Saturday, October 6, 2012

Romney Counting on Honey Boo Boo To Win


“If you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit,” was a quote used by actor W.C. Fields and Mitt Romney used that as his strategy for the first debate against President Barack Obama.  In August a Romney pollster said, “We're Not Going to Let Our Campaign Be Dictated by Fact-Checkers.” Romney gave fact checkers whiplash and finger cramps as he twisted and contorted away from positions he had held for months.

President Obama seemed unprepared and rightly so if he had expected that his opponent would stand on positions he had been campaigning on during his entire run for President, but a different Mitt Romney showed up. The Mitt Romney that denied his economic plan, tax plan and just about everything else he said he had believed previously was counting on public distraction and media laziness.



Mitt Romney knew there would be a huge viewing audience for the first Presidential debate and figure most of the viewers had not been paying close attention to the Presidential race up until that point. Romney has some reason to believe the public is too distracted to care if what he said was true given the Republican National Convention drew fewer viewers than an episode of the reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. As for the news media serving as a source of fact checking, that ended when the fight for ratings became more of a priority for broadcast news divisions than journalistic purity.

Romney decided to introduce himself to over 60 million of the American electorate as a completely different politician than he had been during his prior months of campaigning. The next day when the focus was off his staff and spokespeople started to correct some of the policy shifts feeling that the information would not filter out to the voters that would not tune back in until the next debate. Welcome to the big top of reality television politics where style may rule over substance. Come on Honey Boo Boo, Mitt is counting on you.

No comments:

Post a Comment