"There's a Sense That We Let Mitt Romney Down"

Mitt Romney's top campaign aides conducted a conference call with conservative journalists this afternoon, during which they assessed the damage from Tuesday's electoral loss. The participants included campaign manager Matt Rhoades, political director Rich Beeson, polling director Neil Newhouse and digital director Zac Moffatt. A few notes from the call:

Matt Rhoades, on the overall race: "No campaign is perfect, and we certainly made our share of mistakes." On Paul Ryan: "He has come away from this race with a very bright future before him."

Rich Beeson, on the campaign's strategy: "We won independents and held the base. We thought that would be a winning combination." Given the heavily Democratic electorate, it was not. On Boston's computerized 'ORCA' ground game tracking system: "This was the first time we'd ever done anything like [ORCA] on that grand a scale. We got data from 91% of precincts across the country," he said, noting that the program will help Republicans track and predict voting behavior in the future. As for reports that the system crashed on election day, Beeson conceded that there were significant technical issues: "There were glitches in the system, I don't want to gloss over that. We were able to beta test it, but not at the volume of data we needed." He said the program thought it had been hacked, which triggered a laborious process of rebooting the whole system with new passwords.

Neil Newhouse, on the outcome: "It didn't end up like we'd hoped for and expected (more on the "expected" part later). [The Obama campaign] ran a very small campaign in a very big way." Newhouse said the opposition effectively targeted specific demos in their coalition, using contraceptives, DREAM Act waivers, and student loan policies to entice key elements of their base to show up and vote. They "pretty damn well succeeded" at turning out their voters, he concluded. As an example, Newhouse pointed out that in Ohio, 160,000 more African Americans voted in 2012 than in 2008. Obama's margin of victory in the state was roughly 100,000. On the other hand, "we had fewer white voters turn out [nationwide] in this election than in 2008. The question we have to ask ourselves is 'how did that happen?'"

Newhouse, on Romney's strengths: In exit polling, voters were asked about four metrics of leadership. Romney beat Obama on the questions of (a) which candidate has a positive vision for the country, (b) which candidate shares "my values," and (c) which candidate is a "strong leader." Despite batting .750, Romney got crushed by approximately 60 points on the question of which candidate "cares about people like me." This suggests that the Obama campaign's early "kill Romney" approach -- painting the former governor and CEO as an out-of-touch, uber-wealthy, outsourcing robber barron -- worked. It also suggests that personal connection and relatability are now more important factors in national elections than experience or accomplishment. Newhouse added that the right track/wrong track statistics tightened by 48 net points from November of 2011 through election day, which helped boost the president's approval rating to non-fatal levels.

Newhouse, on the effects of Hurricane Sandy: "It was not determinative. It was a factor, it was not the factor. But it hit the pause button on our campaign and our messaging for about four or five days, and it gave Obama the opportunity to look presidential." Newhouse said exit polling indicated that about three percent of the electorate said Sandy was the most important factor (!) in their presidential choice, and that many of them made up minds in the last few days of the campaign.

The Washington Examiner's Michael Barone asked whether the birth control attacks were effective. The campaign brain trust said that HHS' contraception move was narrowly targeted at a segment of the population -- young unmarried women, whom Obama carried by 38 points on Tuesday. Romney's advisers said Team Obama knew exactly what they were doing by running the unseemly "first time" ad; they recognized they'd face blowback from some elements of the population, but thought it was worth it on balance, in order to appeal to young women.

PJTV's Roger Simon asked about Romney's bruising loss among Hispanic voters. The entire Romney team acknowledged that this was a big problem, and that Republicans need to think hard about how to reverse this trend. Part of the issue, Beeson said, was that Obama's campaign spent heavily on brutally negative ads against Romney for many months over the late spring and summer, before Romney had the resources to fight back. "By that time, [Hispanic voters] were already predisposed against us," he said. Romney's advisers also mentioned that the attack ads Obama ran on Spanish language radio and television were far "meaner, tougher and over-the-top" than "any attacks they leveled against us in English." This battle played out intensely, but off the mainstream media's radar.

I asked about the October "expand the map" strategy, which demonstrably failed. Was the campaign engaging in a deliberate head-fake by pretending that Pennsylvania, Minnesota and other states were in play -- or did they actually believe they had their core path locked up (through Virginia, Florida, Colorado, etc), and thus had the luxury of expansion? I also wondered aloud which scenario would be worse (misdirection vs. bad intel). The Romney brain trust seemed to side-step the heart of my inquiry, instead focusing on the Pennsylvania aspect. Newhouse: "The decision was not made lightly to expand the map. In order for us to go into PA, we had to have every other friggen' thing in the campaign fully funded. We went to everyone to make sure they were fully funded before we went into Pennsylvania. Every other need was met before we did that. The guys on the ground in PA, including our polling guys, were very encouraging. Our numbers were positive there. As it turns out, it was relatively close, but it wasn't as close as other target states." Beeson: "The Obama campaign saw the same numbers we did. They clearly saw it closing. We wanted to wait as long as we could to prevent them from getting that Philadelphia machine fired up in time."

