ELECTIONATE AUGUST 6, 2012
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After embracing stridently partisan positions during the primaries, campaigns traditionally etch-a-sketch to the center after securing the nomination. But while Romney adopted his fair share of conservative positions to squeeze passed Santorum, he has yet to move back to the center: He hasn’t discovered any new centrist positions, he hasn't attempted to co-opt any Democratic strengths, he hasn’t established an independent-minded theme, and he hasn’t found a Sister Souljah moment. He could use one.
Most presidential candidates adopt an image that distinguishes them from the most partisan wing of their party, whether it was Bush running as a “compassionate conservative,” Clinton’s “New Democrat,” Obama’s post-partisan appeals to change, or McCain’s “maverick.” And realistically, Romney needs it as much or more than any of those prior candidates. The Republican Party is decidedly unpopular—more unpopular than the parties were in any of those prior presidential elections (with the exception of McCain in 2008). Yet here’s Romney, a candidate who entered presidential politics positioned to run as a moderate, running as a generic conservative Republican candidate with a splash of Bain Capital.
It’s important to remember that Romney needs moderate, independent, and even traditionally Democratic-leaning voters to win this election, and he needs more of these voters than past Republicans. It’s not 2004 anymore: The influx of non-white voters into the electorate over the last eight years, as well as their movement toward the Democratic party, has raised the bar for what Romney needs among white voters. Romney will probably need to carry at least 60 percent of white voters to secure the presidency, more than any GOP candidate since Reagan. Now, deep dissatisfaction with Obama’s performance and the state of the country has given Romney an opportunity to pull that off, but that essentially requires Romney to sweep persuadable swing white voters—and we can infer that many have traditionally voted for Democratic candidates in national elections.
Take a look at the most recent Pew poll’s breakdown among white voters, and forget about any qualms you have about the poll’s party-ID, since it’s not relevant to what we’re looking at. According to the survey, Romney leads among white independents 50-39. Let’s reframe that: Obama’s at 47 or 48 nationally percent with just 39 percent of white independents. To keep Obama beneath 49 percent nationally, Romney’s going to need to keep Obama’s share of white independents down in the low-40s, which starts to require persuading a number of independents who “lean Democratic.”
In that context, it’s hardly surprising that the attacks on Bain Capital, outsourcing, and tax evasion appear to resonate with undecided voters. These aren’t the undecided voters of the year 2004; many of these undecided voters probably broke for Kerry and Gore, and it’s easy to see how white working class Kerry and Gore supporters would be turned off by the emerging caricature of Romney as a corporate plutocrat willing to fire workers and close factories for personal gain. Romney’s party-line platform probably doesn’t offer these voters any reassurance.
Romney needs to redefine himself over the next month and do something to get independent voters to give him a second look. The vice presidential selection offers an opportunity, but most reports suggest Romney’s inclined toward a lower-case “c” conservative approach. Assuming that’s accurate, Romney will need to rebrand himself on his own, and while he might be able to buy a new brand with his growing financial advantage, that doesn’t appear to be his campaign’s preferred strategy. Even if it was, what brand could Romney adopt? “Turn around” guru? Not if the campaign is intent to avoid Bain Capital, which seems to be their preference.
That leaves Romney with the Sister Souljah moment, and there’s something be said for adopting this tactic. Clinton was in a similar situation: He was running when his party didn’t have the inside route to the White House and he needed to be different than the Mondale-Dukakis line to appeal to swing voters. Whether it’s the marginal swing Latinos and college educated women who once voted for Republicans but now prefer Obama, or the undecided white working class voters who traditionally support Democratic candidates, Romney has options to break out of his narrow path to the White House—he just seems to have foreclosed all of them.
This is a unique moment. Here’s a candidate completely dependent on winning moderate, independent, and perhaps even Democratic-leaning independent voters making no effort to reposition himself toward the center at a time when his party is unpopular. At the same time, a relentlessly negative campaign has begun to define him as the worst manifestation of the forces responsible for undermining the economic security of the middle class, and the Obama campaign is poised to highlight the most severely conservative elements of Romney’s agenda.
