Talk Elections

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP2GsRzROF8&feature=youtu.be

*unless the GOP coalesces around Perry or Pawlenty

The part where all their voices blended together near the end was a bit unsettling.

A decent ad. I suppose it tugs on the heartstrings. Annoyed me(Seems a bit condescending) but for people who have lost their job and are struggling to support their family, perhaps it will have some appeal. 

It's a completely emotional advertisement. Romney is criticizing a metaphor by taking it seriously. People are going to see through that...regardless, does anyone want to see their resumes? Maybe their resume sucks or they interview badly...maybe there's even a few convicted felons in there...

It's good to know that a fabulously wealthy ultra-capitalist born with a silver spoon in his mouth cares so much about the plight of the unemployed. Pfft.

With a bit more blood and gore it could very well be the trailer for the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Hills Have Eyes sequel.

Attabattababta is all I heard toward the end.  It was also 41 seconds too long.

But my educated guess is that at some point Obama will run ads as well.  And can mention that Obama inherited the worst economic disaster in over half a century, that for the past year and a half under Obama, millions of Americans have found jobs, and that yes, sometimes people use metaphors and it's disingenuous to feign outrage and say someone who uses metaphors doesn't care about people. Especially when the person making the accusation, downsized companies, costing many people jobs.  But I agree it's possible Romney is next president.

I think the candidate with the best Marketing campaign wins. 

Right now, Romney has the best message, and its a very strong message of Jobs and the Economy, and his experience working in the private sector and building small and large businesses. 

I think that is something that Obama doesn't get having never worked in the private sector.  He's taking a very academic view and detached view of helping small businesses.  The Health Care plan may or may not work, but its uncertainty and tax burden is really clouding the financial forecasts and confidence that business leaders need to make for the next 3-5 years. 

Bubbles are built on public confidence and bank loans.  If business leaders think their taxes are going to go up, they won't hire anyone else, plain and simple, that is why unemployment is high, no one wants to open their wallets to do the hiring. 

I can think of two candidates who have a better message than Romney.
Ron Paul and Herman Can.

Notice how Jason has $150,000 worth of student debt and 2 kids?  

Dude, how do you rack up 150K in student debt?  That's like five years tuition and board at Harvard.  

For a guy of that age, yeah.

At today's tuition prices that's more like 3 years at the sticker price.

I remain far from convinced.

Yes but if Obama tries to use Bush, it's a nail in the coffin for his campaign. You cannot blame the President last elected 8 years after the current election.

I actually liked the ad. It's not great, but I think it addressed a good point. At the very least, it does a good job of accomplishing its primary objective: creating doubt about Obama's economic policies.

Less than three years tuition and board at the university I currently attend. College is expensive.

That was pretty annoying with the repetition. And what is Mitt trying to say? Obama hasn't magically fixed the economy and ended unemployment? So if Mitt gets elected unemployment will hit 0%? That's kind of the point he's trying to make.

I think his point is that unemployment should be going down, not up.

The Democrats are making a lot of logical arguments in this thread against this ad (all of which are true and I agree with 100%), but none of these are winning general election campaign slogans. "We lost millions of jobs but most of those were Bush's fault" or "Unemployment could have been 11%!" are not going to defeat a competent, not very crazy Republican nominee (luckily the GOP only has one of those). Obama does have his superior organization and demographics on his side, but if Romney somehow wins the nomination this is going to be a very hard attack to refute.

The movie trailer ads were kinda fun at first, but I'm quickly growing tired of them.

If you go to an out-of-state school or private school, without any grants or scholarships, it can easily be upwards of $30k/year. Professional graduate schools (law school, medical school, etc) are crazy expensive too.

It is going down: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate

Unemployment in May was 9.1%. That chart is wrong.

If Mitt Romney does in fact become the next President, as the title of this thread states, I can see half the members on this board either fleeing the country in a blind panic or joining a guerrilla movement to overthrow the Presidency.

:)   

I'm going to medical school and I have calculated that I will graduate with about $394,800 in debt. 

Interesting use of the fat at this beginning.

"Harvard University will increase tuition next school year by 3.8 percent, the school announced yesterday, bringing the annual cost of a Harvard education, including room and board, to $50,724."
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/03/19/harvard_will_raise_tuition/

They also pay tuition in full for like 95% of their students, so not someone going to Harvard.  Presumably the aforementioned individual went to some expensive-ass liberal arts bullsh**t place then graduate school, plus had a bunch of interest piled on.

No, he will not. Ads don't win elections. Paying people to pretend isn't exactly a winning tactic, either.

Mitt Romney is Bob Dole and John Kerry, a generic figurehead who don't really have what it takes to defeat an incumbent. His multiple positions on issues can be played up heavily, because it makes him look like an opportunist. No one goes from being somewhat moderate to far-right in a few years. Those reasons are why he won't even be the nominee, there is absolutely no way his primary opponents are not going to hit him on his waffling. Even if he does manage to be the nominee, he's not going to have a big, easy win.

The recovery is still on track, so realistically, unemployment is going to go down and that's not good news for any Republican candidate.

How many of these people were laid off by Romney?

