Murdoch, Welch not quite impressed with Romney's campaign

[BayGBM]

Murdoch, Welch not quite impressed with Romney's campaign

By Nia-Malika Henderson, Published: July 3

Even as he rakes in millions of dollars for his campaign war chest from Wall Street types, Mitt Romney seems to have left two titans of industry with a skeptical impression of how he is running his campaign for the White House.

First it was Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp., who tweeted Sunday that Romney’s GOP presidential campaign team was insular and outmatched by President Obama’s.

“Met Romney last week. Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops old friends from team and hires some real pros. Doubtful.”

Romney, who is vacationing in New Hampshire, is standing by his team, which includes a mix of longtime aides, such as Eric Fehrnstrom and Beth Meyers, who is heading the search for Romney’s vice presidential nominee.

“Gov. Romney respects Rupert Murdoch and also respects his team and has confidence in them” said Romney press secretary Andrea Saul.

Murdoch’s grumblings, which Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric, echoed later in a no-room-for-amateurs tweet of his own, seem to stem from conversations that he had with Romney last week in New York.

#Hope Mitt Romney is listening to Murdoch advice ont campaign staff..playing in league with Chicago pols..No room for amateurs#

According to someone who attended the meeting but wanted to only speak on background, Murdoch pressed Romney and his aides to get tougher on Obama. Murdoch later tweeted about that issue and his concerns about the Latino vote.

In response to a Twitter follower who said that Romney had brains but needed more stomach and heart, Murdoch tweeted:

“Romney has all these and more, but just to see more fight. And Hispanics a surrender to O. Cn not afford, hurts senate too.”

Polls show that Romney is lagging badly among Latino voters. According to a person who attended the meeting, Romney insisted that he would maintain his position on immigration rather than risk appearing to switch sides. He also touted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as a top surrogate who would help him attract support among Latinos.

Despite his series of gaffes during the Republican primary, Romney is even with Obama in most polls and has pulled ahead of the president in raising cash.

On Monday, Fehrnstrom sided with Democrats who have said that the Massachusetts health care plan put in place under Romney penalized people who didn’t buy insurance, rather than levied a tax. Republicans have used the tax argument — part of Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law — to try to reframe the health care debate and tag Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals. Fehrnstrom’s comments seemed to take that issue off the table.

Murdoch later tweeted: “Romney people upset at me! Of course I want him to win, save us from socialism, etc but should listen to good advice and get stuck in!”

[BayGBM]

Tax or penalty? Romney's evolving statements irritate conservatives
By Mitchell Landsberg

GILFORD, N.H. -- If Mitt Romney was trying to soothe restless conservatives with his July 4 declaration that the Obama healthcare mandate amounts to a tax, he might want to give it another shot.

The Wall Street Journal, whose opinion pages are a highly regarded barometer of conservative thought, published an editorial Thursday that excoriated the Romney campaign for its “unforced error” on the tax issue and concluded that “the campaign looks confused in addition to being politically dumb.”

It was the latest sign of conservative unhappiness with the Romney campaign, which faces the difficult task of pivoting into the general election after a primary campaign fought well to the right of the general electorate.

Some of the complaints have been stinging. William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, went so far as to compare Romney with two other Massachusetts politicians who unsuccessfully ran for president: Sen. John F. Kerry and former Gov. Michael Dukakis.

Ouch.

“So,” Kristol wrote after invoking the dreaded Democratic names, “speaking of losing candidates from Massachusetts: Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he's running?”

The Romney campaign surprised and dismayed many conservatives when it appeared to agree, in part, with President Obama in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling last week that upheld the administration’s healthcare plan, which Republicans prefer to call Obamacare. The court majority said the law was constitutional because it amounted to a tax, and Congress has constitutional taxing authority. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a strongly worded dissent in which he disagreed.

