Romney Speech

Well his crowd is excited. Oddly the line about how America needs someone who has held a "private sector job" was a huge cheer line. "This is the greatest nation in the history of the Earth." Crickets. Weird stuff that Republicans cheer for.

I was really struck with how negative his message was. The major theme of the first half seemed to be "Ameirica is going to hell." It was cautionary (going not gone we need to change etc) but talking about how America will be a second tier power at the end of the 21st Century unless you vote for me (booga booga booga) seems like a pretty negative message. And his wind up was his "BUT THEY HAVEN'T" set. If you haven't seen it, it basically is a bunch of "Washington politicians promised to give us FOO" (no immigrants or less taxes for rich people, whatever) and the crowd replies "BUT THEY HAVEN'T." Again, his message seems to be "bad stuff will happen if you don't elect me." He's encouraging people to vote for him because they will avoid a negative rather than achieve a positive.

I have to say that this is a tough sell. When I was canvasing Kerry in 04, this was essentially my problem. I didn't LOVE Kerry. I didn't think he would bring about Universal Healthcare or an immediate withdrawl from Iraq (because, well, he SAID that he wouldn't). But I was out there canvasing for him in Pennsylvania because Bush was a disaster. People just don't respond to this well. If you ring someone's doorbell with a message that's essentially negative ("hey, Bush really REALLY sucks, totally awful, so vote for Kerry") they just start feeling negative. You're trying to convince them to go DO something. VOTE. That's a positive action, and most people just don't get that motivated to get up early on Tuesday just to punch the other candidate in the nose.