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From an ‘Iconic’ ‘Reagan’ to Trash: Romney Adviser Laments the Fall of Mitt
Former Romney campaign adviser Don Senor is still delusional about why they lost, but very bitter over the way Romney is being trashed.
Senor was on Morning Joe lamenting how Republicans were saying Romney was like Reagan, an icon, when they thought he was going to win and now they won’t stop trashing him. Senor said Republicans who are trashing Romney now were “talking about (Romney) like he’s Reagan. The debate performances, the best of any Republican nominee and presidential history. This guy is iconic. Talking about him because they believed he was going to win in four or five days. Some of them were already talking to our transition, to position themselves for a Romney cabinet….”
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Transcript from MSNBC with modifications for grammar:
Joe Scarborough: we have a lot to talk about. What happened?
Dan Senor: In the election?
Joe Scarborough: No. Why happened with the blue jays this past year? What happened in the election? What happened? Lot of republicans went into election night thinking they were going to win. We heard mitt Romney did and a Romney did.
Dan Senor: Paul Ryan.
Joe Scarborough: Paul Ryan did. Did you believe on Election Day you were going to win?
Dan Senor: I thought between the end of the debates, the debate season and the onset of the storm, we had tremendous momentum.
Joe Scarborough: Yeah.
Dan Senor: We saw it in our internal data, saw it in some of the external data, the public data and saw it on the ground. We would go to rallies, people standing in lines, thousand for hours.
Joe Scarborough: What happened? Why was your internal data so flawed? Why was it so wrong?
Dan Senor: I think a couple things. One, there is a — some kind of systemic crisis today in the world of polling, I think on the right of center polling. The modeling was way off. How pollsters on the Republican side– although not just the republican side. Gallup polling, Rasmussen made similar mistakes. The understanding, the electorate looked like was way off.
Joe Scarborough: First of all, you know Rasmussen is a Republican poll.
Dan Senor: Gallup? I’m not letting anyone off the hook. I’m saying there is — look the republican establishment needs to do an audit and figure out how our understanding of what the electorate looked like was way off. Truth is, not just this election. We faced similar dynamics in certain parts of the country in 2010.
(Gallup is also a right leaning poll.)
Joe Scarborough: We got pounded in 2008, 2012. Wasn’t as much of a shock as last time and this time. We talked about this during the campaign, do you think — as David Frum says accurately and I don’t agree with everything that David says — the conservative entertainment complex, these websites, talk radio shows, certain TV shows, that just tell their viewers day in and day out you’re going to win, you’re going to win, you’re going to win. Obama, he’s going to lose and may be impeached before he’s lost. You’re going to win; you’re going to win. Don’t you think that severely hurt the cause?
Dan Senor: I think it — I think it reinforced some of the worst overly optimistic instincts. I don’t think that’s why we lost. I think it was part of the problem. It was, you know, it created these unrealistic hopes and expectations. It’s not why we lost. Look, you could — people — reporters across the political spectrum, pundits across the political divide, believed this race was too close to call. I’m not defending the conservative entertainment complex, but I’m not saying they’re the only ones that believed Romney had a real shot at this. Anyone covering our events between the end of the debate season and onset of the storm believed that Romney had some momentum. We can debate the degree of momentum, the depth of the momentum, but there was a sense that Romney had begun to turn the race around.
Mika: I hear you on that. What do you think — and I think the conservative entertainment complex dynamic is a part of this — what do you think the bigger problem is?
Dan Senor: Look, first of all, I think there’s a tendency after these races to award the winning side with the label of being the smartest guys in the business and they were genius and the losing side, you know, the biggest door knock knobs and just screwed everything up. Watching some of these Republican officials now –
Mika: Right.
Dan Senor: — trashing mitt Romney. Everyone’s going out trashing Mitt Romney.
Mika: I agree with you on this.
Dan Senor: It is stunning. These are — I will tell you, I was just talking about this with Richard, the Friday night before the election we were in Cincinnati, tens of thousands of people, you could feel the energy, 100 top tier surrogates at the event, I’m back stage with some of them, won’t mention their names, talking about like he’s Reagan. The debate performances, the best of any Republican nominee and presidential history. This guy is iconic. Talking about him because they believed he was going to win in four or five days. Some of them were already talking to our transition, to position themselves for a Romney cabinet.
Mika: They’re the first to jump.
Dan Senor: I won’t say who they are, they were on television, the body was — it was unbelievable, five, six days lately, absolutely eviscerating him.