Obama has said the tax is actually a penalty, to be paid only by those who can afford to purchase health insurance but refuse to do so. The administration argues that, because everyone will use the healthcare system at some point, those who choose to pass their bills on to others should rightfully pay a penalty, while those who do buy health insurance will face no penalty. In addition, the law stipulates the penalty will not apply to the uninsured who cannot afford health insurance.

Still, many Republicans saw the court ruling as a lose-win. They may have lost the overall case, but the fact that the court invoked the t-word in describing the penalties included in the law seemed to give Romney ammunition to bash Obama for raising taxes.

So many conservatives were taken aback when Romney spokesman Eric Fehnstrom said Monday that Romney "agreed with the dissent, which was written by Justice Scalia, and the dissent clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax."

On Wednesday, in what appeared to be damage control, Romney gave an interview to CBS in which said that while he agreed with Scalia, he had to bow to the majority and acknowledge that it was a tax.

“The Supreme Court has spoken,” he said, “and while I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it’s a tax and, therefore, it is a tax. They have spoken.”

The Romney campaign insisted that there was no inconsistency: Ferhnstrom had merely stated the fact that Romney agreed with the losing side in the Supreme Court case. Romney was clarifying by stating that while he agreed with the dissent, the reality was that the court had called the healthcare mandate a tax. If the Supreme Court says it’s a tax, it’s a tax.

That may have been enough for some supporters, including those for whom the entire debate is esoteric and, let’s face it, a little boring. But to the Journal editorial page, it was a reflection of a campaign in trouble.

“This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign's insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity. Mr. Obama is being hurt by an economic recovery that is weakening for the third time in three years. But Mr. Romney hasn't been able to take advantage, and if anything he is losing ground.

“The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault. We're on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that ‘Obama isn't working.’ Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better.”

[GigantorX]

Romney should irritate all conservatives.

[240 is Back]

Romney should irritate all conservatives.

i thought he was severely conservative?

[BayGBM]

Romney's Tax Confusion
The candidate's response on the ObamaCare mandate reveals larger campaign problems.

If Mitt Romney loses his run for the White House, a turning point will have been his decision Monday to absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class. He is managing to turn the only possible silver lining in Chief Justice John Roberts's ObamaCare salvage operation—that the mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty is really a tax—into a second political defeat.

Appearing on MSNBC, close Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom was asked by host Chuck Todd if Mr. Romney "agrees with the president" and "believes that you shouldn't call the tax penalty a tax, you should call it a penalty or a fee or a fine?"

"That's correct," Mr. Fehrnstrom replied, before attempting some hapless spin suggesting that Mr. Obama must be "held accountable" for his own "contradictory" statements on whether it is a penalty or tax. Predictably, the Obama campaign and the media blew past Mr. Fehrnstrom's point, jumped on the tax-policy concession, and declared the health-care tax debate closed.

Assistant editorial page editor James Freeman on the GOP's muddled message over whether the individual mandate constitutes a tax. Photo: Associated Press

For conservative optimists who think Mr. Fehrnstrom misspoke or is merely dense, his tax absolution gift to Mr. Obama was confirmed by campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul, who tried the same lame jujitsu spin. In any event, Mr. Fehrnstrom is part of the Boston coterie who are closest to Mr. Romney, and he wouldn't say such a thing without the candidate's approval.

In a stroke, the Romney campaign contradicted Republicans throughout the country who had used the Chief Justice's opinion to declare accurately that Mr. Obama had raised taxes on the middle class. Three-quarters of those who will pay the mandate tax will make less than $120,000 a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Romney high command has muddied the tax issue in a way that will help Mr. Obama's claims that he is merely taxing rich folks like Mr. Romney. And it has made it that much harder for Republicans to again turn ObamaCare into the winning issue it was in 2010.

Why make such an unforced error? Because it fits with Mr. Romney's fear of being labeled a flip-flopper, as if that is worse than confusing voters about the tax and health-care issues. Mr. Romney favored the individual mandate as part of his reform in Massachusetts, and as we've said from the beginning of his candidacy his failure to admit that mistake makes him less able to carry the anti-ObamaCare case to voters.

