What could Romney have done differently to win?

[Darth Wong]

Many people are waxing eloquent about the reasons Romney failed, so I'm curious: armed with the power of Captain Hindsight, you rewind to May 30, 2012: the day after Romney has clinched the Republican nomination for president. You are Romney's campaign manager. What could you have done differently, in order to win the election?

Keep in mind:
1) You can't change candidates. Romney is your guy, with all his flaws.
2) You can't undo all the stuff he said in order to win the Republican nomination.
3) You can't foresee Hurricane Sandy.
4) You can't prevent the idiotic rape-related utterances of other Republican candidates such as Mourdock and Akin. You have the powers of Romney's campaign manager, not an omnipotent deity.
5) You can't change the Republican platform. It is written by powers greater than you. You only have the power to advise Romney on his messaging.

So what could he have done differently? How could he have won the election? Despite the large margin of electoral victory, it was very close in the actual popular vote. It seems like relatively small changes might have made the difference.

[Channel72]

The biggest forseeable weakness was the shifting demographics. There's just not enough straight white God-fearing Christian males to win elections anymore. You need the growing number of minority voters (mostly Latinos and blacks), as well as women. The only Latinos which lean Republican are Cubans, so the Republicans really needed to do a lot more to court the minority vote. A softer stance on immigration and a lot more pandering to minority interests and women's interests right from the beginning may have helped with some of those swing states. Of course, it's a tough line to walk when it comes to women's interests due to the anti-abortion party mandate, but with some clever message-tailoring about opportunities for women in the workforce, Romney might have been able to sway a lot more women.

Of course, the question is difficult to answer because I think the GOP platform itself is fundamentally the problem in terms of capturing minority and women voters.

[weemadando]

Throw the rape-lovers under a bus in the most public fashion possible. Don't just encourage them to leave the race, but say that you will never recognise them as a member of your party nor let them in your White House, even for a visit. That might cost you with fundies (pro-tip, it won't because you can still be ambivalent about abortion) but it may well pull the female vote your way somewhat, or at least stop the ongoing public backlash.

Actually prepare for a fucking debate. Don't just repeat the same point over and over and try to drag every question back to your initial talking point.

[Zinegata]

Many people are waxing eloquent about the reasons Romney failed, so I'm curious: armed with the power of Captain Hindsight, you rewind to May 30, 2012: the day after Romney has clinched the Republican nomination for president. You are Romney's campaign manager. What could you have done differently, in order to win the election?

Keep in mind:
1) You can't change candidates. Romney is your guy, with all his flaws.
2) You can't undo all the stuff he said in order to win the Republican nomination.
3) You can't foresee Hurricane Sandy.
4) You can't prevent the idiotic rape-related utterances of other Republican candidates such as Mourdock and Akin. You have the powers of Romney's campaign manager, not an omnipotent deity.
5) You can't change the Republican platform. It is written by powers greater than you. You only have the power to advise Romney on his messaging.

So what could he have done differently? How could he have won the election? Despite the large margin of electoral victory, it was very close in the actual popular vote. It seems like relatively small changes might have made the difference.

Have him sever all of his connections to the Republican party. Claim he had an awakening and had felt morally repulsed by how he had to to compromise some of his moderate beliefs to pander to the crazy part of the Republican base. Run as an independent, and hopefully leave the Republicans in such disorganized tatters that they have no choice but to vote for Romney (who should lay out a more fiscally sane policy than "tax cuts and defense spending increase") while still drawing away enough independent or even liberal support from Obama.

Hey, you asked how to make Romney win, not the Republicans . Though admittedly the above suggestion does border on violating #5 and requires Romney to actually be brave enough to pull a Theodore Roosvelt-style Bull Moose stunt.

[lPeregrine]

I'd start by picking a different vice president. The strategy of trying to win with high turnout among the far right is clearly insufficient, so I've got nothing to lose by assuming they'll vote for whoever has the "R" next to their name and picking someone with more moderate appeal, preferably someone from a less wealthy background that might offset the perception that Romney is out of touch with the average person.