"OMG FEDERAL RESERVE!!!!" and *insert Herman Cain's platitudes here* are better messages than a candidate focusing on jobs?

Romney always had a very strong messages... just depending which one at the time.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57125.html (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57125.html)

It was a joke about losing the election last time, and even according to that little snippet the people he was with laughed at the joke.

Alexander Burns needs to learn how to not be retarded...

If you were a paranoid, radical libertarian - then you would probably be inclined to think so. "Don't forget that a round table of evil bankers, on an undisclosed private island somewhere in the Atlantic are manipulating us all with the puppet strings of fear; dancing us straight into a world of oppression, poverty, and authoritarian global government - all in the name of insatiable greed and arguable levels of purely narcissistic insanity and the only way to stop them is to abolish the fed (the means through which they practice their economic witchcraft) and revert to basing the value of our currency on a finite commodity!" - does that about sum it up?

Basically, that was my first thought.  Education is expensive, no doubt.  We have to pay all those administrators huge salaries, after all.  But on average it isn't that expensive.  His debt is the result of some poor decisions that he made.  

Ah, well, the bump in the road thing is cute.  But it lends itself more to short attack ads and speeches, not a repetitive, droning 60-second commercial.

Unfortunately for Mitt, the "joke" seems to be gaining some traction in the media. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110616/ts_yblog_theticket/mitt-romney-to-voters-im-also-unemployed)

"Seventy percent of Harvard students receive some form of financial aid, with close to 60 percent receiving need-based scholarships."
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/home/news-and-notices/news/press-releases/admissions-03302009.shtml

Need-based aid could be very little or a lot.

"I'm networking. I have my sight on a particular job."

That line that followed the unemployed statement, and was left off Politico, makes it even less of a serious story.

I mean, how are the Dems going to spin this? "Governor Romney was completely insensitive to the fact that so many people are being hurt by the economic conditions that we've failed to improve in any serious way"? The audience laughed because their feelings were hurt?

I'm sure the DNC could find 15 real unemployed people to cut an ad with them telling Romney unemployment is not a joke for people worth less than a hundred million.

Does the DNC really want to make an ad highlighting unemployment in this country?

Dude, just because the handpicked Republicans at Romney's little meeting laughed at his comment doesn't mean that his comment wasn't insensitive, bordering on offensive, to the millions of people who are unemployed through no fault of their own and who don't have a few hundred million dollars in assets to comfort them. I would be offended, since I'm one of those people, but I don't expect any better from an aloof plutocrat like Mitt Romney. He couldn't possibly understand what people like me are going through; to make a "joke" that he's just like us is an idiotic thing to do, and to go "hurr it's the Democrats fault!" instead of just calling it like it is, a dumb thing that he shouldn't have said, is ridiculous.

It was joke, it won't stick. The Democrats are grasping at straws.

I'm not sure what this thread is actually about, but this past week I've been thinking about it and come to the conclusion that Romney is, very likely, going to be the president in Jan 13.

I think you're right.

the only question seems is how the Evangelicals can effect or alter the GOP primaries to prevent Romney from winning the nomination. 

If Romney wins NH and Nevada decisively, he should be able to win in SC as well, and thus, secure the nomination. 

Evangelicals may coalesce around one candidate in Iowa, such as in Huckabee of 2008. 
That person may be Bachmann or Pawlenty, but I doubt either of those 2 can beat Romney in NH, who will have a stronger ground game this time.  Unless Evangelicals embrace Huntsman, I think he's going nowhere fast, and just warming up for 2016.  I'm puzzled as to why Huntsman would even compete in NH, given Romney's geographical strength and Mormon support.  It might be a decisive issue in the usually solid Mormon community.

But I'm on the Romney bandwagon, since Daniels and Barbour (the 2 heavyweights) are gone.  Perry could make some noise, but I think Romney appears more competent than Perry for now.

Loosening the restraints on the market and cutting taxes is focusing on jobs.

I'm a Paleoconservative with libertarian views on a few things. I'm not paranoid and why doesn't commodity based currency sound like a good idea to you?

The joke wasn't that he's "just like us". The joke was, if anything, self-deprecating because it was a jab at himself for losing in 2008.

If anyone was offended by it, it's because of a deficiency on their part, not on Romney's. It's blatantly obvious to anyone with 1/32 of a brain that he a) had no ill intention in making the joke, and b) doesn't actually think his situation is comparable to that of people struggling to make ends meet.

I'm not supporting Romney, and I probably won't vote for him, but I'm not going to be a whiny little bitch and go out of my way to try to find statements of his to get offended by.

Speaking of blatantly obvious, are you really not seeing the irony?  Barely a week after trying to inflate Obama's "bump in the road" metaphor into the Mother of all signs of insensitivity to the unemployed, this joke about how he's unemployed too and should he share his story like everyone else comes out of Romney's billionaire mouth.  It's not as perfect as Weiner accusing Clarence Thomas of trying to hide a shameful disclosure on Memorial Day then, on the same night, posting a crotch photo for all 40,000 of your twitter followers to see... but it's the same basic rhythm.  That's why I put it in this thread.