Durante un town hall meeting de Ron Paul anoche en Alfred, un diminuto pueblo de Maine, fue más la gente que se quedó fuera que la que consiguió encontrar sitio dentro del recinto donde se celebró el evento. El candidato tuvo que salir a saludar a los que se quedaron sin poder entrar.
domingo, 29 de enero de 2012
Sobre cómo Team Romney ha cambiado la dinámica de la campaña
The New York Times:
Facing the unthinkable here just seven days ago — a second loss in a row to Newt Gingrich — Mitt Romney’s campaign team hatched a two-part plan to win in Florida: make Newt mad and Mitt meaner.
In a call last Sunday morning, just hours after Mr. Romney’s double-digit loss to Mr. Gingrich in the South Carolina primary, the Romney team outlined the new approach to the candidate. Put aside the more acute focus on President Obama and narrow in on Mr. Gingrich.
Find lines of attack that could goad Mr. Gingrich into angry responses and rally mainstream Republicans. Swarm Gingrich campaign events to rattle him. Have Mr. Romney drop his above-the-fray persona and carry the fight directly to his opponent, especially in two critical debates scheduled for the week.
The results of that strategy, carried out by a veteran squad of strategists and operatives assembled by Mr. Romney to deal with just this kind of moment, have been on striking display here.
By this weekend, Mr. Romney’s aides were on the offensive and increasingly confident, with some combination of their strategy and Mr. Gingrich’s own performance swinging polls in Mr. Romney’s direction. Even as it acknowledged the damage inflicted on Mr. Romney by the past several weeks, his team suggested that it had learned a lesson about never letting up on rivals, especially if Mr. Romney wins the nomination and confronts Mr. Obama in the general election.
(...) With the Florida primary two days away, Mr. Gingrich is now facing the full capabilities of a Romney team that was built for battle, but that by several accounts became so confident during primary season that it failed to see Mr. Gingrich’s latest resurgence coming, presuming that he had been left for dead in Iowa.
“We had a moment where we kind of started drinking our own Kool-Aid, and it looked like we were just going to blow through it,” said John D. Rood, a chairman of Mr. Romney’s Florida finance team. “There is a little humility in getting your butt kicked in South Carolina, and all of the sudden it’s a wake-up call.”
Behind the scenes, it was more than that. It was a call to arms employing all the visible and invisible tactics of political warfare. As recently as Wednesday, several Romney advisers, donors and supporters were speaking in terms of what losing in Florida would mean and how they could survive it.
If Mr. Romney does win here on Tuesday, it will have been through a blistering and unrelenting series of attacks. His campaign has pressed everything at its disposal into service to eviscerate Mr. Gingrich, painting him as an erratic, unreliable Washington insider in mailings and television advertisements, at two critical debates here (where his team made sure Mr. Romney had ample and vocal supporters in the audiences) and even by sending supporters to mock him at his own events.
(...) David Kochel, an adviser who arrived here from Iowa to oversee the pressure campaign, described the strategy as “let’s go rush the quarterback.” A team of Romney boosters started infiltrating nearly every Gingrich campaign stop to offer instant rebuttals. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah showed up to challenge Mr. Gingrich’s record to reporters and at one point tangled with Mr. Gingrich’s press secretary as the cameras rolled. Bay Buchanan, a longtime conservative activist, worked on the Romney campaign’s behalf to win over voters and commentators.
Mr. Romney, meanwhile, had been receiving help from a new debate adviser — Brett O’Donnell, a longtime leader of the Liberty University debate team who advised Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota in her campaign last year — and assumed a new role as the campaign’s chief attacker, relinquishing his old approach of leaving the dirty work to supporters and a friendly super PAC.
A team of some of the most fearsome researchers in the business, led by Mr. Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, spent days dispensing negative information about Mr. Gingrich, much of it finding its way to the influential Drudge Report, which often serves as a guide for conservative talk radio and television assignment editors and to which Mr. Rhoades has close ties.
(...) The Romney team was also carefully tracking Mr. Gingrich’s every utterance for a potential opening. What an aide described as a “eureka moment” came just hours before the debate on Thursday night. At a Tea Party rally in the Central Florida town of Mount Dora that day, Mr. Gingrich had opened a new line of attack, noting that Mr. Romney had investments in funds that included shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage lenders.