Mr. Romney should use the Supreme Court opinion as an opening to say that now that the mandate is defined as a tax for the purposes of the law, he will work to repeal it. This would let Mr. Romney show voters that Mr. Obama's spending ambitions are so vast that they can't be financed solely by the wealthy but will inevitably hit the middle class.

Democrats would point to the Massachusetts record, but Mr. Romney could reply that was before the Supreme Court had spoken, that he had promised Bay Staters not to raise taxes, and so now the right policy is to repeal the tax along with the rest of ObamaCare. The tragedy is that for the sake of not abandoning his faulty health-care legacy in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney is jeopardizing his chance at becoming President.

Perhaps Mr. Romney is slowly figuring this out, because in a July 4 interview he stated himself that the penalty now is a "tax" after all. But he offered no elaboration, and so the campaign looks confused in addition to being politically dumb.

This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign's insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity. Mr. Obama is being hurt by an economic recovery that is weakening for the third time in three years. But Mr. Romney hasn't been able to take advantage, and if anything he is losing ground.

The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault. We're on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that "Obama isn't working." Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is assailing Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch rich man, and the rich man obliged by vacationing this week at his lake-side home with a jet-ski cameo. Team Obama is pounding him for Bain Capital, and until a recent ad in Ohio the Romney campaign has been slow to respond.

Team Obama is now opening up a new assault on Mr. Romney as a job outsourcer with foreign bank accounts, and if the Boston boys let that one go unanswered, they ought to be fired for malpractice.

All of these attacks were predictable, in particular because they go to the heart of Mr. Romney's main campaign theme—that he can create jobs as President because he is a successful businessman and manager. But candidates who live by biography typically lose by it. See President John Kerry.

The biography that voters care about is their own, and they want to know how a candidate is going to improve their future. That means offering a larger economic narrative and vision than Mr. Romney has so far provided. It means pointing out the differences with specificity on higher taxes, government-run health care, punitive regulation, and the waste of politically-driven government spending.

Mr. Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat. So far Mr. Romney is letting them down.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304141204577506652734793044.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Copyright ©2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

[GigantorX]

i thought he was severely conservative?

HA!

That said, I really miss Tim Pawlenty.

You gotta love how the money machine gets their guy in no matter what. Plenty of good Republican candidates that got blown to the side while Cain, Bachmann and the rest were touted as saviors.

Fuck that. Conservatives wish they had Huntsman or Pawlenty to vote for. Instead they were lead astray by the power brokers. Shit, just ask Hillary how all that works.

[240 is Back]

agreed.   T-Paw/Huntsmann ticket would be badass.

Instead you have ORomneycare/RubioLessExperienceThanObama on the ticket.   Sheesh.


no - wait - remember?  "Huntsmann is too liberal".   "TPaw is too boring".   Then yall chose romney - both liberal and boring and - worse - spineless.  

He's afraid to challenge obama and take strong positions - and repubs are starting to call him on it.

[Straw Man]

i thought he was severely conservative?

I know, what an odd choice of words

he often uses odd and awkward phrases

[Soul Crusher]

I know, what an odd choice of words

he often uses odd and awkward phrases

Agreed, both are very awkward:

"My muslim Faith"

"57 States"

"Punch above their weight"

"XXXX is one of our strongest allies"

"Eat your peas" 

"Corpse Man"

[BayGBM]

Murdoch’s Digs at Romney Underscore Persistent Strains
By JEREMY W. PETERS

To hear Rupert Murdoch tell it lately, Mitt Romney lacks stomach and heart. He “seems to play everything safe.” And he is not nearly as tough as he needs to be on President Obama.

Mr. Murdoch’s thoughts on the Republican presidential candidate’s prospects? “Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops old friends from the team.” Chances of that? “Doubtful,” he tapped out in a Twitter message from his iPad last weekend.