Maybe it’s too late for Romney to pull off a Sister Souljah moment—in which case, re-imagine the headline as “could have used” rather than “could use.” Perhaps Romney’s deficient conservative credentials truly prohibit any etch-a-sketch moment. But Romney’s route to the presidency is quite narrow, and it essentially leaves him in a “1980 or bust” scenario: If he doesn’t sweep the undecided voters, he’s going to lose. Given the narrowness of his path, the composition of those undecided voters, and their emerging opinions of his candidacy, anything that encourages voters to give him a second look would serve him well.
16 comments
One reason Clinton was able to pull off his Sister Souljah moment was that he didn't have to worry about losing the votes of Sister Souljah's supporters. For any equivalent figure on the right, Romney would have to worry that any action sufficient to win support from independents would cause movement conservatives to sit the race out.
- sighthnd
August 6, 2012 at 4:21pm
Okay, but that assumes Romney really doesn't want to implement the Ryan budget, destroy Obamacare, wants to lower taxes yet further, doesn't want to return us to those halcyon days of 2008. And that he really doesn't like to "fire people" and outsource their jobs. All of which are terrible assumptions, since everything Romney says currently indicates he wants to double-down on all those policies. You seem to think that even Romney doesn't believe in those policies, and needs a "transformational moment" to discard them and adopt some platform less destructive to America, to be attractive to moderates and independents. Nothing I've seen of Romney in the last three months indicates he thinks that, he just wants his destructive policies to be attractive.
- AllanL5
August 6, 2012 at 4:21pm
After Tampa; he still needs a big showing in Tampa, lots of cheers not boos.
- rayward
August 6, 2012 at 4:28pm
Amen. Anything Romney says wouldn't make us believe it now anyway.
- Sophia
August 6, 2012 at 4:29pm
Bottom line, Romney comes across as a person of no interior core who doesn't really like us very much unless we're rich. And, he's clearly willing to lie. His performance on CNN yesterday was abysmal, he conflates, for example, people making high incomes with "small business job creators," whether they are or not, and offers no proof whatsoever that people making over $250K/year ARE small business owners, and of course there's the obvious fact that Job Creators Paying Next To No Taxes Haven't Been Creating Jobs, but rather losing them since Bush was elected, and making matters worse by attacking the public sector and refusing to pass Obama's jobs bill.
- Sophia
August 6, 2012 at 4:34pm
I think the problem for Romney is that, as others have said above, it's difficult to think of an SS moment that would make political sense for him. If he comes out against some politically-correct sensitivity of the GOP Right, he is likely to lose more votes than he gains, because although Clinton had the Slick Willy label to deal with, Romney is now far more endangered because of a broader perception of him as a phoney who will twist into a pretzel shape if it will get him the White House. I'm not sure that the undecideds are out there in sufficient numbers to make such a move worthwhile (back in March/April, maybe that would have been different). It would have to be something really striking to succeed, but something that striking (e.g. standing by Romneycare as a model for reform) would be like tossing a hand grenade into a dug-out, and the dug-out is where the conservative base is.
- ironyroad
August 6, 2012 at 4:52pm
Romney is stuck between a rock and a hard place, where the rock is the imperative to appease the Republican base, and the hard place is the necessity to appeal to anyone else.
- NateG
August 6, 2012 at 10:09pm
Romney passed up so many Sister Souljah moments that for him to do so now would be just another flip flop. And the reason he passed them up is because a passionate part of his base, the Tea Party, is not enamored with him. And the reason Mr. Cohn is giving his advice is because some Tea Party candidates have lost elections where a centrist Republican would likely have won.
- Nusholtz
August 6, 2012 at 11:15pm
maybe Romney really thinks he has this election in the bag due to all the money he has raised and the insular nature of that crowd with their reliance on right wing media and Rasmussen.