Mr. Romney’s opposition-research team in Boston quickly dug into Mr. Gingrich’s own publicly disclosed holdings to find that he, too, had mutual funds invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The information was quickly fed to Mr. Romney during his private debate preparation session at a hotel in downtown Jacksonville.
When Mr. Romney delivered the attack against Mr. Gingrich that evening, Mr. Gingrich was left with no substantive response, a killer blow that helped keep Mr. Gingrich from commanding the debate stage as he had in South Carolina.
(...) As early as the day of the primary in South Carolina, the Boston team had returned to the drawing board, realizing that it had erred in leaving Mr. Gingrich to resuscitate his candidacy. “There was a belief among some that he was done; clearly that wasn’t the case,” said one Romney aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He likened the unanticipated comeback of Mr. Gingrich to a character from a horror movie who refuses to die.
Even as Mr. Gingrich was cruising to victory in South Carolina last Saturday, Mr. Romney’s team was meeting, setting aside its focus on Mr. Obama to treat Mr. Gingrich as its chief obstacle, realizing that a loss here in Florida could cripple the campaign.
Breaking into teams, they divided duties for a new plan to put unrelenting pressure on Mr. Gingrich, hoping to make him angry enough to throw him off track and remind voters about the most unflattering aspects of a record forgotten during a decade in which he solidified his status as a wise man in the party.
The Romney research department began studying Mr. Gingrich’s vulnerabilities, specifically the attacks, many of them employed by a pro-Romney super PAC, that had led to Mr. Gingrich’s collapse in Iowa. There, the team had observed that Mr. Gingrich seemed to become distracted and angry over negative advertisements and attacks on issues like his ethics problems in Congress and his work on behalf of corporate clients in Washington after he left the House.
Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, Mr. Romney’s senior strategists, also know Florida well as onetime advisers to former Gov. Charlie Crist, former Senator Mel Martinez and George W. Bush. They unleashed their first negative advertisement early last week. It links Mr. Gingrich’s work for Freddie Mac to the housing crisis here.
But, most of all, the attempt to regain an advantage rested on Mr. Romney’s own shoulders and his ability to deliver sharper distinctions, as an aide put it.
Mr. Romney was still in South Carolina when the team, led by Mr. Rhoades, presented the plan to him. “He was on the road, and there was a call with him on Sunday morning where we laid out all the different pieces of what was going on,” Mr. Schriefer said. “He asked questions, but it wasn’t a particularly long call; it was very calm, sort of ‘O.K., guys, let’s go win in Florida.’ ”
Dos nuevas encuestas confirman la ventaja de Romney en FL
Public Policy Polling:
PPP finds the same thing in its newest Florida poll that all surveys of the state have found in the last few days: strong movement away from Newt Gingrich and toward Mitt Romney. Romney now leads with 40% to 32% for Gingrich, 15% for Rick Santorum, and 9% for Ron Paul. Romney has gained 7 points and Gingrich has dropped by 6 since our last poll, which was conducted Sunday and Monday.Encuesta de Miami Herald/Tampa Bay:
It's clear that the negative attacks on Gingrich have been the major difference maker over the last week. His net favorability has declined 13 points from +23 (57/34) to only +10 (50/40) in just five days. Romney has pretty much stayed in place. At the beginning of the week he was at +31 (61/30) and now he's at +33 (64/31).
Santorum is actually the most well liked candidate among Florida voters with 65% seeing him favorably to 24% with a negative opinion. In Iowa Santorum's persistently high favorability ratings were a precursor to his late surge. But as popular as he is, he's only gone from 13% to 15% support in the last week. It seems unlikely that he'll be able to break into the top two.
The backbone of Romney's support in Florida is senior citizens. He's getting 50% of their voters with Gingrich at only 28%. Romney also appears to have a pretty good sized lead in the bank. Among those who have already voted he's at 45% to 35% for Gingrich.