The other thing I'd do is try harder to take advantage of the debates. I start with a solid win in the first debate, so build on that. And, above all, I ensure that Romney has more to say in the final debate than "I'd do what Obama did, but kind of do something maybe differently". I'm not sure where exactly to push a major difference, but the last thing I want to do is have the final debate right before the election give the impression that Romney isn't a strong leader.

Finally, while I can't prevent the pro-rape idiots in my party from trashing their own campaigns, I can put more distance between them and my own candidate. Make sure Romney condemns them in harsh terms, and use what influence I can to cut all official support for them. Those seats are probably lost anyway, so there's no point in sacrificing Romney's image in a futile effort to keep an R at any cost.

[Mr Bean]

You are Romney's campaign manager. What could you have done differently, in order to win the election?

Keep in mind:
1) You can't change candidates. Romney is your guy, with all his flaws.
2) You can't undo all the stuff he said in order to win the Republican nomination.
3) You can't foresee Hurricane Sandy.
4) You can't prevent the idiotic rape-related utterances of other Republican candidates such as Mourdock and Akin. You have the powers of Romney's campaign manager, not an omnipotent deity.
5) You can't change the Republican platform. It is written by powers greater than you. You only have the power to advise Romney on his messaging.

So what could he have done differently? How could he have won the election? Despite the large margin of electoral victory, it was very close in the actual popular vote. It seems like relatively small changes might have made the difference.

Okay the President was vulnerable in five areas
1. The Handling of the War, not Libya but Afghanistan
2. The economy
3. The Latino vote
4. Broken promises
5. The size of Goverment

Romney's trick to wining is simple, he needs to get ahead on immigration even if he can't change he positions he can pick a more Latino friendly option. I don't care what you have to promise him you need Macro Rubio on your team even if he's imperfect (And he is) because they lack any other kind of person who can literally speak the language let alone have the cultural background to appeal. That takes care of 3, if you can swing the Latino vote 50/50 your doing great as a Republican.

To take care of 1 Romney needs to run left of Obama, he needs to hammer Obama on his private kill list. The lack of charges being filed before killing Americans is a nice thing to run on and hammer Obama on since there is literally no defense to offer on why Al Lib was not even charged. Make sure to frame it in context that going after Terrorists is good but we need to at least offer Americans a chance to surrender and face judgement. IE go to the courts get an arrest warrant place charges and then take him out if you find him working with a terrorist in the field. Run left and run hard left because stoking fear of secret FEMA Deathcamps appeals to the base and here is a gold plated chance to say Obama orders hits on American citizens... could you be next for not agreeing with his radical socialism?

To take care of 2 you just need to refine the message and not attack on economic issues where there is something from Bain that can be drawn on. For example don't fucking talk about the auto industry instead talk about every other industry but Auto. And for Xenu sake do your research to make sure Stimulus funds are not in use at a plant where you plant to give a speech.

To handle 4 you just need to focus on his right leaning promises and make each one a meme.

Last Romney needs to be careful who's help he accepts and by that I mean kick Trump to the fucking curb, tell Fox News Trump died as of May 30th 2012 as far as Romney is concerned and if they want an interview they have to treat Trump as dead and not acknowledge his existence. Same thing with Newt. Both of them did damage to the Romney campaign in their bungling so kick both the curb and keep them there.

And as a final note, the Romney campaign should be based around two week news cycles. Every two weeks something is being leaked or pushed for a solid week on our good friends at Fox before we spend a week talking about it and rinse and repeat. We need not to hammer the same points for a month but introduce a negative thing, talk about it for a week so everyone knows what's going on after the media spent a week talking about it then move onto the next thing. Save two or three big things for when Obama manages to move the news cycle onto him.

[Simon_Jester]

Pressure Romney not to present himself as Mister One Percent so much. He really doesn't have to and it can't possibly help him among blue collar voters. He should be trying to avoid talking about large chunks of the country as some kind of degenerate slime for having below-median income, and so on.