Mika: That’s the bigger problem. I want to go back to the first thing you said, there’s this temptation to think that the winning side is the smartest. I actually think no, Romney should have done better.
End transcript.
Dan Senor was obviously drinking the Romney Koolaid, since he bought into Romney as Reagan and believed they had momentum after the first debate. It was clear to us from the polling that this was not true. We pointed out at the time that the fundamentals had not shifted, and that within days of the first debate, the improving economic data put an end to the debate bump. It was Senor’s choice to pretend that Rasmussen and Gallup were not right-leaning polls, just as it was his choice to ignore Nate Silver and Princeton. Just as it was his choice to ignore the fundamentals within the polling data. Just as it was his choice to ignore the swing state polling, which was very different from the national polling and rather importantly so. It was also Senor’s choice to believe that a “winning” debate performance based on Romney fundamentally shifting his policy positions until he sounded like a Democrat was a positive for them; the backlash to that choice was inevitable.
From Reagan to trash, the Romney Koolaid continues. Romney was never Reagan, he never had the trust of the Republican base and Romney was also not trash. It is not Romney’s fault that he represented all that is wrong with Republican policies.
Pretending this is Romney’s fault is just another way for Republicans to avoid reality, but Senor pretending the Romney campaign doesn’t bear some responsibility is absurd. The Romney campaign was flawed from the get-go. They thought they could buy the election with negative ads, and placed little effort into their ground game. The candidate was flawed and exposed as hating half of America. They are, quite frankly, lucky they did as well as they did between their incompetence and Romney’s character issues.
None of the Romney campaign’s mistakes – and they are too numerous to detail – excuse the real problem, which is that Republicans have ridden the Southern Strategy to its inevitable conclusion. They can no longer count on the resentful white vote to avoid coming up with good reasons why people should support policies that benefit the wealthy and corporations. Social division and claims of divine righteousness are not going to get the job done either.
Anyone who believes that Mitt Romney was like Reagan is obviously not dealing with reality, but what can you expect from people whose performance is being ridiculed and blamed by the entire Republican Party in their haste to run away from the national Romney spanking.
Romney was ‘iconic’ in the sense that he stood for the elite plutocrats who have been raping the middle class for the last 40 years and feel entitled to do so. The fact that he got busted for this belief makes him no less iconic. Republicans once again flee the rejected representation of all they stand for, without dealing with the inherent problems. If they keep this up, it will be a long time until they win another national election, their continued efforts at voter suppression notwithstanding.
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21 Responses to From an ‘Iconic’ ‘Reagan’ to Trash: Romney Adviser Laments the Fall of Mitt
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Coemgein
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 1:02 pm
It’s kind of telling: Senor notes in the same breath that these people were “talking about like he’s Reagan” and that “some of them were already talking to our transition, to position themselves for a Romney cabinet”.
Yet he wasn’t able to connect the dots that somebody who’s angling for a cabinet position is probably going to say flattering things to their prospective boss.
When the praise of sycophants and hangers-on is what gives you your confidence of a win, you have some serious denial issues…
Rita Nicholson
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Personally, I believe Mitt Romney and staff need to quietly go away. The race is over. Mr. Senor, et al may believe that Mitt is being “trashed,” but I believe that Mitt showed mean-spirited behavior to middle-class and poor though out his campaign and continues in this same venue. America has and should always be about the “working class” because these people are who made America great from the military men and women, the unions, and all who work hard and contribute to society. This thought process about people being “lazy” has got to stop. I do not call someone who has to work long hours at minimum wage “lazy.”
K from Bellingham
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 1:26 pm
It was worth millions in ad dollars to the various media outlets to make this appear to be a tight horserace. Pre-debates, Obama appeared to be pulling away, and look what happened…the money began flowing away from the Presidential, to the state House and Senate races.
Doris Forever
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 2:07 pm
It is what it is….Myth is iconic trash
David Hinson
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 2:19 pm
this is just cherry. does anyone remember the republican primaries? it looked to me, the entire party was who “eviscerated” him, and let the dead meat just rot and stink, and never thought the people could notice something stunk.
sooooo… why Romney? 1] because they have NO ONE, they are lost, no real solid platform 2] all the other wannabees were/are nuttier than a baby ruth bar
there is also a point not getting much play. and that is Karl rove as the Kingmaker and feeling there was an “anonymous” intervention for the will of the people. it would be thrilling to learn of the vast wealth of “kingmaker[s]” to mysteriously evaporate
mjh
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 5:49 pm
this is just cherry. does anyone remember the republican primaries? it looked to me, the entire party was who “eviscerated” him, and let the dead meat just rot and stink, and never thought the people could notice something stunk.
sooooo… why Romney? 1] because they have NO ONE, they are lost, no real solid platform 2] all the other wannabees were/are nuttier than a baby ruth bar
3] The ones who bankrolled the GOP presidential campaign {Charles and David Koch} weren’t gonna fund anyone who didn’t remind them of themselves . . . so, it stands to reason that they’d back a white/male/one per center.
