Unable to receive messages from reality
Michael Ivins/European Pressphoto Agency — Hugs on stage during the Romney Election Night event in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Republican Bubble
By DAVID FIRESTONE, NYT
Is it possible that the numbers-crunchers high up in the Romney campaign really had no idea President Obama might win? A report Thursday by CBS News says that senior Romney aides were utterly “shellshocked” Tuesday night when they lost one swing state after another.
There’s a chance that the Romney team wasn’t all that naïve; that the campaign just doesn’t want to admit it was bluffing to the press, the big donors, and possibly the candidate himself. But if the report is accurate, it indicates that Romneyworld was encased in the same bubble surrounding Fox News and so much of the Republican party for the last year, unable to receive messages from reality.
The campaign, according to the report, was certain Democratic turnout would be substantially lower than it was in 2008, ignoring a multitude of polls, the huge early-voting numbers, and a get-out-the-vote operation that they should have seen with their own eyes. (Not to mention Nate Silver.)
That’s the same wishful-thinking mistake that right-wing analysts have been making publicly for months, and it produced a sputtering meltdown on election night by Karl Rove, the man who both affects the campaign with tens of millions in third-party spending and then analyzes the results for Fox.
(More here.)
By DAVID FIRESTONE, NYT
Is it possible that the numbers-crunchers high up in the Romney campaign really had no idea President Obama might win? A report Thursday by CBS News says that senior Romney aides were utterly “shellshocked” Tuesday night when they lost one swing state after another.
There’s a chance that the Romney team wasn’t all that naïve; that the campaign just doesn’t want to admit it was bluffing to the press, the big donors, and possibly the candidate himself. But if the report is accurate, it indicates that Romneyworld was encased in the same bubble surrounding Fox News and so much of the Republican party for the last year, unable to receive messages from reality.
The campaign, according to the report, was certain Democratic turnout would be substantially lower than it was in 2008, ignoring a multitude of polls, the huge early-voting numbers, and a get-out-the-vote operation that they should have seen with their own eyes. (Not to mention Nate Silver.)
That’s the same wishful-thinking mistake that right-wing analysts have been making publicly for months, and it produced a sputtering meltdown on election night by Karl Rove, the man who both affects the campaign with tens of millions in third-party spending and then analyzes the results for Fox.
(More here.)
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