If you want a clue as to why Romney releasing his tax returns hasn't hurt him one little bit in Florida consider this: 68% of Republicans in the state have a favorable opinion of rich people to only 8% with a negative one. Romney's up 47-32 among those who like rich people. Here's a simple reality: in a GOP primary it's an asset to be rich and successful, not a liability. Attacks on Romney along those lines just aren't going to be effective with Republican voters. Additionally only 14% of voters have 'major concerns' about Romney's overseas bank accounts, while 56% have none at all.
Newt Gingrich swaggered into Florida as a Republican front-runner, but now he’s close to slipping out as an also-ran against a resurgent Mitt Romney.
Gingrich is badly trailing Romney by 11 percentage points [42%-31%], garnering just 31 percent of likely Republican voters heading into Tuesday’s presidential primary, according to a Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald/Tampa Bay Times poll released late Saturday night.
President Barack Obama should be wary as well. Romney beats Obama by a 48-44 percent spread — a lead inside the error-margin, however — in a theoretical general-election matchup, the poll shows.
In the Republican primary, Romney’s lead looks insurmountable. It cuts across geographic, ethnic and gender lines. And the poll indicates Romney’s attack on Gingrich as a Freddie Mac insider is a hit with GOP voters.
“If there’s no 11th hour surprise,” Coker said, “this race is looking right now like it’s over.”
(...) Rick Santorum and Ron Paul — who did not campaign in Florida — are running well behind and have little chance of pulling into serious contention in the nation’s largest swing state, which holds 50 of the 1,144 delegates needed to help secure the GOP’s nomination at this summer’s convention in Tampa.
(...) Romney is running strongest in Southeast Florida, from the Keys to the Treasure Coast. About half of all voters favor him here. Gingrich gets about a quarter of the vote. Similarly, 52 percent of Hispanic voters favor Romney, compared to just 28 percent who support Gingrich.
sábado, 28 de enero de 2012
Romney visita el Panhandle
En Florida se dice que cuanto más avanzas hacia el norte, más al sur llegas. Y es lo que ha hecho hoy Mitt Romney trasladándose a Pensacola y Panama City, en el Panhandle de Florida. Se ha adentrado en el Sur Profundo para encontrarse con un electorado más parecido al de Carolina del Sur que al de Orlando, Tampa o Miami.
Si a tres días de la primaria, Romney se permite el lujo de dedicarle un día completo al Panhandle, y además un sábado, el día ideal para hacer campaña, es que sus sondeos le colocan en una posición bastante desahogada a nivel estatal.
Si a tres días de la primaria, Romney se permite el lujo de dedicarle un día completo al Panhandle, y además un sábado, el día ideal para hacer campaña, es que sus sondeos le colocan en una posición bastante desahogada a nivel estatal.
Team Romney busca desgastar psicológicamente a Team Gingrich (II)
El Congresista Connie Mack, partidario de Romney, confrontado por R.C. Hammond, portavoz de Gingrich, en un evento de Gingrich en Florida.
Jon Voight se une a la campaña de Romney
El actor Jon Voight ha expresado su apoyo a Mitt Romney durante un evento en Pensacola.
Voight, ganador del Oscar por 'El regreso' en 1978, se convirtió al republicanismo hace cuatro años, con un artículo en The Washington Times en el que explicaba su transformación política.
En el pasado destacó como una de las caras más liberales de la industria del cine. Hace cuarenta años protagonizaba películas anti-militaristas como 'Trampa 22' de Mike Nichols, era una de las voces más críticas con la Administración Nixon en Hollywood, asistía a recaudaciones de fondos de la campaña de George McGovern, y ayudaba activamente a registrar votantes para McGovern en los barrios marginales de Los Angeles.
Gingrich promete pelear hasta la convención
POLITICO.com:
Newt Gingrich made clear to reporters at a press conference in Florida this morning that he plans to press ahead even if he loses Florida on Tuesday, as polls are suggesting is likely at the moment.
“I will go all the way to the convention. I expect to win the nomination,' Gingrich said, via POLITICO's Ginger Gibson. "You just had two national polls that show me ahead. Why don’t you ask Gov. Romney what he will do if he loses since he is behind in both national polls.”
Asked how he planned to do that, Gingrich said, "State by state."
His comments come as Gingrich enters familiar territory, at least prior to his whopping South Carolina victory - surge and then, when momentum shifts, face questions about dropping out.
