment, it’s fabricating shit out of nothing. Romney did not set up the venue, but feel free to go left on him.
Have never been Romney supporter, but if you look close enough at the others, they ARE RINOs too, I.E. professional politicians.
? - I don't understand the point. If those rooms are for events etc. they were probably booked too. It was a Detroit Economic Club event and they moved it at the last minute to provide more room. In fact they may very well have originally scheduled it for one of the smaller rooms.
Again, it was the Detroit Economic Club that set up the event and paid for the room. If it had been Obama the media would not have mentioned it.
Note that Ford Field is a regular venue for the Detroit Economic Club meetings:
http://www.econclub.org/Meetings/VenueInformation.aspx
Savvy campaign operatives know how devastating empty chairs at a rally are to the campaign’s image. Years ago I had a business seminar scheduled in Mount Pleasant, Michigan in a hotel meeting room that, in a U-shapaed set, would comfortably hold about 25, the size of group expected. A couple of days before the meeting the hotel event coordinator called and asked if I would mind being moved to another much larger meeting room; she said they would put up screens so we didn’t look lost in the grand ballroom. I didn’t mind, and agreed. On the day of the function, I wandered by the meeting room I had originally booked and saw that it was set up with a podium up front and about fifty chairs. Some time later, a crowd started gathering and then Steve Forbes made his entrance; every chair was filled and the crowd spilled out into the hallway.
I wandered by on a break and asked one of the campaign flaks why they had insisted on the smaller room when the room I was switched into would have much more comfortably held the group with room to spare.
“Are you kidding me?”, the guy asked. “This is exactly the optics we wanted. We originally had your room booked but when we realized that the crowd would be a lot smaller than we expected we asked to hotel to switch us to a smaller room so the rally would be SRO.”
Sure enough, on the evening news that night the infobabe noted that Forbes had held a rally in a “packed meeting room with frustrated boosters spilling out into the hallway”. Had the meeting been in the ballroom, the newscast would have instead noted that Forbes had a “sparsely attended rally today at the Holiday Inn in Mount Pleasant”.
Optics matter.
Continuation of “its all W’s fault” will play from O’RomneyCare supporters, for sure.
I don't know SE Michigan but come on, we're talking about Detroit, right? I live in a Kansas city of about 60,000 and off the top of my head, I can think of 5-6 auditoriums or churches that would accommodate a crowd of that size. If I included outdoor sites, I could double that number. How many universities with large auditoriums are there in the Detroit area?
The Romney people dropped the ball on this one, regardless of who actually set up the event, them or the Detroit Economic Club. Rule #1 of public campaign events - book a venue that is too small so you can have an overflow crowd. Overflow crowds imply overwhelming popularity.
My point is to mock Mittens. Period. I hate the guy.
And my beef with Romney has more to do with what he did to Palin than his moderate viewpoints.
Mitt may seem like a goofy harmless rich kid. But behind the scenes, the Romney team is vicious (just ask Newt). They alone took out Sarah Palin. They were the ones who for two years planted the stories, worked behind scenes, trashed Palin as ‘unnamed sources’ etc.
They thought with her gone that it was a free ride to the nomination. Wrong.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.