Then, on Thursday, Mr. Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, published a blistering editorial criticizing Mr. Romney’s campaign, accusing it of being hapless and looking “confused in addition to being politically dumb.”

Mr. Murdoch has never been particularly impressed with Mr. Romney, friends and associates of both men say. The two times Mr. Romney visited the editorial board of The Journal, Mr. Murdoch did not work very hard to conceal his lack of excitement. “There was zero enthusiasm, no engagement,” said one Journal staff member who was at the most recent meeting in December.

The editorial was a stern reminder of Mr. Romney’s failure to win the trust of the Republican Party’s core conservatives, a group that pays close attention to Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers and cable news outlets. Though political strategists debate the ultimate impact of any single media outlet, what is written in the pages of The Journal and The New York Post and talked about on Fox News — all Murdoch properties — could have the collective power to shape the thinking of millions of voters.

Mr. Murdoch’s dim view of Mr. Romney points to a palpable disconnect between the two men, one that has existed since Mr. Romney’s first run for president four years ago, people who know them both said. More than a half-dozen friends and advisers to the two, speaking mostly anonymously to reveal private and frank conversations, said that the Murdoch-Romney relationship could be summed up rather simply: They do not have much of one.

They have met only a handful of times. Their lukewarm feelings toward each other stem from their encounter at a meeting of The Journal editorial board in 2007, when Mr. Romney visited to pitch himself as the most capable conservative candidate about two months before the Iowa caucuses.

Romney and Journal staff members who attended said that despite being deeply prepared and animated — particularly on his love for data crunching — Mr. Romney failed to connect with either Mr. Murdoch or The Journal’s editorial page editor, Paul A. Gigot. Instead of articulating a clear and consistent conservative philosophy, he dwelled on organizational charts and executive management, areas of expertise that made him a multimillionaire as the head of his private equity firm, Bain Capital.

At one point, Mr. Romney declared that “I would probably bring in McKinsey,” the management consulting firm, to help him set up his presidential cabinet, a comment that seemed to startle the editors and left Mr. Murdoch visibly taken aback.

The Journal’s write-up of that meeting would later glibly refer to Mr. Romney as “Consultant in Chief.”

Mr. Romney followed up later in the campaign with a second meeting in Mr. Murdoch’s office, but that, too, failed to light a spark. “I don’t think he ever got excited about Romney,” said one associate of Mr. Murdoch’s.

By the time the first Republican primaries of 2012 were closing in, Mr. Romney met again with The Journal’s editorial board. Mr. Murdoch sat in. “America doesn’t need a manager. America needs a leader,” he told the board. He wore a suit, which he would later change out of for an appearance on David Letterman’s show that evening. And at one point, according to a Journal staff member, he said lightheartedly, “I hope I’m getting better at this.”

The Romney campaign felt the meeting went well — so well that it was surprised when The Journal kept hammering him, reprising its complaints about his “inability, or unwillingness, to defend conservative principles.”

Fundamentally, Mr. Romney and Mr. Murdoch are two very different men. Mr. Romney is said to respect Mr. Murdoch as a visionary business mind and deeply admire the way he built the company he inherited from his father into a $60-billion global media power. But a teetotaling Mormon from the Midwest and a thrice-married Australian who publishes photos of topless women in one of his British newspapers are bound to have very different world views.

Mr. Murdoch’s wariness about Mr. Romney is similar to the way many Republican primary voters initially felt about the candidate. Mr. Murdoch wanted anybody else, and could not resist getting swept up in the flavor-of-the-week fickleness that gummed up this year’s Republican nominating process. He wrote glowing Twitter messages about Rick Santorum, calling him the only candidate with a “genuine big vision” for the country.

Along with Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, Mr. Murdoch urged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to run. Both men admire Mr. Christie’s gusto and toughness — a sharp edge they have themselves. “He really wanted Christie,” said one of Mr. Murdoch’s friends. Mr. Ailes, a former campaign strategist for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, shares Mr. Murdoch’s disdain of how the Romney campaign is being run, telling people privately that it is too soft.

