Insiders Explain How Mitt Romney's Campaign Completely Fell Apart On Election Day

[cash__whatiwant]

Last edited Tue Nov 13, 2012, 01:59 PM - Edit history (1)

As conservatives search for an explanation for Mitt Romney's loss, much of the blame has been directed at the collapse of his campaign's Election Day get out the vote efforts, a massive organizational failure that resulted in lower Republican turnout than even John McCain got in 2008.

A major source of Romney's GOTV problems appears to have been the disastrous Project ORCA, an expensive technological undertaking that was supposed to provide the campaign with real-time poll monitoring that would allow Republicans to target GOTV efforts on Election Day.

In the week leading up to the election, Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul told Business Insider that ORCA was "the Republican Party’s newest, most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 election," touting it as the game-changer that would blow even the Obama campaign's sophisticated GOTV system out of the water.

But on almost all counts, ORCA failed miserably. In a fascinating piece for Ace of Spades, Romney poll-watcher John Ekdahl describes a perfect storm of technology problems that made the ORCA app unusable and left scores of Republican volunteers " wandering around confused and frustrated" on Election Day.

read more:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mitt-romneys-campaign-completely-fell-195408549.html

[Arugula Latte]

1. If you can't run a campaign, how can you run a country, Mr. Bigshot CEO?

[Lucinda]

17. Exactly....That's the way I felt with his attempted Benghazi "gotcha" in the debate too

If they couldn't even get that right, how could he possibly govern.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

46. Bingo. Exactly. n/t

[ffr]

2. Not surprised. Reps want small ineffective government

This is the disorganization one can expect from someone who begins with the premise that government is not the solution and goes about proving that to be the case in his own organizational structure.

Phew! Dodged the bullet on that one, didn't we!

[MynameisBlarney]

49. Dodged?

Nay verily I say unto thee!

We smacked that bullet right back into their stupid faces.

[tblue37]

3. Just like the way the intelligence community tends to overemphasize

technology and underemphasize humintel.

One edit--Don't they realize that GOTV is a form of community organizing?

They do love to mock Obama's expertise in that area, LOL!

[Old and In the Way]

4. Rmoney crushed in the primaries with huge ad buys.

They thought ad dollars would win the general election, too. I really think between the huge financial advantages and the 'unskewed' polling, they really believed it would be a cakewalk and GOTV would somehow just materialize.

[WCGreen]

5. EXACTLY!!!

[Johonny]

32. that is how he's always won

crush the guy your running against with $$. It is probably the only reason he could run in 2016. Who in the field can outspend Mitt Romney or survive his primary assault if he chose to buy it again?

[BlueToTheBone]

6. Ultimate crony capitalism!

They hired their friends, talented or not.

[joeunderdog]

7. Oh, I just thought his platform just sucked and he was out of touch.

Not enough lipstick for that pig.

Time to cut the bullshit about the campaign and talk about the issues.

Time to stop talking about the loser and start talking about our President.

[hifiguy]

8. In other words, Willard and his people could not

organize a two-car funeral on a one-way street even if you spotted them the hearse.

No surprise there.

[malaise]

9. they were playing Super Nintendo while Obama's people had PS3."

[LynneSin]

18. Way Romney campaign was - those were old Atari 65

[MynameisBlarney]

51. Even older than that.

They were playing pong on a trs80

[malaise]

54. The really hilarious part is they thought this ORCA shit was so hot

and so secret that they kept it to themselves until election day.

Isn't that like wearing brand new running shoes for a marathon you plan to win?

[Borgnine]

61. How dare they compare the great Super Nintendo to Mitt Romney?

[Oilwellian]

10. You may want to pare this post down

to the 4 paragraph limit. Thanks.

[cash__whatiwant]

13. done nt

[cui bono]

11. So Romney's not a people person.

He tries to be by saying that corporations are people but we all know that's not true.

[JHB]

12. This is Romney's REAL business experience on display...

Screw details, outsource all that crap, I have more important things to do, like making A Better Amercia.