These analyses make sense, but only within the context of the campaign truly believing that they were safe in other crucial must-have states -- a cataclysmically wrong assumption. When I stopped by Romney headquarters in Boston back in September, Newhouse said his team was anticipating a D+3 electorate in November. This seemed entirely reasonable to me, based on evidence from 2004, 2008 and 2010, but it turned out to be incorrect. The actual electorate this year was D+6. Post-election news reports reveal that Mitt Romney was "shell-shocked" by his loss, an outcome that can only be explained by shockingly flawed internal polling. Was that polling predicated on a D+3 model? If so, that would explain the huge disconnect between Boston's expectations and the final results. I'll reiterate that although the D+3 model seemed sensible on its face, it was the campaign pollsters' job to figure out if their assumptions comported with reality. In retrospect, their failure to do so looms very, very large.

Finally, Joel Pollak from Breitbart asked if the campaign's gurus felt like they'd let down the American people, particularly Romney's supporters. The takeaway line from a relatively broad answer to this (admittedly tough) question came from Neil Newhouse: "There's a sense that we let Mitt Romney down." If the candidate truly expected to be delivering a victory speech on Tuesday night, even as he was in the process of losing the popular vote by two percentage points and the electoral college by a wider margin, Newhouse's assertion isn't too far off.

That is true of independents, but Romney's problem was not with independents. It was with Republicans. That tells me that your supposition is intrinsically wrong with regard to Romney.

As more vote totals have come in, Romney has gotten pretty close to McCain's number of votes. He's 1.5 million under McCain, while Obama is 8 million under his 2008 totals. And just matching McCain's numbers would now leave Romney with a 2 million loss.

The fact remains that Romney got millions of Obama's voters to stay home, but couldn't get them to show up and vote for him. Whatever their party ID was, and it could've changed between 2008 and 2012, the task was to get former Obama voters to vote for Romney. Obama's 2008 win was so huge, there was no other way to win. So Romney didn't have a problem with Republicans, but with people who were wishy-washy enough to have voted for Obama once already.

As for the independents who did show up, Obama won I's by 8 last time, Romney won them by 5 this time. So we could have used more of the I vote. Romney went up with R's by 3 points, but went down with D's by 3 points, so kind of a wash there. The percentage of party turnout stayed about the same as in 2008, so the electorate declined evenly among all 3 groups. So, in that sense, there were both R's and I's who stayed home that we could've used.

Romney another sucky GOP country club republican’t from the GOP establishment. Full disclosure I am an American that just happens to be black. That doesn't matter but I want make that point clear because I am sick and tired of hearing the myrmidons in the media tell white republicans that they need to reach out to black voters more and tailor the messaging. First let me say this. If you don't understand the meaning of limited government, individual liberty and the ability to own private property as well as unalienable rights. You are lost PERIOD. Blacks that vote for their slavers of the Democratic party suffer from the greatest case of Stockholm Syndrome in the history of Stockholm Syndrome. Here we have a group of Americans that have suffered through slavery, Jim Crow, Dred Scot, KKK Civil War and Civil Rights turn right around and vote for the people that brought that upon the heads of blacks. That is more effective brainwashing in the history of recorded man. The is insidious and pathetic me like Frederick Douglass and Booker T Washington saw this coming and so should we. Obama and Romney are our fault they are two sides of the same coin and that is why 3 million republican voters stayed at home. He was worse than McCain and didn't suffer Obama to the attacks that he launch during the primaries. That is telling about Mr. Romney as well as the lack of response from him when they attacked his wife's treatments for her MS. Someone attacks my wife I get ballistic, I don't know about you. Even Sarah Palin went off when her kids were attacked as well as Michele Bachman. Ladies and Gentlemen we must not give up hang in there and keep fighting.

The Republican Party has allowed the DemoRats to cater to the masses through “shallow emotion” politics. It’s time to start playing through not fear or shallowness but “real life situational” politics in ads, radio and social media.

Actually, its time for both.

Use the real-life situational stuff for the mass market.

Use shallow emotional appeals in targeted markets and social media.

One reinforces the other.

Then, in ethnic markets, get a few surrogates out there, trusted members of ethnic communities, to go all-out trashing these people. All day, all night. Just trash them. Go super-negative in the non-English media.

I'm up for a total scorched earth method of taking these people out by painting them, tarring them, and then flipping it around and pointing them to "Morning in America".

Think about it.

“That hits home.”
Mayhaps- but I doubt many have noticed it. It is a paraphrase of Churchill’s remarks about appeasers of his time. They thought they were being pragmatic- and look where that went. History tells us that making a strong and sincere stand is better than temporizing, cowardice, or appeasement.

Atticus:

The GOP appears to be determined to give control of the country to the Democrats. For at least the last 30 years I have been trying to find out why lawmakers of both Parties allowed the so called “New Left” to take control of this nation’s educational systems. I have never received an answer.

They all must know that shaping the attitudes and opinions of children will have monumental impact on the entire society as those children grow up to become the leaders of the nation.

This leads me to conclude that the deck is stacked against what used to be the greatest nation this miserable world has ever seen. We could easily refer to the Obama/McCain ticket. Or more recently the Obama/Romney ticket.

I see treason involved, but no one is ever tried for treason anymore. Why do you think that is?

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