Mitt Romney: Scrappy Underdog?

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Today I watched Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP convention and was impressed that he did not pander.

Yes, portions of his speech were aimed specifically at his audience — Romney talked a lot about education reform as a means of promoting opportunity — but for the most part, Mitt gave his standard Republican stump speech, saying the same things to the NAACP I’d heard him say to crowds in Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida and other stops along the GOP primary campaign trail.

Mitt slammed ObamaCare and was willing to risk being booed for it, and in general displayed an admirable firmness of conviction.

Will this win Mitt many black votes in November? Probably not, but it will help inspire support for a candidate who seems sincere, whose message is consistent and who is unafraid to speak up unapologetically for core Republican principles even when speaking to a hostile audience.

UPDATE: Drew M. at AOSHQ was peeved at the MSM’s distorted reporting about the speech, whereas my optimistic appraisal was based on having watched the speech itself . . . on MSNBC, of all places.

 


51 comments

  1. Exactly what I was thinking. Shoot, even if it was a calculated risk, I’ll take it. 

    Better than Obama’s “Summer of 1001 lies” speech strategy, any case. 

  3. (Scoop has the full speech.)

    I agree with your take, Stacy, and after kind of hammering Romney for not winning any votes there, Rush sort of said the same thing, except he wasn’t so positive about the not pandering part.  That was the whole point, I thought: no pandering.

    However, it would have been cool if he’d opened up with, “Boy!, I bet a lot of you here today thought you’d have jobs by now.”

  5. I’d have tried opening with, “So, how’s all that Hope & Change working out for ya?”

    But the point of addressing the NAACP wasn’t to win any of their votes.  They are a bunch ignorant leftists.  The point was to demonstrate to the mushy middle swing voters that Romney was willing to go into the lion’s den.  And that he did NOT tailor his speech to pander to the group, but stuck to his same themes.

    The booing was rude, and gives all future nominees the excuse to send a cardboard  cutout of themselves to address the NAACP – let the rude jerks boo that.

  6.  Agreed.  The NAACP went Communist long ago.  Romney likely didn’t expect to win any votes today.  And he is willing to say “Repeal ObamaCare” to the faces of the lefties. 

  7. Not only was Romney willing to say it, but the NAACP was willing to entertain hearing it.

    That is significant.  Might not have changed any minds today, but it does say to everyone present that that these types of ideas are  at least worthy of discussion, if not necessarily acceptance.

    It is a step in the right direction.

  8. Just to have this: ” a candidate who seems sincere, whose message is consistent and who is unafraid to speak up unapologetically for core Republican principles even when speaking to a hostile audience.” is a major miracle this election year. Let’s hope there’s building momentum and that this is a trend that continues.

  9. I totally agree that the point wasn’t to win any of that crowd’s votes. Romney was not my first pick but he is definitely in it to win it and I hope he does.

  10. I’m glad he didn’t pander, but he shouldn’t have gone at all. The   NAACP, whatever its history, is today just a far-left pressure group. By speaking before it and giving the false legitimacy to speak for all black people, Romney merely plays into the left’s hands.  Romney should be speaking before audiences of black conservatives and independents, black business groups etc.

    Pandering to the NAACP is beta male Republicanism.

  11. As usual, legacy media skews the coverage.  It’s all about the booing on ObamaCare, but not a word about the cheers for traditional marriage and the Keystone pipeline.

    So perhaps it was not a wasted trip.

  12. Red, I think you and Adjoran hit on the “unmentionable” factor: Courage.

    Mitt went into the lion’s den in West Philadelphia in May and now pushes his education, fiscal and social reforms in Houston.  It’s sublime.
     
    Wolverines!

  13. I hope those who want to withold their vote from Obama will at least consider casting their vote fir Romney. Do we really need 4 more years of Obama?

  14. “Mitt slammed ObamaCare and was willing to risk being booed for it, and in general displayed an admirable firmness of conviction.”

    Agreed. Romney looks like he’s setting an anchor and it’s about as forceful as we’ve seen from him.

    Credit where credit is due. Romney stepped up.