Although Fox News has been cast by liberal critics as an arm of the Romney campaign, its coverage of the presidential election has been far more aggressive toward Mr. Obama than it has been kind to Mr. Romney.

Mr. Murdoch does much of his sounding off on Twitter, as he did last weekend when he suggested Mr. Romney replace his staff. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, politely brushed off Mr. Murdoch’s concerns about the staff’s competence. “Governor Romney respects Rupert Murdoch, and also respects his team and has confidence in them,” Ms. Saul said.

Those who know him say that his fondness for Twitter is classic Murdoch. A compulsive e-mailer and phone caller, he has always had a hyperactive mind. And the impetuous, unfiltered nature of Twitter suits his shoot-from-the hip style.

Mr. Murdoch’s political influence in the United States has never been anywhere near as unilateral as it was in Britain, where he once slipped into a private meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron through the back door of 10 Downing Street. But the phone hacking scandal has left him greatly diminished there and rendered him something more of a complicated political hot potato in this country.

Mr. Romney’s advisers say privately that having Mr. Murdoch sniping at them is better than the alternative. To be praised by him would open the campaign up to criticisms that it is a tool of the conservative establishment.

“To his credit, the idea that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t think something could be better run is unimaginable,” said one Romney adviser, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about Mr. Murdoch. “That’s just how he is.”

Last week when the campaign invited a few dozen leaders from Wall Street, the news media and Republican politics to an informal discussion with Mr. Romney at a private Manhattan social club, Mr. Murdoch was one of the first to offer a suggestion.

Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who was there, recalled that Mr. Murdoch spoke up after the chief executive of Univision, Randy Falco, told Mr. Romney that Mr. Obama had appeared on his network a dozen times and was building a considerable edge with Latino voters. (The meeting was first reported by Politico.)

“Every campaign attracts a fair number of critics,” Ms. Conway said. “But not every critic is created equal. Rupert Murdoch is a very important voice in the national conversation.”

When he spoke, Mr. Murdoch did not have much of a question — just more unsolicited advice, this time about the need to win over Latino voters.

“I hope that you’ll take the fight to President Obama,” he told Mr. Romney.

[Soul Crusher]

Romney is going to have to be dragged over the finish line , it is what it is.   Obama has to go.  He has done enough harm for 2 generations. 

[Straw Man]

Agreed, both are very awkward:

"My muslim Faith"

"57 States"

"Punch above their weight"

"XXXX is one of our strongest allies"

"Eat your peas" 

"Corpse Man"

Romney comes off and awkward and uncomfortable in his own skin and appears to be a person who is trying too hard to  act like a "regular guy"

Obama doesn't have that problem at all (not expecting you to see this given your history of living in a fantasy world)

[Soul Crusher]

Romney comes off and awkward and uncomfortable in his own skin and appears to be a person who is trying too hard to  act like a "regular guy"

Obama doesn't have that problem at all (not expecting you to see this given your history of living in a fantasy world)

Except when off teleprompter - uuuggghhhhhh uuhhh ugghhhhh uugghhhh  uuummmmmm uuuggghhh 

Romney is way too stiff for my likes, but ABO


I like Christie better - just putting libs in their place left and right.   

[whork]

HA!

That said, I really miss Tim Pawlenty.

You gotta love how the money machine gets their guy in no matter what. Plenty of good Republican candidates that got blown to the side while Cain, Bachmann and the rest were touted as saviors.

Fuck that. Conservatives wish they had Huntsman or Pawlenty to vote for. Instead they were lead astray by the power brokers. Shit, just ask Hillary how all that works.

+1

[GigantorX]

Except when off teleprompter - uuuggghhhhhh uuhhh ugghhhhh uugghhhh  uuummmmmm uuuggghhh 

Romney is way too stiff for my likes, but ABO


I like Christie better - just putting libs in their place left and right.   

I'll agree with this. Off teleprompter Obama sounds like a sputtering clown, George W. Bush-like.