Dunno know who was dumber: the people who thought either Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann ever had a shot at getting the nomination — or Herm and Shelly themselves for wasting their time . . .
.
Robert Chapman
Nov. 22nd, 2012 at 12:50 pm
David Hinson makes some great points.
Let’s start getting focussed on the 6400 state and federal officials to be elected in 2014.
The 2012 election was volatile because the noise of the weekly issues and campaign crises kept moving the polling numbers around.
It is time to start getting ready to defend the implementation of universal health care coverage in 2014 and to get the second term administration staffed up in 2013.
Senor creating mischief helps some, but solid policy research, field organizing, candidate recruitment and fund raising will assure that the 2014 mid-term turns out better than the 2010 mid-term did.
fedded-up
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 2:50 pm
More of the same delusional horse manure baguettes we heard throughout the campaign. ‘Reaganesque,’ my arse. REAGAN wasn’t even the mythological BS ‘Reagan’ they’ve been fantasizing about for >2 decades now. They had exactly ONE decent candidate – ONE, who wasn’t spouting teabilly nonsense and appeared to have some semblance of integrity and backbone – Huntsman. And they never gave the guy a scintilla of a chance. The only thing about this election that surprised me at all was the number of people who actually voted for the Romney/Ryan ticket. That was truly sickening to behold.
dragonpuff
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Obviously the race was never as close as the silly “pundits” claimed it was. In the MSM all of this is a show. I watched CNN manipulate the order of states that went for Obama to make it look like the electoral college was close and would be close.
I tuned into other networks and saw them do this too. They’d hold back a certain state to continue a meme. i wasn’t able to get MSNBC where I was so I don’t know if this was true for them also. I hope not.
Actually Dan Senor strikes me as a bit clueless. They judged that they would win by people who showed up at rallies and and what “skewed polls” said?
Excitement? People saying amazing (and untrue) things about Mittens to get a job in his cabinet? Sad. There were huge crowds at Obama rallies. That
meant nothing either. It was the Obama ground game that took Romney out.
Did the Romney campaign go to border cities? Did they ever think if you were in Cincinnati you would get people from Kentucky and Indiana–both states went for Romney–so you shouldn’t be shocked if you lost Ohio. And of course did any of them think this skewed polls thing was backed by Rove so if he tried some shenanigans (which I believe he did) he could say the polls were indeed closer than anyone thought? Did they make sure all the people who were coming to the rallies were actual registered voters and not just people caught up in the excitement?
Really, Romney had an awful campaign staff.
Robert Chapman
Nov. 22nd, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I am not affiliated with a campaign, as an activist, I donated a ton of money and spent hundreds of leisure hours on Obama and local Dems’ campaigns.
But there was a time when I was receptive to a message that offered a better alternative to Obama.
In my view, most other people experienced that receptive stage much later, and only decided to support Obama-Biden in late October.
Team Obama’s field operation WAS the decisive factor, but its impact was made in the last three weeks of the campaign.
For a campaign to have that sort of effect take months and months of preparation, though.
If Obama is to be successful in his second term, the political accountability that an active grass roots political movement provides is essential.
1voice1vote
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 3:02 pm
also from the interview:
When asked about Gov. Christie’s post hurricane conduct Senor said, “He was dealing with a crisis… and the last thing I’m going to do is judge someone who’s managing a crisis – in real time.”
One word, Dan Senor, you despicable hypocrite – Benghazi.
When asked about Republicans reflecting on their policies post-election Senor says, “Other policy areas – look – Republicans … have to do a better job of how to talk ABOUT…”
By all means, Republican leadership, don’t drag your constituents into the 21st century by educating them; simply find better language with which to fool them. Good luck with that losing strategy, GOP. I’ll be working to serve you another nice big plateful of Fail for Thanksgiving in 2014.
mjh
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 5:35 pm
When asked about Republicans reflecting on their policies post-election Senor says, “Other policy areas – look – Republicans … have to do a better job of how to talk ABOUT…”
By all means, Republican leadership, don’t drag your constituents into the 21st century by educating them; simply find better language with which to fool them.