  15. So, Mitt is going to repeal Obamacare, something modeled on Romneycare, and replace it with lower costs and preventing insurance companies from denying pre-existing conditions? So… he’ll repeal one thing and replace it with the exact same thing. 

    He’s now got my vote. 

  16.  I disagree.  He’ll win a few votes.  There are plenty of blacks that passionately support school choice, among other things.  Kudos to Romney.

  17.  I read that Romney was applauded when he spoke about education:

    “And he expertly used education reform as a wedge between the president
    and his supporters in the audience, earning sustained applause when
    arguing that “candidates cannot have it both ways” — i.e., Obama must
    choose between advancing education reforms and protecting teachers’
    unions.

    “

  18. Maybe Romney learned a lesson from RomneyCare, unlike the lefties, who still worship ObamaCare, hmmmm?

    Or maybe you’re just an obfuscating troll with limited imagination.

    Naw.  It’s both.

  20.  So, that’s the secret to firing up the base?  Go and get Black people to boo ya? lol.  sounds racist.

  21.  The NAACP also applauded parts of his speech.    Which makes you sound bigoted and stupid. 

  24. Oh Jeff. You’re so tough. You’re as big a coward as the moderator on here who censors posts. Hide the truth from the ignorant right and you get more Romney votes. 

    I tried to have a conversation, but fuck you, fuck the moderator and fuck both mccains.

  25. You block some because they disagree. You are the biggest type of coward there is. “Me hit button, make bad man go away”

  26. If he really wanted to go into the lion’s den, he’d speak to the thousands of people he put out of work and try to win their votes. 

  30.  Woohoo!  Scary Liberal anonymously posting inane comments cut&pasted from some leftie news aggregation site on the INTERNET pokes at me about being a coward. 

    And by dropping debunked assertions (a/k/a “turds”) on the living room floor, he’s just trying to have a conversation.  From which I am forcing Scary Liberal to run away, by offering a counterpoint in the same format (i.e., sarcastic snark rubbed in its face). 

    I just love the smell of hypocrisy in the evening. 

    And I don’t feel guilty at all — not after checking Scary Liberal’s profile, and seeing a grand total of 4 posts under this nom de blog.  Either S.L. is too thin skinned to be allowed free rein on the INTERNET, or it’s one of our resident trolls, trying to make us feel guilty.

    Try offering HONEST comments, S.L., something that you didn’t hit a search engine for.

  31.  Liar.  Romney’s work with Bain saved jobs and helped turn around failing companies.

    Even the SC plant near Newberry that was closed when Bain acquired the company did not stay shuttered long, and the local county economic development board reported employment went UP as a result.  In the meantime, the parent company survived and thrived and is now part of the world’s leader in its field.  Score another miss for lying leftist scum, eh?

  34. I’m glad you are back to your normal blogging routine, RSM.  But Romney’s stump speech sucks, so I don’t care if his normal non-conservative speech was unchanged to something more non-conservative than usual.

    Also, I assume this is mostly a campaign ploy.  The NAACP is dead organization within the black community…i..e. it is mostly filled with old people.

     It he wants to peel away any of those black Obama voters who are dissatisfied with him (and that is evidently a sizable group) he will have to be more creative.  Though I doubt he will since most of his team from the northeast which has littler diversity outside the urban areas….meaning I’m not confident he has people in place that know anything about outreach to minorities.

    This whole episode all speaks to the predictability and lack of imagination of the Romney campaign.

    The ObamaCare decision is going to hand Romney the White House…but lets not pretend that anything in Romney’s background lends one to foresee that he will lead the way for a smaller government….to the benefit of all Americans…regardless of race.

  35. If you’d ever bothered to make a study of it (which of course means specifically: by watching a lot of Hollywood-produced movies about “black” people), you’d know they all have guns and can do kung-fu fightin’ and sh*t.

    So a fork would just get in the way.

  36. Nice strawman. Who said he did it just to stir up “the base”?

    Romney spoke to a hostile audience (and he knew such a response would be forthcoming RE ObamaTax), reiterated a point about which there’s been considerable debate, still held his ground, and made a respectable presentation. This as he’s guaranteed to be the GOP nominee and could easily have moved to pander. I’d say that was presidential. What’s Obama’s plan in contrast? He’ll be sending Slow Joe. IOW he’s taking the Black vote for granted just as just about every Democrat does year after year after year while throwing them the tailbone that is Biden.