The questions have clearly offended Gingrich and his supporters, who feel the crush of blowback against the former House Speaker is unfair.
It's not clear how he will afford a campaign unless he suddenly is able to raise bigger sums of money. But if Sheldon Adelson continues to help an old friend through the super PAC supporting him, it may be less of a question.
"History Lesson"
El nuevo anuncio de Romney rescata un corte de un informativo de hace 15 años.
TOM BROKAW (NBC): "Buenas noches. Newt Gingrich, quien llegó al poder, después de todo, predicando mayor calidad en la política americana, un hombre que derribó a otro Speaker por acusaciones éticas, esta noche tiene en su propio historial el juicio de sus pares, demócratas y republicanos por igual. Por un voto aplastante, lo encontraron culpable de violaciones éticas; le cobraron una gran multa, y extendieron serias dudas sobre su futura efectividad."
TOM BROKAW (NBC): "Buenas noches. Newt Gingrich, quien llegó al poder, después de todo, predicando mayor calidad en la política americana, un hombre que derribó a otro Speaker por acusaciones éticas, esta noche tiene en su propio historial el juicio de sus pares, demócratas y republicanos por igual. Por un voto aplastante, lo encontraron culpable de violaciones éticas; le cobraron una gran multa, y extendieron serias dudas sobre su futura efectividad."
Luis Fortuño apoya a Romney en Orlando
AFP:El gobernador de Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuño, expresó hoy su apoyo al precandidato republicano Mitt Romney en Orlando, donde vive gran parte de la comunidad boricua, que representa el segundo bloque hispano más grande de Florida después de los cubanoamericanos.Con un historial conservador impecable de reformas fiscales y recortes en el gasto público, el Gobernador Fortuño también suena desde hace meses como posible running-mate.
"Apoyo a Mitt Romney como presidente de Estados Unidos", dijo Fortuño en un evento en Orlando (centro de Florida), pocas horas después que Romney prometiera en Miami que apoyaría la anexión de Puerto Rico como el estado 51 del país si los puertorriqueños votaban esa opción en un referéndum.
"Quiero agradecer al gobernador Fortuño por este apoyo, ¡es grandioso!", replicó el aspirante a la nominación del partido Republicano que el martes se mide frente a su rival más cercano Newt Gingrich en la primaria de Florida, junto a Rick Santorum y Ron Paul, los otros contendientes en la carrera.
Romney, que lidera por un ligero margen las encuestas de Florida, se dijo a favor de que Puerto Rico se convierta en el estado número 51 de Estados Unidos, si lo aprueban los puertorriqueños en un referéndum no vinculante que se prepara para este año.
Cortejando a los cubanos de Miami
La CNN analiza la importancia del voto cubano para los candidatos republicanos.
Reportaje de Radio Televisión Martí, la emisora creada por Jorge Mas Cansoa en los 80 para emitir desde Miami hacia Cuba, sobre el acto de Romney el otro día con los líderes del exilio anti-castrista.
Reportaje de Radio Televisión Martí, la emisora creada por Jorge Mas Cansoa en los 80 para emitir desde Miami hacia Cuba, sobre el acto de Romney el otro día con los líderes del exilio anti-castrista.
Ron Paul en Bangor, Maine
Gran recibimiento a Ron Paul en su primera aparición en el frío estado del pino.
Dixie Strategies: empate técnico en Florida
First Coast News:
Florida is up for grabs when it comes to next week's Republican primary, according to a new Dixie Strategies/First Coast News poll.La encuesta es anterior al último debate.
According to the new results out today, Newt Gingrich leads over Mitt Romney statewide, but his lead is well within the poll's1.93 percent margin of error.
(...) When asked, "If the Republican Presidential Primary were held today, for whom would you vote?," 35.46 percent of the 2,567 likely voters polled selected former House speaker Gingrich, and 35.08 percent selected Romney.
The same question showed former senator Rick Santorum in a distant third place with 9.38 percent, followed by Ron Paul's 7.42 percent.
Nearly 4 percent of the respondents (3.93) chose "someone else," and 8.74 percent said they were undecided.