Get a look at what's really on Romney's tax returns; see if they can be released safely. Probably not; crud.

[Darth Wong]

I'd hazard a guess that not releasing Romney's tax records was probably an absolutely correct decision.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm not sure there is anything different that Romney could have done to win, not with the resources realistically available to you as his campaign manager. He was always a small chance at victory even back before he became the nominee.

[lPeregrine]

I'd hazard a guess that not releasing Romney's tax records was probably an absolutely correct decision.

But what about the information they did release? The way they handled it they got the worst of both worlds, they let the news go on and on about how Romney won't release his taxes, and then in the end they released enough to still make him look bad. They might as well get it over with, release something to satisfy the demands without committing complete suicide, and hope that something else comes along to take it out of the news focus and let everyone forget about it.

[Darth Wong]

I'd start by picking a different vice president. The strategy of trying to win with high turnout among the far right is clearly insufficient, so I've got nothing to lose by assuming they'll vote for whoever has the "R" next to their name and picking someone with more moderate appeal, preferably someone from a less wealthy background that might offset the perception that Romney is out of touch with the average person.

I have to agree; Paul Ryan was a terrible pick. Romney already had the rabid fundie "we hate Obama he is the Antichrist" vote locked up anyway, so what's the point of pandering to them with his VP pick?

Throw the rape-lovers under a bus in the most public fashion possible. Don't just encourage them to leave the race, but say that you will never recognise them as a member of your party nor let them in your White House, even for a visit. That might cost you with fundies (pro-tip, it won't because you can still be ambivalent about abortion) but it may well pull the female vote your way somewhat, or at least stop the ongoing public backlash.

This seems to be a popular suggestion. I suppose there would be those within the party who would fight you on this, because the stuff the rape-lovers said was really no different from the standard "pro-life" position; they just made the mistake of saying it plainly, instead of gracefully side-stepping it in order to avoid being obviously offensive. However, I do agree that it would have made a difference in terms of staunching the bleeding among female voters who were outraged by the whole thing. As Alec Baldwin said, when people ask if "the rape guy" won and you have to ask which one they're referring to, your party has a serious problem.

I don't care what you have to promise him you need Macro Rubio on your team even if he's imperfect (And he is) because they lack any other kind of person who can literally speak the language let alone have the cultural background to appeal.

Picking Rubio as the VP could have made a big difference in Romney's appeal to minorities, I agree. I wonder if it would have cost him among the anti-immigration southern crowd, but then again, it's not as if those guys would have voted for Obama. They might have stayed home, however.

To take care of 1 Romney needs to run left of Obama, he needs to hammer Obama on his private kill list.

The idea of running left of Obama on foreign policy is fascinating: very risky, but bold and aggressive, and (dare I say it) exhibiting the one thing Romney kept promising but could never deliver: an impression of strong leadership.

To take care of 2 you just need to refine the message and not attack on economic issues where there is something from Bain that can be drawn on. For example don't fucking talk about the auto industry instead talk about every other industry but Auto. And for Xenu sake do your research to make sure Stimulus funds are not in use at a plant where you plant to give a speech.

I'm not sure that would have worked very well. If he didn't talk about the automotive industry, the Obama campaign would have hammered him on his silence about the issue. I could imagine the campaign ads now: "Romney said 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt', and on his campaign tour, he has refused to even mention the American auto industry. Mitt Romney: a Wall Street insider with a history of neglect and disregard for hard-working American auto-workers". Romney's vulnerability on the automotive industry is just something the Romney campaign has to suffer for, one way or another.

To handle 4 you just need to focus on his right leaning promises and make each one a meme.

Wouldn't that only play well among the sort of voters who were most enthusiastic about "right leaning" promises, who were probably going to vote for Romney anyway?

Last Romney needs to be careful who's help he accepts and by that I mean kick Trump to the fucking curb, tell Fox News Trump died as of May 30th 2012 as far as Romney is concerned and if they want an interview they have to treat Trump as dead and not acknowledge his existence. Same thing with Newt. Both of them did damage to the Romney campaign in their bungling so kick both the curb and keep them there.

