Look no further than the debacle last week of Mitt speaking to a small crowd in the cavernous Ford Stadium tat seat 65,000 people. The news pictures of 1,200 people sitting at one end of the football field with 65,000 empty seats clearly visible was devastating, and was used by his detractors to imply that Romney is failing to generate any excitement among Republican voters. A Daily Kos post showed a picture of empty Ford Stadium versus a picture of a large stadium in Denver almost completely filled to hear Barack Obama speak in 2008, along with some mocking Twitters.
But that's not really fair. Here are the facts:
The Detroit Economic Club arranged the event and sold tickets for it ($45 for members; $75 for non-members), and when two indoor venues sold out quickly, club officials moved the speech to Ford Field.
So a crowd of 1,200 club members who paid to hear Romney speak was actually a pretty good turnout. So why do I think this event shows why Romney can't win the Presidency? Because, 1) to win you need a staff that is smart enough to know that a crowd of 1,200 people in a huge stadium is going to look tiny and news pictures will give the impression that the event was a bust (that was my first reaction to the pictures). Romney's staff should have rejected the venue, but didn't. That picture will be used against him again and again in the future. 2) Romney's speech.
“You know, the trees are the right height,” he said. “The streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.”
[Ann Romney drives a Cadillac SRX - two actually. They are designed in Detroit but made in Mexico]
The trees are the right height, the streets are just right? Romney has said a lot of stupid stuff that has gotten him in a lot of trouble ("I don't worry about poor people"), but his speeches are also full of weird stuff like this. It makes people stop and scratch their heads in confusion. People don't want their Presidents to say weird stuff.
Besides an inept staff and saying stupid things that make people groan and weird stuff that no one understands, Mitt is also - a poor debater, - he will take any stance he feels he has to to get the votes, and - he has no rapport with white blue-collar voters so important to the Republican Party. No, Mitt will not be our next President (unless the SuperPACS can buy the office).
Update: As if to reinforce what I wrote above, here's Maureen Dowd's column today in the NYTimes:
[The GOP's] jitters increased exponentially as they watched Mitt belly-flop in his hometown on Friday, giving a dreadful rehash of his economic ideas in a virtually empty Ford Field in Detroit, babbling again about the “right height” of Michigan trees and blurting out that Ann “drives a couple of Cadillacs.”
--Trakker
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