Posted on 10/30/2012 9:49:20 AM PDT by nhwingut
Rendell: "Startling upset’ for Romney ‘a possibility’ in Pennsylvania"
When Governor Ed Rendell made these comments last week, he was clearly sending a desperate call to Chicago for help in the Keystone State. At the time, his comments were met with derision and scorn from the Obama High Command who were feeling secure in their own predictions of a landslide victory.
What a difference a few days makes. Not only has Minnesota has been moved to “Lean Dem” and the Obama Campaign is up in that state with a significant television buy, but the Chicago gurus have heeded Governor Rendell’s plea and are buying television in Pennsylvania and sending the Vice-President in to help prop up their flagging campaign.
With one week to go, and 96% of the vote on the table on Election Day in Pennsylvania, this expansion of the electoral map demonstrates that Governor Romney’s momentum has jumped containment from the usual target states and has spread to deeper blue states that Chicago never anticipated defending.
In 2007, then candidate Obama said he would accept the Presidential public financing and its attendant limits on spending. We all know he broke that pledge and went on to raise $745 million while Senator McCain kept his word and ran under the limits of public financing.
Governor Romney’s strong fundraising efforts have enabled our campaign to compete with the Obama effort on a level playing field, helping us shape the landscape for this Presidential election.
As a campaign, we will put more resources into the target states in the final week, than previous GOP campaigns have been able to do in the final 10 weeks. The Romney campaign has the resources to expand the map in ways that weren’t possible in past cycles (without reducing any effort in any other target state). After fully funding the paid media effort, the ground operations and the voter contact programs, Governor Romney’s message of bringing real recovery continues to resonate with voters, volunteers, and donors.
Pennsylvania presents a unique opportunity for the Romney campaign. Over the past few years we have seen Pennsylvania voting for a Republican senator and a Republican governor, and Republicans win control of the State House in addition to the State Senate. The western part of the Keystone State has become more conservative (and President Obama’s war on coal is very unpopular there), and Mitt Romney is more competitive in the voter-rich Philadelphia suburbs than any Republican nominee since 1988. This makes Pennsylvania a natural next step as we expand the playing field.
While the Obama campaign would like to wish it is 2008, the reality is that they are now forced to “play defense” in least six states (Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa and Wisconsin) that they once believed were “safe” Obama wins.
As the Romney-Ryan message continues to resonate and GOP momentum continues to build, we are adding Pennsylvania to the long list of states where we are expending significant resources in order to bring real recovery to the country, while continuing to implement and fund full-scale efforts in all the target states.
John McCain was the dumbest candidate the GOP ever nominated... and he chose an equally dumb running mate... who didn’t know how to run an effective campaign.
Mitt Romney is the opposite and he chose of the sharpest running mates in GOP history. He’s run an amazing campaign and after every one wrote him off for dead back in September, he mounted one of the most extraordinary political comebacks in American history.
His deserved win next week would be one for the history books!
This guy Beeson — I don’t know much about him but I like what I see so far.
Wonder if this could be a ‘head fake’.
Whenever I hear of something like this, I can’t help but to think of when Bush & Cheney went out to California, while also doing a media buy out there in the latter days of the 2000 race. Had the same time and resources been used in say....FLORIDA, we might have had a MUCH easier time of it. We shall see in this case. For the past several elections, PA always seems just barely close enough to lure the GOP into spending money, to no avail.
Two weeks ago Romney’s people un North Carolina went up there
PA Ping!
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If you see posts of interest to Pennsylvanians, please ping me.
Thanks!
Easy now you will be accused of PDS. Speaking of Palin, where has she been? Her cultists thought any candidate who did not kiss her ring and take campaign advice from her was doomed. Despite her having a recurrent gig on Greta as the resident member of the peanut gallery, she has been invisible. Nice lady, solid conservative, good Christian and thankfully humble and sees the big picture and knows that she has about 1/3 of the country that likes her, 1/3 who could care less and another 1/3 who hates her. I do think part of her appeal was married white guys who had some Freudian thing going on..."Oh you see her, she can rock those 6" heels and say the name Milton Freidman in a conversation."
The Romney team is making a serious financial commitment. The Keystone State is winnable and they have a great GOTV operation there.
All they have to do is win western PA and the vote-rich suburbs and they’ve got a prize no GOP presidential candidate has gained since 1988.
I believe the momentum in PA is with Romney!
In 2004 I knew the “Kerry landslide” exit polls were crap because I had carefully watched where the campiagns were going for a couple of weeks and I saw that Kerry was spending all his time defending territory Gore won in 2000 and Dubya was spending all his time trying to take those states away. Yet the media narrative, even on Fox, was that Dubya was in a supertight race and could only win if the Swiftees succeeded in making Kerry a mockery.