- blackton
August 7, 2012 at 12:18am
Forget the SS moment. Ain't gonna happen, not with as risk averse a candidate as Romney. But actually, all Romney needs to do is do well in the debates in order for people to give him a second look...or really, for many key undecideds, a first look, since many of them aren't paying attention now. They won't be until September or possibly October. And don't underestimate his ability to do well in debates. He acquitted himself decently in the primary debates, admittedly against some weak competition. But if he drills home such questions as asking people whether they like the direction the country is going, and (more importantly) persuades them to vote on that basis, he becomes quite competitive. Having said all that, I'm not sure he'll do a good job in the debates. But a decent enough job, combined with outspending Obama and Republican voter suppression efforts, could put him over the top.
- Thunderroad
August 7, 2012 at 1:37am
Romney will come off badly in the debates, especially in contrast to the much more likable Obama (who also has more attractive positions on the issues). The key will be to get him to go off script. I can't wait to see him crash and burn.
- heppner52
August 7, 2012 at 9:25am
I agree that Romney needs a Sister Souljah moment, but I would reformulate what that moment looks like. The article assumes that such a moment requires Romney to go after a Republican icon or iconic position. But there is another way to look at it. Rather than going after a Republican icon, steal a Democratic one. And that Democratic icon is the Obama mantra on infrastructure. Crazy, you say? Can't be. Well, if I were Romney, I'd put a huge decade long program on the table, compute how many people it can put to work, including Hispanics and African Americans, and say that he will pay for it with tax reform. Say he is Eisenhower, not Obama. After all, Republicans loved big highway programs until Obama was for them.
- CABChi
August 7, 2012 at 10:50am
heppner52, I hope you're right about Romney coming off badly in the debates. But it's hard to predict their political impact, especially since that impact doesn't mainly flow from the debates themselves but from the spin afterwards. If the Republicans' post-debate spin on Romney is successful at getting the press to say that he came across as human and likeable, that's half the battle right there. The 1980 and 2000 debates and/or post-debate spin helped get Reagan and Bush across their respective thresholds. It could happen again. Now, the best thing going for Obama is that Romney has such trouble being or coming across as a likeable, empathetic human being. And of course other factors will heavily influence the election. But the notion of Romney's debate performance or post-debate spin affecting enough low-information voters to make a difference is by no means out of the question.
- Thunderroad
August 7, 2012 at 11:07am
sighthnd is right. Romney can't alienate his party's base with any kind of move to the center, for fear of stirring up a hornet's nest. And, if he wins the election because America has become anally retentive, he's still stuck. As president, if he strays from the hard right in public, he will be attacked by a pack of crazed wolves from his own party. He's not exactly the alpha dog in the GOP.
- magboy47.
August 7, 2012 at 11:17am
I'm with blackton. I just don't think that Romney belives he needs a Sister Souljah moment or for any daylight between himself and the right wing. His friends and money-men and everyone he sees on the campaign trail assure him that the election is right where he wants it to be, that Obama is another Jimmy Carter in the making and that all Romney needs is to hang in there and not make any unforced errors like criticizing Paul Ryan or some other Republican luminary. In their view, everyone will break for the exits in his directly just like they did in 1980 toward Reagan (because the American electorate hasn't changed at all in the last 32 years). This is what life in the Bubble will get ya. And if you thought the GOP looked and acted ugly after the 2008 catastrophe, wait until their coming catastrophe this fall -- a Romney Electoral College debacle, losing back the House after Dems retake pretty much all lost seats in the Northeast and a bunch in the Midwest and California (along with Michelle Bachmann and Steve King) and net losing seats in the Senate. It won't be pretty, or bode well for lame duck issues.
- wildboy
August 7, 2012 at 12:14pm
Romney has plenty of Sistah Souljah opportunities. He could get righteous about some dunderhead on the right arguing some stupid economic position--that low-income people shouldn't own houses, for example, or that regular workers don't matter, only entrepreneurs do. There are social issues too that he could easily use: denouncing someone who says something viciously anti-gay, for example. There are tons of conservatives saying over-the-top, ridiculous things in the media. Romney could pick on any of them. But I agree with the other commenters--I don't think Romney has it in him. If he couldn't speak up about Huma Abedin, then he's not going to do it at all.
- polcereal
August 7, 2012 at 2:42pm