Romney 2012: The Last Great White Campaign

[Likely Voter]

Interesting article in National Journal on how the Romney campaign have essentially given up on non-white vote and are focused on not just winning the white vote , but getting 61% (McCain got 55%, Bush got 58% in 2004)

...here are some excerpts:

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http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824

[Likely Voter]

Yes Obama has pandered to his constituents by giving them what they want (gay marriage, stopping deporting Mexican kids). The difference with how Romney is appealing to white voters is he is making racist birther jokes and (worse) running blatantly false anti-welfare ads aimed at white voters to stoke racial resentment.

Romney always talks about how Obama is trying to divide America (because he wants to end the tax cuts for the rich to help balance the budget...the bastard!)...but ROmney is overtly driving wedges between middle class and poor and yes between white and black over this BS Welfare thing.

[Likely Voter]

The thing here is that the Romney campaign are shooting for an unprecedented share of the white vote, especially relative to their overall target. Romney is shooting for 50.1% overall with 61% of whites.

In the modern era only Reagan in 1984 and Nixon in 72 have nabbed more than 61% of whites, both of which were landslide elections already.   Even George HW Bush only got 59% when he beat Dukakis and that was the year of the infamous (and clearly race baiting) Willie Horton ad*, and  still Bush's overall percent was still 53.4.

* Fun fact: Larry McCarthy (the guy who made Willie Horton ad) is media consultant for Romney's SuperPac. Look forward to what they have in store to help Romney with white folks.

[Likely Voter]

as noted in the original article, Romney's people are looking at four quadrants of whites, dividing them by education and gender. Obama leads with white educated women, Romney dominates with both blue collar and educated men, and the group with the most flux is non educated white women. I guess these are the so called 'wall-mart moms'. And again, the reason they are running about five different ads on this Welfare BS is because this issue apparently resonates with these non educated white women.

The astounding thing about the whole Romney strategy is to essentially assume that they arent going to get any more non white votes than McCain, so they are going to try and make it up entirely with white votes...that is the noteworthy thing.

[Likely Voter]

facts have a liberal bias. What matters is your gut. And it just feels like Obama has raised taxes, increased spending and added more job killing regulations.

[Likely Voter]

Getting back to the OP and how going all in on white votes will never work again (and may not this time) here are a couple of quotes from some GOP big shots said during the RNC

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