Digging deeper, ex-Massachusetts governor Romney had the highest percentage of voters with a "very positive" opinion of him, with 29.06 percent compared to Gingrich's 27.64 percent.
Expanding the results to include "very positive" and "somewhat positive," Romney got 67.25 percent, to Gingrich's 56.25. Santorum scored higher than Gingrich in overall positivity: 60.75 percent, though his "somewhat positive" was twice as high as his "very positive." Texas representative Paul scored 31.46 percent combined.
Romney supera a Gingrich por 5 a 1 en publicidad en FL
The Fix:
Despite new infusions of cash, former House speaker Newt Gingrich is still being crushed in Florida television ad spending by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
With the primary coming up on Jan. 31, Gingrich and his supporters are being outspent 5-to-1 by Romney and his supporters as total spending in the state approached $20 million.
According to a Republican media buyer who provides the Post with television ad numbers, Gingrich’s campaign has spent only $1,112,541 on Florida television ads.
The pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future has spent $2,164,727, despite a $5 million contribution from the wife of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who already donated $5 million to the group.
A spokesman insisted that the group was spending the $6 million it had promised to invest in the Sunshine State, but so far that money has not been put into TV. The total pro-Gingrich television spending so far is only $3,277,268.
Romney, meanwhile, has spent $6,723,288 and the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future has spent $8,815,227 for total Romney-supporting spending of $15,538,515.
Part of Romney’s dominance stems from the fact that his super PAC supporters began putting money into Florida way back in December, and he began spending money himself in early January, while Gingrich and his supporters have only been airing ads in the state for the past few days.
"What Kind of Man"
Nuevo anuncio de Gingrich que trata de desmontar algunas de las cosas que Romney dijo en el último debate.
GOBERNADOR HUCKABEE: "Si un hombre es deshonesto para conseguir un trabajo, será deshonesto en el trabajo."
NARRADOR: "¿Qué clase de hombre engañaría y distorsionaría sólo para ganar una elección? Este hombre: Mitt Romney.
"Romney dijo que siempre ha votado republicano cuando tuvo oportunidad. Pero en la primaria de Massachusetts de 1992, Romney tuvo la oportunidad de votar a George H.W. Bush o Pat Buchanan, en cambio, votó por un demócrata liberal.
"Romney dijo que sus inversiones en Fannie y Freddie estaban en un fondo fiduciario. Pero, como se dijo en el National Journal, Romney ganó decenas de miles de dólares en inversiones no en un fondo fiduciario.
"Romney negó haber visto un falso anuncio que su campaña utilizó para atacar a Newt Gingrich. Pero la campaña de Romney pagó el anuncio y la voz de Romney aparece en el anuncio aprobando su falso contenido.
"Si no podemos confiar a Romney en un debate, ¿cómo podemos confiar en él en la Casa Blanca?"
GOBERNADOR HUCKABEE: "Si un hombre es deshonesto para conseguir un trabajo, será deshonesto en el trabajo."
NARRADOR: "¿Qué clase de hombre engañaría y distorsionaría sólo para ganar una elección? Este hombre: Mitt Romney.
"Romney dijo que siempre ha votado republicano cuando tuvo oportunidad. Pero en la primaria de Massachusetts de 1992, Romney tuvo la oportunidad de votar a George H.W. Bush o Pat Buchanan, en cambio, votó por un demócrata liberal.
"Romney dijo que sus inversiones en Fannie y Freddie estaban en un fondo fiduciario. Pero, como se dijo en el National Journal, Romney ganó decenas de miles de dólares en inversiones no en un fondo fiduciario.
"Romney negó haber visto un falso anuncio que su campaña utilizó para atacar a Newt Gingrich. Pero la campaña de Romney pagó el anuncio y la voz de Romney aparece en el anuncio aprobando su falso contenido.
"Si no podemos confiar a Romney en un debate, ¿cómo podemos confiar en él en la Casa Blanca?"
La Latin Builders Association apoya a Santorum
La Latin Builders Association es la asociación de constructores hispanos más importante de EEUU. El Senador Rick Santorum se dirigió ayer a 500 de sus miembros en el Hotel Hilton de Miami y recibió su endorsement.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)