Can Romney really tell FOXNews what to do? They can threaten him just as easily as he can threaten them. He needs their support badly.

And as a final note, the Romney campaign should be based around two week news cycles. Every two weeks something is being leaked or pushed for a solid week on our good friends at Fox before we spend a week talking about it and rinse and repeat. We need not to hammer the same points for a month but introduce a negative thing, talk about it for a week so everyone knows what's going on after the media spent a week talking about it then move onto the next thing. Save two or three big things for when Obama manages to move the news cycle onto him.

I don't know; the release of talking points seemed pretty well-executed to me in the campaign as it was conducted.

[Sea Skimmer]

Not making a futile last minute attempt to 'put Pennsylvania in play' would have helped, the money and visits by Paul Ryan could have been better used in another state. PA was never seriously in play.

So would a different VP pic, Ryan was a defensive pic and that made no sense when he was already trailing in the polls on a consistent basis. Its actually what I expected at the time, but I expected Romney to loose too.

The fact that he got such a big boost from the debates, indeed they created the only time he had a serious chance of winning, shows that undecided voters do exist, and that he could gain ground by explaining himself. So general Romney needed to talk more about who he was, and what he would do. Instead he ran almost the whole campaign on cut taxes, which everyone has heard before and was kind of just assumed out of hand that Republican = less government, and on Obama is bad without being too specific about that either. This just wasn't going to cut it, too conservative, too defensive. His number one feature was supposed to be his extensive private business experience, but instead of trying to defend or justify Bain Capital he backpedaled away from it. Not everything they ever did was evil, he could have played with that better. Since he was never that good with people and talking, he let himself become a faceless and jobless rich guy, and left doubters to assume the worst.

[Channel72]

I have to agree; Paul Ryan was a terrible pick. Romney already had the rabid fundie "we hate Obama he is the Antichrist" vote locked up anyway, so what's the point of pandering to them with his VP pick?

They probably thought they needed Ryan to offset the whole "Mormon thing". But it turns out evangelicals didn't seem to care much that Romney was Mormon, due to their fear/hatred for Obama. After the first debate, Romney's Mormonism basically just faded out as a non-issue.

[Sea Skimmer]

I have to agree; Paul Ryan was a terrible pick. Romney already had the rabid fundie "we hate Obama he is the Antichrist" vote locked up anyway, so what's the point of pandering to them with his VP pick?

Apparently they actually thought the base would not come out to vote enough and stay home. The real problem with this logic was the core assumption that the base could win this on its own. But like you said, the popular vote loss was not overwhelming, a lot smaller I think then Bush's margin of victory in 2004, so concentrating turning out the base was not lacking in validity either. It just couldn't be the only goal.

[ryacko]

Obama roughly raised and spent a hundred million dollars more then Romney. But I think that's another thing I can't fix.

Personally, I would argue that the perverse incentives of Obamacare would encourage employers to reduce the hours of low-income workers until they are considered part-time by the IRS to deprive them of benefits. There might be other perverse incentives. This might unfortunately go over some heads. Probably all of them.
And since both candidates receive debate questions ahead of time, give Romney a talking point other then we have less ships since 1917. I mean, who is his military adviser? We also have more then enough ships, unless you listen to John Lehmen.
I would also emphasize or at least have Romney emphasive the threat of Russia (Putin does wish to restore Russia's strength and influence in the Former Soviet Union), the Chinese annexation in the Pacific, Obama's continued war effort in Iraq, and maybe even claim the deficit has prolonged the recession (through the crowding out effect).


According to Nate Silver, the election wasn't close at all.

[Mr Bean]

I don't care what you have to promise him you need Macro Rubio on your team even if he's imperfect (And he is) because they lack any other kind of person who can literally speak the language let alone have the cultural background to appeal.

Picking Rubio as the VP could have made a big difference in Romney's appeal to minorities, I agree. I wonder if it would have cost him among the anti-immigration southern crowd, but then again, it's not as if those guys would have voted for Obama. They might have stayed home, however.