While I am concerned PA may be Lucy with the football again, if the media narrative matched reality Romney wouldn’t dare shift anyone to PA that he could be using in OH. But if the early voting and absentee data we’re seeing in Ohio means what it seems to mean, Ohio is won and staff can and should be shifted.
Obama is on defense and his only hope was that he could look like Captain Awesome while directing relief efforts after an East Coast Katrina. Sandy wasn’t even an Irene, much less a Katrina, and “Look, he can execute the basic duties of an office he’s held for four years” is not a closing argument that will help when 23 million people are looking for work.
This difference is this time the Rs are flush with money - both the Romney campaign and the Super PACs.
I really doubt they think they have PA, but if it’ll help divert some of attention and time from the Obama campaign and possibly help our Senate candidate (Smith), it’s a good idea.
The true battleground is still OH, VA, IA and WI.
That all said, I haven't given up on her totally. I would like to see her leave FoxNews and get back in the game. Get a talk show...run for senator or something. I don't think she's dumb but I do think she's wasting her talent and political viability at FoxNews.
This is someone who attended four different colleges, who quit half-way through her term as AK Governor and who couldn’t tell you why “Roe” is unconstitutional.
As for the guy at the head of the ticket, he never put up a fight for what mattered and told us we had nothing to fear from Obama. Even before the election was over, it was clear he didn’t like or trust his running mate.
No wonder the American people preferred Obama! One can say none of those things about Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney. They are definitely running to win!
PA could really be in play because of coal. I’d say that if there’s a head fake, it’s MN.
The important thing to watch, IMHO, will be campaign events in both locations. Who they send and how many people they speak to will tell us more than ad buys and memos.
BTW, let’s not forget Obama’s only hope is massive energy in the base. If he and the surrogates have to visit even a couple of more states in the last week to try and make that happen, their task becomes much, much harder.
Yes, Palin is staying out precisely because she is far more humble and far smarter than even her gOP critics give her credit for. She knew the media would be eager to make her the story.
Yes, Palin is staying out precisely because she is far more humble and far smarter than even her GOP critics give her credit for. She knew the media would be eager to make her the story.
Wouldn't surprise me if we never have a presidential candidate request matching funds again.
Money aside, Romney is running a great campaign and while most of us focus on the ad campaign, Romney also has a huge ground game in place that is going to yield some great results. I read an article earlier today that Romney is busing in volunteers from out of state to do door knocking in states where early voting is taking place.
They are actually by-passing households that they already know is voting Romney on Election Day and concentrating on the voters who are not super motivated to vote. In contrast, Obama's campaign is concentrating on people that they already know are going to vote their way. So Romney is piling up early votes with people that might otherwise have not voted and Obama is "shooting his wad" now just trying to keep up with Romney. On Election Day itself, the hard-core Romney voters are simply going to overwhelm the remaining Obama voters at the polling places. Think Chik-Fil-A on a much larger scale.
Give Romney and the GOP a lot of credit this year. They have managed to survive a barrage of negative advertisements all summer long by the Obama campaign in which they could not effectively respond (unlike Obama, they had to spend most of their pre-general election money on the primaries) and they had the mainstream media not only not on their side but actively supporting their opponent. Yet when the general election came around, they were able to mount a formidable campaign nonetheless both in the airwaves and on the ground.
I agree with you completely...I think she’d be great at Interior or Energy, but if not she should consider the Senate. Begich is up in 2014 and Murkowski in 2016.
I think she’s trying not to upstage the candidate, which is good.
That said, yeah, I don’t think Fox has been a great venue for her. She’s at her best giving barnburner speeches, lighting up the base, and sticking a rhetorical switchblade into leftist stupidity when every one else is to afraid to do it. And I still hope she runs someday because I think she’s tough and has a good head on her shoulders.
Personally I think a national radio talk show would be perfect for her. She'd give Hannity a run for his money. Also, having a talk show would help her learn to think quicker on her feet and get her better informed on all the issues. I think this is how Herman Cain was able to jump to front-runner status last fall when she decided not to run. Cain had a radio talk show for years and it showed. He was sharp as a tack with respect to speaking extemporaneously. If he didn't have the bimbo eruptions, he would have been a contender. Just wish he had laid off on the 9-9-9 schtick. That was making him a laughingstock.
IMHO it is the absentee ballot data that has the Dems alarmed. In 2008 46,000 Dems and 47,000 GOP voters returned absentee ballots/early voting. In 2012 37000 Dems and 57000 GOP returned absentee ballots/early voting. If I were a Dem this is a very bad precursor to Nov 6 in PA. No to Keystone Pipeline and anti coal/anti fracking were bad decisions made by Obama. Now it is going to come back and haunt him in 2012.
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