First he saved the Olympics, now he's saved BilkFest 2012. Your vendors thank you Mitt. At least the ones who made sure they were paid up front.

[BainsBane]

38. the latter part of the article highlights his managerial failures

volunteers and poll watchers had no idea what to do, and the campaign wouldn't return phone calls for the entire month before the election. What did they expect would happen? He claimed to be such a great manager. He's obviously a disaster at that.

[dixiegrrrrl]

58. So that 3 am phone call would have been...unanswered?

[Whisp]

14. seems like Romney wasn't really interested in winning the election

the signs are all there.

he was interested in ad money that Bain would get pieced off with and whatever loopsholes PACs have with jamming the dollars in their jeans.

[Patiod]

15. The reaction to this on Redstate.com was astounding

A LOT of unhappy Republicans

Here's my favorite:
"If you're concerned about your money going to line the pockets of wealthy charlatans then you should be glad that Romney didn't get elected.
(and 332 Redstate folks gave this a thumbs up!!!)

http://www.redstate.com/2012/11/09/campaign-sources-the-romney-campaign-was-a-consultant-con-job/

[LynneSin]

19. 332 Redstate folks gave it a thumbs up? Ironic

That's how many Electoral Votes Obama got

[Patiod]

26. I spent a half hour Sunday night wallowing in the shaudenfreude.

I had never been there before, and was surprised to discover some conservatives on line who can spell and write coherently.

Now if they could just THINK clearly....

[bluestate10]

68. I tell you. Reading the comments from that crowd was like looking at the toilet paper after use. nt

[K8-EEE]

16. I am completely addicted to Romney Fail reports

I swear stories like this, if I was a drug addict I'd be cooking this up in a spoon and shooting it up.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

20. Me too lol!

[coalition_unwilling]

23. Forget shooting it up. Just hook me up the IV drip :) - n/t

[Wind Dancer]

35. LOL!

Me too!

[ecstatic]

69. LOL! Me too! That's why I'm annoyed with all the Petraeus talk

I want to see more fail reports and more coverage of the teaparty vs moderate repub bickering!

[eShirl]

21. ORCA, the Great White Fail

I hate how "i" in bold looks like "l"...

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

22. Even the ferret living on Donald Trump's head is angry

and expressed it to him by engaging in a diarrhea spree this morning.

[Liberalagogo]

40. How

could you tell?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

44. Like I wrote - the trail of diarrhea

Kind of like Seamus only Trump's ferret is strapped down with toupee tape.

[Liberalagogo]

57. A trail of diarrhea flowing down Trump's head

is no different from his "normal" look. That's my point.

[coalition_unwilling]

24. Source article from Business Insider ("Ace of Spades"?) is also

worth perusal:

http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-project-orca-disaster-2012-11

[K8-EEE]

25. "Smaller smarter goverment" crowd runs bigger dumber campaign. nt

[ffr]

28. Romney as CEO in Chief, super FAIL

In an interview last week, the attorney, one of the "Lawyers for Romney" who volunteered to help the campaign's legal team by watching the polls on Election Day, described how the Romney campaign sent its legal volunteers the wrong training information, failed to provide volunteers with information about where they were supposed to be on Election Day, and stopped responding to phone calls and emails in the final two weeks of the campaign.

<snip>

While we may never know what really happened inside the Romney campaign's Election Day collapse, the Ohio attorney's story, taken with the accounts from Ekdahl and people close to the Romney campaign, paint a picture of a campaign in disarray.

LOSER!

[WolverineDG]

76. Sounds like they knew they were going to lose

& just gave up. The whole campaign became a false-front.

[Rob H.]

36. Ha!

That would make a much better headline.

[Kalidurga]

27. Romney's failures are very instructive.

Romney showed us how our society still needs people who care. That it is important to be able to connect with people on an emotional level as well as an intellectual level. I have to admit I am not good at connecting on an emotional level. I would rather talk about ideas. Romney seems to be unable to connect on any level at all. But, if he could have connected with his base on an emotional level and moderates on an emotional level, we might be saying President Romney today. But, as it was he was so out of touch that he thought his horror stories were amusing and a way to get to people. They weren't and they aren't. Like the one about how he toured a slave factory in China then bought it. He thought that was a real knee slapper.

