In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Republican strategist Karl Rove says Mitt Romney has had an advantage in news coverage of his campaign from “traditional” outlets: February has only two primaries (Michigan and Arizona, both on the 28th) and one debate (on the 22nd). Mr. Romney can duplicate his Florida strategy, where his campaign and super PAC outspent the Gingrich forces on ads by a ratio of 5 to 1 during the last three weeks. But dangers lurk. While traditional news organizations have been balanced or slightly favorable in their coverage of Mr. Romney, the GOP blogosphere has been decidedly negative on him all January, pointing to continuing unease among conservatives. It’s probably true that Romney hasn’t received much love from conservative bloggers. Search “Romney” on RedState, a leading conservative blog, and the top three results are: “Mitt Romney as the nominee: Conservatism dies and Barack Obama wins,” “The unelectable Romney” and “Not Romney.” But it’s decidedly not true that Romney has received “balanced or slightly favorable” coverage from “traditional news organizations.” A study published mid-January by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that Romney got the most negative coverage of any of the Republican candidates on the three network nightly news broadcasts and even Fox News’ “Special Report”: On the broadcast networks, evaluative comments of Romney were 78% negative vs. only 22% positive. By contrast, on-air judgments of Ron Paul were 73% positive vs. 27% negative, evaluations of Jon Huntsman were 71% positive vs. 29% negative, Rick Santorum ’s evaluations were 56% positive vs. 44% negative, and comments about Newt Gingrich were 52% positive vs. 48% negative. Other candidates received too few evaluations to be statistically meaningful. FOX Results Romney fared slightly better on FOX “Special Report”, than on the networks, with 63% negative vs. 37% positive evaluations. By contrast, Ron Paul fared less well than he did on the networks, with evenly balanced coverage — 50% negative and 50% positive comments. Rick Santorum did best on FOX with 63% positive vs. 37% negative judgments. These were the only candidates who received enough evaluations on FOX for meaningful analysis. This doesn’t take newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times into account. But come on. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Follow this link:
Wrong, Rove; news coverage of Romney not ‘slightly favorable’
Mitt Romney has done fairly well managing expectations of his success in the Republican primary. Which is to say he hasn’t thrown fists of confetti into the air while doing the Hustle under a banner that says “PRESIDENT ROMNEYYYYY!” But here’s an autograph he gave in November to a supporter who’s confident Romney will be the next commander in chief. Via the New York Times:
More here:
Romney dots his ‘i,‘ only crosses one ’t’
And the results from Florida are (Fox News) Romney received 46 percent of the Florida vote. Gingrich had 32 percent, followed by Rick Santorum with 13 percent and Ron Paul with 7 percent. Romney won all 50 of Florida’s convention delegates. The Politico’s Maggie Haberman, who has done a pretty good job in covering the GOP
View post:
Six Takeaways From Florida
Major gaffe? It probably won’t do very much damage but there is a fundamental philosophy of Romney exposed here. Here is what Romney said: In an interview with CNN Wednesday morning that should have been a Florida victory lap, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made a fumble that could give rivals an attack ad
More:
Romney: Welfare State So Successful We Don’t Have to Worry About Poor
Mitt Romney emerged from his Florida victory with a big fund-raising advantage over Gingrich and perhaps Obama.
See the original post:
Romney Rides Fund-Raising Wave
ContributorNetwork – COMMENTARY | I watched former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s Florida victory speech Tuesday night. He’s looking stronger since the South Carolina debates in an attempt to defeat Newt Gingrich and show that he’s no “shrinking violet.”
Read the original post:
Harvard Educated Romney Disses Harvard Educated Obama
(ContributorNetwork)
Romney looks tired here in this CNN interview this morning. Too much post-primary partying, I guess. But it’s exactly the time he needs to be on guard and on his A-game. Instead, he fumbles the post-Florida football and gives ammunition to all of his opponents on both sides of the aisle by reinforcing the perception and reality that he is gobsmackingly out-of-touch. This could easily have been a Saturday Night Live parody. Facepalm : After winning the Florida primary, GOP presidential nominee hopeful Mitt Romney explains to CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien that he is focused on a particular portion of the American population in his campaign. Romney says, “ I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich…. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.” O’Brien asked him to clarify his remarks saying, “There are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, ‘That sounds odd.’” The message shouldn’t be “Let Them Eat Food Stamps.” The message shouldn’t be that he’ll “fix” any holes in the safety net. It’s supposed to be: Get them off food stamps, provide them with real educational choice, reform the culture of dependency, and get government out of the way so that businesses and entrepreneurs can thrive — and increase economic opportunities for everyone. Yes, there is a better choice. Latest PPP results: “Trouble ahead for Romney?” What might be most interesting in both states is what happens in a head to head between Romney and either Gingrich or Santorum: -In Missouri Santorum leads Romney 50-37 and in Ohio Santorum leads 45-38. -In Missouri Gingrich leads Romney 43-42 and in Ohio Gingrich leads 42-39. Two takeaways from those numbers: if this ever came down to Romney, Paul, and just one out of Gingrich and Santorum, Romney would be in a lot of trouble. And he’d be in more trouble if the single conservative alternative ended up being Santorum. Santorum is a stronger long term threat to Romney than Gingrich because he has less baggage and is simply much better liked. Santorum is easily the most popular of the Republican candidates in both Missouri (+42 favorability at 63/21, compared to +20 forGingrich and +10 for Romney) and Ohio (+35 at 59/24 compared to +10 for both Gingrich and Romney). It’s just proving hard for Santorum to get much traction while Gingrich is still in the race. *** Update: Romney updated his comments here . I don’t think it helps much. Do you?
View post:
BlunderMitt: Let Them Eat Food Stamps; Plus: PPP results point to Santorum
Over on the homepage , I lay out five key lessons from Florida: The gender gap returned with a vengeance; the elderly abandoned Newt: early voting closed the window for Gingrich to help himself in the final days; Romney ran stronger among evangelicals than most expected: and Newt underperformed where he needed it most, in the Panhandle and key northern Florida counties. Oh, and some GOP consultants are talking about making the national party convention in Tampa “more interesting and productive than most.”
See the article here:
Outside of South Carolina, Women Don’t Find Newt So Charming
Today’s Jolt is heavy on late-night analyses of Romney’s big win in Florida, but I conclude by looking around the Twitterverse of the Right and looking at all of the impending . . . unity . . . Our Robert Costa wonders if Romney’s negative ads enraged Gingrich so much that Romney’s top rival now has no other desire than vengeance: Keep reading this post . . .
The rest is here:
Kumbaya, Fellow Republicans! Kumbay-OW!