    Romney faced a specific PAC constituency (even one I, for example, disapprove because of its radicalization) and presented his platform. Honestly. While the NAACP was his most proximate audience, his bigger audience was fence-straddling Democrats, Independents, and those to the Right. They all saw a guy who acted presidential – one who would engage those who are inclined to dislike him immensely and yet remain steadfast, transparent, and sincere.

    Your “racist” claptrap is just idiocy.

  38. Some conservatives are just as knee jerk in responses as leftists. Wombat is, alas, one of them.

  39. It’s no secret that I don’t like Mittens, but he did the right thing going to the NAALCP conference. Critics, such as Walter Williams, have had some pretty bad things to say about them and it is a ggod thing to go speak the truth to them (although we need to get FedGov completely out of education). getting booed by that bunch is a badge of honor, not of shame.

  41.  You couldn’t be more wrong. The NAACP is seen as representative of the vast majority of black voters, therefore Romney speaking to them is very appropriate. Yes, of course he should speak to groups of black conservatives, and no doubt he will, but that will not move the dial in any direction as far as reaching out to the mass of black voters. Romney demonstrates he has a firm core. What’s not to love?

  42.  I’ve never known of Wombat banning anybody who had anything worthwhile to say, including liberals. There’s no reason to allow these flaming jackasses to come on here and purposely poison the discourse.

  43. Constitution Party, Red, but I am encouraged that Romney has enough courage to do the obvious right thing.

  44. He can only do the right thing if there are enough votes behind him. I voted Constitution Party last round because McCain simply wasn’t a choice and Ron Paul dropped out. This time it’s ABO.

  45. TPT, *why* is the the NAACP seen as “representative of the vast majority of black voters”?  Because everyone is always validating them as that– every GOP candidate appears before them.  African-Americans don’t vote for the GOP and GOP outreach to the NAACP isn’t going to change that.  Instead we should be speaking to African-Americans who share our values rather than letting our enemies dictate the terms on which we address them. The NAACP needs to realize their partisan far-left pandering has consequences- -and that they won’t have a seat at the table in a GOP administration.  In reality, Romney is not going  to the NAACP to win black votes– he’s going to convince moderate whites that he’s not “racist”- to get their votes- but to buy into that is a sure losers game– the sort of tactical win/strategic loss that beta male GOP member have specialized in for decades.  We need to stand up forcefully for conservative values and make it clear to liberals that there will be consequences for them in opposing us. The strategic win is to empower conservative and moderate African Americans as the authentic voice of that community, while disempowering the NAACP radicals. . . Any other strategy is a chump’s game.

  46.  He’s making the point that if he is elected, he will be the President of all Americans, and he made it plain that he will work to make life better for the African American community. I didn’t see his speech as pandering, unlike most other GOP nominees who address the NAACP.

    And again, addressing only black voters who “share our values” will not win one extra black vote, nor any other. If Mitt does no more than inadvertently convince an extra one percent of democratic black voters to stay home, he’s accomplished something.

  48. But since he’s in, its proof that the RNC does not WANT to do the the right thing.  In which case, its my duty to apply the rod of correction to the seat of knowledge.

  49.  Hey, QM?
    Up yours, buddy. I only keep you around to amuse the rest of the commenters, much like Anamika only slightly more coherent.

  50. @beddd0ebf1f1d7f0c1561106bdcdfb31:disqus 

    “But since he’s in, its proof that the RNC does not WANT to do the the right thing.  In which case, its my duty to apply the rod of correction to the seat of knowledge.”

    I applaud your conviction but I don’t get how that will help us now. Witholding your vote or casting it for a party that you know won’t win simply to make your point is like shouting into the abyss. The only thing the politicians ‘hear’ is money. Now if you’re working to make a bigger difference on the local level then bravo to you but in a national election I’m afraid to say it’s an exercise in futility.

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