Unless massive numbers of them stayed home there are no states that were close Romney states along the border where the anti-immigrant vote would have swung things the other way. Every single border state Romney won by over 11 points some he won by nearly twenty. Rubio helps you in places like New Mexico and possibly hands you Florida so net zero loss for a possible gain of 33 electoral votes is a win/win in my vote. Every other part of the south is locked into a Republican win column except North Carolina. Rubio might hurt you there but I say simply spending time in North Carolian brings out enough evangelical vote to offset any immigration votes.

To take care of 1 Romney needs to run left of Obama, he needs to hammer Obama on his private kill list.

The idea of running left of Obama on foreign policy is fascinating: very risky, but bold and aggressive, and (dare I say it) exhibiting the one thing Romney kept promising but could never deliver: an impression of strong leadership.

That's the beauty of it... it's only running left of Obama because Obama is so far right into the authoritarian area of the spectrum. And Obama gets zero real credit for it aside from Osama Bin Ladin the fact he's being murdered hundreds of people to get to a handful of Al-Q leadership as only Bush could dream of still results in him getting attacked as weak on foreign policy.

That's another thing, running Neo-con philosophy through the thesaurus a few times so he can say something other than "I totally agree with the President on everything in foreign policy"

To take care of 2 you just need to refine the message and not attack on economic issues where there is something from Bain that can be drawn on. For example don't fucking talk about the auto industry instead talk about every other industry but Auto. And for Xenu sake do your research to make sure Stimulus funds are not in use at a plant where you plant to give a speech.

I'm not sure that would have worked very well. If he didn't talk about the automotive industry, the Obama campaign would have hammered him on his silence about the issue. I could imagine the campaign ads now: "Romney said 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt', and on his campaign tour, he has refused to even mention the American auto industry. Mitt Romney: a Wall Street insider with a history of neglect and disregard for hard-working American auto-workers". Romney's vulnerability on the automotive industry is just something the Romney campaign has to suffer for, one way or another.

You misunderstand me, the line should be to ignore the Auto industry unless Obama brings it up then repeat the lie he went with about private credit handling the issue and say private credit would have handled the issue if the government had not stepped in. No I mean Romney should hammer the President on lots of other industries like why Iphones are built in China, why the new video game council is going to be made from parts from half a dozen Asian countries. Hammer him on everything that Clinton and Bush did to help ease shipping jobs overseas. Remember anything bad from an old administration that Obama failed to fix becomes his fault in this method of reasoning.

To handle 4 you just need to focus on his right leaning promises and make each one a meme.

Wouldn't that only play well among the sort of voters who were most enthusiastic about "right leaning" promises, who were probably going to vote for Romney anyway?

PolitiFact's Obameter is handy for clarification here. In there you find a list of 2008 promises made, kept, compromised, broken, stalled and in progress. Digging through that I see four easy attack lines, one helping foreclosed home owners which the Obama plan turned into a bank giveaway. Second refining the tax code, sell that one as something Republicans are eager to work with the President on but Obama was lying about being interested, ending No-bid contracts (Sell that as a Capitalist and imply that Obama is giving contracts to Democratic doners) and last hit Obama from the left on the Generic Drug issue. Something he can hit as a businessman telling Americans Generics are just as good as name brand but thanks to sweet heart deals to Obama doners the President has made everyone's drug bills higher despite promising us he'd lower prices.

Remember as a Republican facts are mostly optional, half truths are just as good as real facts because no one calls Republicans on anything besides Maddow.

Last Romney needs to be careful who's help he accepts and by that I mean kick Trump to the fucking curb, tell Fox News Trump died as of May 30th 2012 as far as Romney is concerned and if they want an interview they have to treat Trump as dead and not acknowledge his existence. Same thing with Newt. Both of them did damage to the Romney campaign in their bungling so kick both the curb and keep them there.

Can Romney really tell FOXNews what to do? They can threaten him just as easily as he can threaten them. He needs their support badly.

