As we await the results from Super Tuesday, here’s the question I’m puzzling over: Why can’t anyone (Mitt Romney excepted) play this game?
For all his weaknesses as a candidate, Mitt Romney has done the one essential thing a candidate for office must do: build a campaign organization. He’s raised money, hired staff, recruited and deployed volunteers, made decisions about how and where and when to use campaign resources. It’s all pretty basic—and pretty important—stuff for a political campaign. And it’s probably going to be enough to cinch the Republican nomination this year.
But why is he the only Republican presidential candidate to do that this year? Rick Perry’s won six (six!) statewide campaigns in Texas, our second largest state. Newt Gingrich won numerous House races and oversaw the 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. Rick Santorum ran statewide three times in Pennsylvania and won twice. How come none of them could put together campaigns that could execute the basics—like getting on the ballot in Virginia, or filing complete delegate slates in Ohio? This is stuff that College Republicans roll out of bed in the morning knowing how to do…isn’t it?
I can’t think of a precedent for this (and people will tell you, I can usually come up with a precedent for almost anything). Even when Democrats were going up against popular Republican incumbents (Nixon in ’72, Reagan in ’84, Bush I in ’92, Bush II in ’04), even when their eventual nominee got trounced in November, they always had multiple candidates who knew how to run a campaign—at least to the extent of, you know, getting on the ballot.
Any theories?
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
The election is not yet over. it is too early to say who is the winner.
Thanks for the reply. I agree it’s not over mathematically. But given that Romney won over 50% of the Super Tuesday delegates, and that he’s won over 50% of the total delegates awarded so far, isn’t the Republican presidential campaign in “dead girl, live boy”* territory?
*A reference to a line by former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards who said when campaigning for office in 1980, “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy”.
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A thinking troll for travel planning – Jezreel Ricafort
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Thanks.
De fault lies not in de stars.
Or something like that…
But why?
Why is he the only one who can “play this game?”
Because he is the chosen one, massappeal.
Chosen by those who control the most effective media.
I have been saying that the fix is in for months now, and it most certainly is.
It’s a media-enforced fix, and it is in because the Permanent Government believes…has probably gotten written-in-stone promises…that Romney won’t rock the boat, win or lose.
Jesus Christ himself could appear flinging around miracle loaves of bread and fishes wherever he goes and he still wouldn’t win. The media would find a way to cast doubt on his performance (“Lookit!!! He thinks he’s Jesus Christ!!! HAR har har har har har har!!!”), or failing that the PermaGov could of course simply crucify him. (It happened once, remember…)
It’s in deep, massappeal.
Bet on it.
Only the fools have gotten involved in some sort of anti-Romney effort. The wiseguys…the Jeb Bushes, the other RatPubs with eyes on the eventual prize…already know the fix is in. They are part of the fix. Thus this circus, this circle of fools.
It’s a clown show.
And everybody’s lapping it up,
Laughing it up.
Deep.
Meanwhile the drones keep on killing.
Very deep.
AG
Okay, it’s a theory. So, assuming Romney is “chosen by those who control the most effective media”, two further questions:
1- who are “those who control”? and,
2- what are “the most effective media”?
Those with the most money.
Those with the most viewers, listeners and/or readers.
The corporate-owned PermaGov is not a monolith, massappeal, but there is a central (centrist) core to it. A series of shifting agreements. Its police force? The CIA and other appendages of the intelligence octopus. Its “educational” system? (Actually its mind-control system.) The mass media.
“Centrist.” That which is dedicated to the least possible change. The least possible short-term rocking of the boat. Why? Corporations are short-term creatures, or at least that describes those who control them. They run on quarterly profits. Fail to produce dividends for the stockholders over more than a few quarters and your Westchester mansion is on the line, along with your own inflated self-image, your marriage, your luxury style highlife, etc. So naturally the corporate bosses support…by direct contribution and by advertising on (and outright owning of) media that spin the desired line.
Again…the history of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird is highly instructive regarding how the media are…were, actually…controlled. The style of control has changed…the tactics, the methods…but the strategy remains the same. Control the media to control the minds. It is no coincidence that those who advocate real “change” (as opposed to sloganeering about the same idea) are now always relegated to the dust heaps and killing fields of the media. It really makes no difference if they are coming from the left or the right. Dennis Kucinich, Alan Grayson, Ron Paul, Newtie Boy, Santorum…they are all targets. The mass media crunch ’em all up eventually, leaving only the safe ones.
Safe for corporate interests.
Safe for short-term profits.
Now…are these controllers infallible? No. Witness their support of G. W. Butch for all you need to know on that account. Most of them are actually real assholes. But they’ve got the power. Mao Zedong said “Power comes from the barrel of a gun.” He was at best incomplete with this observation. Power comes from the possession of resources. Financial resources and the goods to back them up. That power buys guns, and if the media weapon promises to be more effective than the shooting weapon, it buys media as well.
That’s why they call this “The Information Age,” massappeal.
Information rules.
Not necessarily true information, of course, but there you have it.
Now walk into the nearest gathering place of likely voters…the working class diner or bar, the middle class/upper middle class PTA meeting, coffee shop or cocktail party, the poverty class street or fast food joint…and tell me that the majority of the electorate has enough plain sense and/or a good enough education to be able to reliably tell the difference between real “information” and disinformation.
I dare ya.
Several generations of rapidly declining public education…a factor that is itself a product of the same general dumbing-down strategy as is control of the media…has produced a know-nothing population.
So it goes.
Watch.
The least change possible in an increasingly complex world?
Barack Obama.
Unless some outside influence(s)…serious (read “nuclear or other WMD-based”) war/terrorism, natural disaster, a real, world-wide economic breakdown, etc…interferes with the well-laid plans of mice and other, more human-appearing rodents, it’s our Nobel peace Prize-winning willing murderer Barack Obomb’em at the helm of the ship.
For four more years. Well…three and something, until it’s time to hype another winner.
Watch.
AG