[Rob H.]

41. He couldn't connect with people because when it comes right down to it,

he didn't really stand for anything. He'd say something one day, and then say the exact opposite the next if he thought it might help him win. He always struck me as a breathtakingly dishonest man with no real principles other than, "I'll tell people what they want to hear when I'm in front of them, then walk away from what I said later if doing so benefits me or my party in some way." Hell, there was one occasion where he said something non-right-wingnut about a woman's right to choose (iirc) and his people were in front of the press trying to retract it two hours later because it wasn't the GOP party line.

There were a lot of people who voted for Romney, no question, but I'm just glad Romney himself never seemed to realize that most people, if they're honest with themselves, don't want a lying snake oil salesman/bully running things. (Did the GOP really believe we all forgot about what a disaster Dubya's presidency was? Seriously?)

[Kalidurga]

73. Well after the dog story I knew Romney was a horrible person.

But, when I heard stories of his flip flopping and lying, I thought they have to be exaggerating. This was years and years ago. But, it turns out his lying and flip-flopping can't be exaggerated.

[abolugi]

29. I'm a baaaad person...

I can't get enough of these articles! Romney and his crew were so arrogant I am extremely glad they fell hard!!!


Best quote in the article..

"They were playing Super Nintendo while Obama's people had PS3."

[BlueStreak]

30. Romney never ran any companies

He TOOK OVER companies. He didn't manage them. If he did anything other than shutting them down, it was all about cost cutting. He never built anything of value.

He is the ultimate "Taker".

It is always easier to demolish than to build.

[Patiod]

74. ironic that it was the consultants who fleeced him

Other campaigns, we hear about problems with staff. With Romney, it was his high paid Bainlike consultants who blew it.

[BlueStreak]

79. I hadn't thought of that. It is ironic.

Rod Serling would be proud.

[leftlibdem420]

31. Hmm...

"the Republican Party’s newest, most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 election,"

[workinclasszero]

78. I LOL'd! :D /nt

[SDjack]

33. He really should have committed to customer satisfaction quality. nt

[Spazito]

34. The campaign fell apart from day one...

etch-a-sketch, 47%, "you people", "the trees are the right height", "corporations are people my friend", etc, etc, etc.

It was the absolute worst campaign I have EVER seen and I'm old!

[WeekendWarrior]

37. This had NOTHING to do with GOTV

Romney's base was NEVER enthusiastic about him.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

60. Correct

[quaker bill]

63. They were at my polling place with paper checklists of voters

but they did not seem to know what to do with them. Paper checklists seem a bit old fashioned and my precinct seems an unlikely place to need them as we are white, middle class, reliable voters. Geography was the biggest challenge for (R) GOTV. Their voters tend to be rural so it takes alot of volunteers for a small number of votes. Ours are urban (look at the map), so it does not take many people or much gas to find alot of voters.

[BeliQueen]

39. They're trying to find any excuse...

...other than that they're policies are unappealing to the majority of the public.

Urban voters; failed technology; etc.

Also, ORCA sounds more like a voter suppression tool than a GOTV tool since it relies on getting their poll watchers strike lists not contact lists of people who need help getting to the polls.

[Jim Lane]

66. I think this one was legit

The grousing on redstate came from people in the field (or who'd wanted to be in the field), not from the campaign honchos.

Also, ORCA really was a GOTV tool. Their "strike lists" weren't lists of voters to be challenged. They were using an old GOTV technique. Back in the day, you'd prepare a list (on paper) of the people you expect to vote for you in that precinct. Your poll watcher strikes names off the list as they vote. At some point, the lists get taken to your phone-bankers, who phone the people who haven't voted yet. ORCA was an attempt to digitize this process. The Democrats had the same thing except that ours worked. I was calling Elizabeth Warren supporters who hadn't voted yet.