Fox News exists as a wing of the Republican party, part of the broad based Murdock media empire. He very much can tell them in exchange for access they have to do something for him. Hell Fox News does that when Obama asks so why would they refuse Romney? He (Romney) did use Trump to host fundraises after all, no matter how many pennies Trump scraped together he was not worth it since he broke several good Romney news cycles with his stupid antics not to mention nearly running the Republican convention if his little racist stunt had gone off.

And as a final note, the Romney campaign should be based around two week news cycles. Every two weeks something is being leaked or pushed for a solid week on our good friends at Fox before we spend a week talking about it and rinse and repeat. We need not to hammer the same points for a month but introduce a negative thing, talk about it for a week so everyone knows what's going on after the media spent a week talking about it then move onto the next thing. Save two or three big things for when Obama manages to move the news cycle onto him.

I don't know; the release of talking points seemed pretty well-executed to me in the campaign as it was conducted.

Here I disagree strongly as a minute to minute politics watcher. Running a campaign is all about building easy to follow narratives for the media and thus the public to follow. It's kind of like staging a TV show except the villain never changes it's always your opponent. They were all over the place and went back and forth from economy to foreign policy to weird contraception issues that helped them not at all.

Where I the director, we have June, July, August, September and October to work in. October is bringing it all together month and launching the really nasty shit so that leaves June, July and August to work in with September being the month we save for our convention. So if we start in June we talk economy of three weeks then on the 4th week we transition into something economic related and related to our next issue which would be the Banks and Debt, we go for three weeks on that stamping out brush fires as we go before moving onto our next episode of the Evil Obama show.


Final note on the evangelicals, what every Republican since Bush II forgot was the fact that you don't have to ever mention a single evangelical issue to get them on your side. Simple word choice is all one needs, winking and nodding when your describe an issue in moral imperative terms is enough to get the 700 club and a thousand preachers buzzing. Simply saying you prayed before you decided X instead of Y is enough to win them to your side if you have an R in front of your name.

[Grumman]

To take care of 1 Romney needs to run left of Obama, he needs to hammer Obama on his private kill list.

The idea of running left of Obama on foreign policy is fascinating: very risky, but bold and aggressive, and (dare I say it) exhibiting the one thing Romney kept promising but could never deliver: an impression of strong leadership.

I wonder whether it would be possible to run left with right wording: to call Obama out on doing the terrorists' recruitment for them every time the CIA fucks up and kills a kid or twenty. Or say he'll go after the traitors that give the military a bad name, ruin otherwise worthwhile evidence with "enhanced interrogation techniques" or even attack their own squadmates, while Obama's more of a "go after the whistleblowers and hope the problem goes away on its own" kind of guy.

In other words, don't attack Obama as weak on terror, attack him as incompetent on terror.

[Darth Wong]

To take care of 1 Romney needs to run left of Obama, he needs to hammer Obama on his private kill list.

The idea of running left of Obama on foreign policy is fascinating: very risky, but bold and aggressive, and (dare I say it) exhibiting the one thing Romney kept promising but could never deliver: an impression of strong leadership.

I wonder whether it would be possible to run left with right wording: to call Obama out on doing the terrorists' recruitment for them every time the CIA fucks up and kills a kid or twenty. Or say he'll go after the traitors that give the military a bad name, ruin otherwise worthwhile evidence with "enhanced interrogation techniques" or even attack their own squadmates, while Obama's more of a "go after the whistleblowers and hope the problem goes away on its own" kind of guy.

In other words, don't attack Obama as weak on terror, attack him as incompetent on terror.

While the strategy is bold and aggressive, it does carry risks, and one of them is the fact that it would totally demolish the narrative that the Republican party has spent the last thirty years carefully constructing: that Democrats are "soft" and "weak". Changing it to "recklessly over-aggressive and violent to the point of inciting hatred against America" is bold but is so disruptive to longstanding prejudices that the results are unpredictable. Having Obama stand up in a debate and say "I will not apologize for destroying our enemies" would make peoples' brains explode. All the chest-thumping dumb-ass nationalist warmongers who normally vote straight-ticket Republican would be really confused and conflicted.

