Romney's Lost War with Expectations

Okay, we all know Romney lost his northern neighbor last night by 5 points, which was humiliating. He spent something on the order of $7 million in ads and put in a huge ground operation and lost. That's a crushing blow considering he was ahead there for the last seven months. He didn't manage expectations well. He got ahead in both Iowa and New Hampshire by so much for so long he really couldn't afford to lose them. By conservative estimates he has spent something like $15 million between those two states, more than all the other Republicans in both states put together. That's just....awful. By some other estimates, like one I saw earlier, Romney spent almost $30 million in Iowa alone including ads, ground operations, and the bribes he paid people to vote for him in the Aimes Straw Poll earlier. By bribes I mean he paid their participation fees.

Now, he goes on to Michigan where he has allowed the media to make it sound like he is a shoe-in for a victory there. "Oh, but George Romney, his dad, was governor there!" Yeah, but that was 40 years ago! That would be like here in Wisconsin if one of Warren Knowles' descendants campaigned on his memory. Warren who? Exactly. Nobody remembers George Romney or anything about him except maybe 10% of the population. They remember much more clearly that McCain won the state against Bush by 8% in 2000 and also that they like John McCain. With McCain's media prompted boost out of New Hampshire and the general talk of his moribund campaign's resurrection he will likely pull ahead. He was in contention all along anyway.

It will be interesting to see what the polls say. However, Romney seems to be favored to win in Michigan by the pundits as misguided as that may be. Huckabee also has a decent chance here as I posted earlier and will siphon off support from Romney's push at social conservatives. Even IF he wins in Michigan the media won't give him any credit and if he doesn't, then they will say "Damn you are pathetic. That should have been in the bag." Romney completely mismanaged expectations and his strategy. Whoever was managing Mitt Romney's presidential campaign should never get near politics again.