[BattyDem]

42. Every day, it's a new excuse or a new scapegoat ...

ANY reason tho deny the truth: Americans don't like the GOP agenda! It's hateful, discriminatory, misogynistic and it favors the rich.

[southernyankeebelle]

43. The think if they had a good ground game they would have one. Interesting even

if they had one that was equal to Obamas game plan they still would have lost. They don't get it still. They lost because they don't care about the middle class. Everyone saw it.

[Voice for Peace]

45. Name a Republican strategy after a beautiful creature

and do not expect success.
Higgs-Boson Themself* will introduce chaos.

*(They are anonymous, they are legion, they do not forget
and they are on our side.)

[Richard D]

47. Of course, there's no possible way it could be because . . .

. . . he just wasn't presidential material.

[closeupready]

48. Oh, balderdash. His policies sucked. He kept secrets,

like his taxes, from voters. Evidence abounded of his innate cruelty to animals, gay people, etc.

It was HIM - HE is why they lost.

[MissMarple]

53. Balderdash! And complete bunkum. I love it.

I do agree, it was of his own doing. His anal, control freak approach does not work in a cooperative culture that a campaign must develop and that democratic government demands. He is better suited to an authoritarian dictatorship. The thought that he was as close as he was makes me queasy.

[Ganja Ninja]

50. Do they think that people didn't notice ...

the endless attempts to paint this president as foreign born, or (as if there were something wrong with it) a Muslim? They not only questioned his place of birth but his parentage as well. Did they think people would just brush that off?

Do they think people didn't notice the constant stream of insults and disrespect shown to America's first black president?

Do they think that people have such a short memory that they forgot what a disaster George W. Bush was?

Did they really think they could pass the blame for 8 years of failure and all the deficit spending that was rubber stamped by a GOP congress on to this president?

Did they really believe they could blame Obama for a stagnant recovery while the Teabag congress obstructed any attempt to fix the mess their party created and instead voted over 30 times to repeal Obamacare?

Did they think people were going to forget the hate and racism directed at people of color, women, gays and just about everyone that wasn't a white evangelical?

Did they think we would forget the divisive meanness and spite?

Do they really think that all of this had nothing to do with why they lost the election?

[closeupready]

55. As a Mormon bishop, he served a flock in a secretive religion

which seems to discourage meaningful examination of dogma for 'truthiness'.

If as a group there is little diversity and little tolerance for dissent, how on Earth did they think he was fit to run the American government? Or to relate to foreign powers?

Groupthink is seductive because it's comforting; the downside is that it weakens character and leadership ability.

[DollarBillHines]

52. " they were playing Super Nintendo while Obama's people had PS3." "

Delicious read, thanks for posting.

[thesquanderer]

56. This followup article really explains it

http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-project-orca-disaster-2012-11

Pardon my schadenfreude.

[Ken Burch]

62. So...ORCA ended up beached?

(c'mon...SOMEBODY had to say it...)

[Jim Lane]

67. One of the Republicans beat you to it.

One of the commenters on the original piece recounted his own totally frustrating experience with trying to volunteer for Romney and concluded: "Felt used. Burned. Project ORCA ended up with a harpoon in its side and washed up on shore, lifeless."

[Cha]

64. So, the Idiotic Cons aren't blaming Sandy anymore? It's their own ineptitude for

for technology?

[cash__whatiwant]

65. cute photo nt

[upi402]

70. Obama whipped his ASS

THAT is when it flipped

[Change has come]

71. This coverage is delicious.

[Nye Bevan]

72. In the vernacular of my teenage kids,

it sucks to suck.

[tanyev]

75. Killer whale circles back, attacks handlers.

[Blue4Texas]

77. Romney bought his own lies

Beginning with, he was conservative, he was a businessman, he was for the 100%, he had nothing to do with the ads his super pacs ran, he knew what was in the Ryan Plan. He did this to win the GOP nomination. It never occurred to him, he would not win. To be honest, he would have been better off to change parties in college. He might not have been a part of cutting that kids hair or done anything else that followed.