[TimothyC]

If the Libya attack was going to work, it was going to have to be done better:

"Mr President, you keep saying you don't want to discuss the situation until all of the facts are in. Why then did your administration - your UN Ambassador - your press secretary - keep repeating the lie about the attack being triggered by the video when we knew that wasn't the case? What did you know Mr. President, when did you know it, and why did your administration lie about it?"

Remember, it's not the act that gets you, it's the cover-up.

[Sea Skimmer]

Romney kind of backed off the Libya topic because the family of one of the dead men specifically asked him to do so, which did make it into the press, and I suspect a mortal fear was struck that this could become the doom of the campaign if mishandled.

[Block]

Romney kind of backed off the Libya topic because the family of one of the dead men specifically asked him to do so, which did make it into the press, and I suspect a mortal fear was struck that this could become the doom of the campaign if mishandled.

He also had Fox News to do it for him, and do it in a much slimier way than Romney ever could have.

[Sea Skimmer]

I've been thinking on the auto bailout for a few hours now, and I do wonder if Romney couldn't have neutralized that issue by admitting not that he was wrong to oppose it, but that he was glad at least that it worked out, and then used that as a talking point about how America is broke and we can't expect to bailout every problem because that's just whoring freedom to the Chinese banks. It'd be tough, but this wouldn't necessarily alienate his supporters nor just openly endorse Obama.

[Irbis]

To take care of 1 Romney needs to run left of Obama, he needs to hammer Obama on his private kill list. The lack of charges being filed before killing Americans is a nice thing to run on and hammer Obama on since there is literally no defense to offer on why Al Lib was not even charged. Make sure to frame it in context that going after Terrorists is good but we need to at least offer Americans a chance to surrender and face judgement.

You will be counter-kicked as being SOFT ON TERROR and STATE SECRETS CIA PROOF.

No, what you need as manager is to pick some neatly republican states, recruit in viral way, say, 250.000 people, and, according to these rules, covertly pay them to relocate for 2-3 months to Ohio and a few more battleground states. At 1.000$ per person, that's 250 mln $, less than quarter of Romney's campaign budget. Alternatively, use same money to run Jill Stein (or other believable left candidate, anyone who could be convinced or coerced to do so) as spoiler in a few key states. Use all the fools who say Obama is as bad as Romney to torpedo his campaign.

Gaining Latino vote is all well and good, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. All states Latinos are in voted Romney anyway, except California, but this one is so Barack it's not even worth bothering. EC system is fucked up - such concepts as 'becoming popular' or 'gaining more votes' do nothing to win, as they will be in states you have anyway or too Democratic to switch. No, the only way to victory is to change demographics in these few key states a bit, even by a few thousand votes at a time, and then, in truly democratic way, 60.5 mln votes on Obama cease to matter

[Ariphaos]

I just saw a post from a heartfelt, died-in-the wool Republican, who had been using language like 'lieberal' for years, vote straight Democrat, because of his daughters.

I don't think Romney had a chance without the 'female' vote. I don't think the Republican party does, in the future, thinking of it. They might be able to get away with being bigots for a long time, but it's not just that over half the population is female. Or that women are more likely to vote.

I don't think handling everything else 'perfectly' from nomination on would have made any significant difference, in comparison.

[Lord Zentei]

The convention was far too late a date to try and save the campaign. The wheels of Romney's defeat were set in motion during the primaries, where he pandered to the fringe in order to secure the nomination. He needn't have done so, since most of his opponents self-destructed, and the only viable ones left were Gingrich and Santorum - I doubt they could have secured the nomination even with Romney being more moderate and the Tea Party on the prowl. There's a limit to how far he could have tried that, of course: witness the fate of Huntsman. Nonetheless, some kind of middle ground could surely have been found. At least he could have come off as more human, like he did during his concession speech.