Exactly.
It’s for this reason that you can expect Frank Luntz to remain on retainer by the GOP for some time . . .
.
Maranon
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 3:10 pm
They voted for Romney/Ryan ticket because of Obama’s skin color, the racism is virulent among many of the current GOP
I would not feel too sorry for Romney, he will be back trying to buy something else with his money bags. The mormons want to be at the top of the heap and reign over the planet.
The bible belt people will still believe they are the light of the world and try to shove their morality to the rest.
Reagan, he was a likable fellow, but not too bright, he had memorized so many scripts from his movies, he would just repeat them as if they were real policies (star wars come to mind). He left us in a huge deficit when he left office.
Good bye Romney and stay gone…
Robert Chapman
Nov. 22nd, 2012 at 1:01 pm
There is no question the racist vote went overwhelmingly to Romney, but that does not change the fact that Romney attracted tens of millions of votes from people who are not racists.
The conservatives are very firm in their beliefs and will not be shaken from them.
The idea among some liberals that the GOP are kidding about defunding social programs, privatizing social security, outlawing abortion, increasing taxation on middle and low income household, decertifying and outlawing public sector labor unions, enhancing the mobility of capital regardless of the effect on domestic employment and vastly increasing security spending is delusional.
The GOP will not, repeat, will not moderate on any of these issues and if Dems do not remain vigilant the GOP will re-assert itself in 2014 as they did in 2010.
D. W. Skinner
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 4:47 pm
Its because they were lying to his face when they said he was “ICONIC”. Now they’re just telling the truth…not hard to figure out..
Sara
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Dan Senor has plenty of practice lying to himself and the country. He was on the vanguard of the liars who touted Bush’s splendid little wars. I suspect he is constitutionally unable to give the Democrats credit for anything. If Obama said “It’s morning in America” Senor would swear categorically thatit was actually 9 PM.
mjh
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“Senor said Republicans … were “talking about (Romney) like he’s Reagan.”
I continually fail to understand why that’s a good thing . . .
.
majii
Nov. 21st, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Senor is as bad as the other republicans he’s complaining about. There is no way I’ll ever believe that he wasn’t angling for a job in a Romney Administration. Besides those huge paychecks he was getting, that was probably a major reason he signed on to the Romney campaign in the first place. Romney was used by many—-his advisers, his business consultants, his financial sponsors like Sheldon Adelson whose bidding he did on his trip to Israel, etc., and he got exactly what he deserved after the lost on November 6. The Romney bashing coming from the GOP tells Romney what he should have known all along–few people in the GOP really like him. They saw him as someone they could install in the WH to do their bidding. Grover Norquist put it best when he said the GOP doesn’t need a thinker in the WH, they only need someone who can sign laws passed by a GOP majority in Congress into law.
Anne
Nov. 22nd, 2012 at 1:09 am
Dan Senor is one of those who chose to delude themselves into believing that Willard Romney was presidential material. Some spent enormous amounts of money trying to get him elected, while others voted for him in order to get rid of the incumbent president. They were willing to overlook his many lies and flip-flops, as well as overstating his success as a businessman. This was all in the service of replacing the black man whom they have spent years trying to discredit. Mr. Senor is also deluding himself into overlooking the fact that the majority of voters rejected the regressive ideology of the GOP. Like most of Romney’s team, he was residing in the insular bubble that enabled him to deceive himself about Willard’s chances of winning the election. Now, he’s also one of those who have egg on their faces because they were so embarrassingly wrong about those chances. They have no one but themselves to blame.
KatzKids
Nov. 22nd, 2012 at 5:14 am
Senor’s comments – as could be expected from a Romney sycophant. Excellent analysis Sarah!
Just wanted to add that IMHO Mika is nothing but a brain dead twit. Her father must cringe whenever she opens her mouth.
Robert Chapman
Nov. 22nd, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Mitt Romney is iconic, maybe in the way Gen. George Custer is.
In all three debates Romney followed up his plan to cut federal spending with pledges to restore $450 billion cuts in DoD procurements and $715 billion cuts in Medicare that Obama had already made.
These pledges to cut federal spending by restoring $1.15 billion in cuts to federal spending Obama made were not slip-ups, they were also displayed in the five point economic plan on Romney’s campaign web-site.
The American people listened and 62 million voted based on facts.
Fifty eight million others, share Senor’s delusions about Romney’s abilities.