Deep Inside a Romney Strategy Session contd..

As an Indian American blogger of American political matters I was given a special observer seat at a recent campaign strategy session by Gofernor Mitt Vhomney’s Stoff (this is how the words ‘Governor Mitt Romney’s Staff’ sound when you speak with your tongue firmly in cheek!). Anyway, I thanked his campaign staff profusely and took my seat as an observer and here is what transpired at the strategy session (please refer to the previous post for a description of the participants in the strategy meeting):

The meeting started amicably and everybody congratulated the Romney-Mixer for achieving the great feat of making the candidate appear many things to many people in Iowa and New Hampshire. However, there were distinct undercurrents of dissatisfaction just below the surface. The Estrat (the evangelical strategist) was given a contemptuous look by the Mstrat (the moderate strategist), who, in turn, let out a torrent of some Biblical curses (or was it verses?). The Hstrat (the Hispanic strategist) excitedly said some nasty things to the Istrat (anti-illegal immigration strategist) but thankfully he said them in Spanish hence the Istrat couldn’t understand them. But he responded by waving the Arizona law in Hstrat’s face and threatened to have the Hstrat arrested for being an illegal alien. The Hstart countered by citing Romney’s own record of employing illegals to tend his lawn. The business strategist, Bizstrat and the Blue-collar strategist, Bluestrat were always at each other’s throats but had kept their uneasy truce for the fear of being fired. The campaign manager (CM) had to restore order within minutes of opening the meeting by separating the warring strategists from each other’s throats. 

Then the chief polling officer (3CPO) prepared to reel out his polling data of the key issues in South Carolina. Everybody knew that South Carolina was the real test of their team. This was for 3 main reasons. Firstly, the Romney-Mixer had turned the knobs far enough left on many issues to suit the New Hampshire market. Now he would have to turn them around far enough right to suit the South Carolina market. This was not an easy task. Secondly, they knew that Santorum, Perry and Gingrich were already ‘far out’ on the right side and had vowed to make their last stands in South Carolina; at least Perry and Gingrich had vowed so. Thirdly, Ron Paul, the perennial nutcase had suddenly loomed as a threat. The team didn’t even have a strategist that could counter Paul and the Mixer would have been clueless how to mix the existing ingredients that would make the Romneys look like or unlike Paul. It was imperative that 3CPO came up with very fine poll numbers or the Romney team would meet their first defeat. The tension was palpable in the room.

The 3CPO began, “I have the following data. 16% of the Palmetto state wants Romney to be Romney, 28% wants him to be not Romney, another 15 % want him to be Baptist or Presbyterian but there are another 6 % who want him to continue as a Mormon. 12% prefer him to be a Catholic while 19% said they would send him to purgatory if he tries to pull a Newt on them at this late stage. And anyway, Romney’s Confessional would be outright insipid compared to Newt’s colorful one. 62% want him to give them affordable healthcare but 80% want him to repeal Obamacare even if it is affordable. 60% want him to attack Iran while 75% want him to bring back the troops. 35% want him to cut Federal budget and 45% want him to get them jobs, in Federal Government preferably. 20% want him to attack Newt for being anti-party while 30% want Newt to attack him for being anti-conservative. 25% want him to be like Ron Paul when Paul talks about the federal spending. 20% want him to be like Santorum when Santorum is frothing at the mouth against gays, abortions and liberals. 15% want him to be like Perry when Perry is not debating or doing math. 10% want him to be like Newt when Newt is asleep. 5% want him to be like Huntsman but they didn’t know who was Huntsman.”

“Oh Maah God! I ain’t so good at math mahself but that one there is gonna add up to a million percent, you betcha!” the Blue-collar strategist exclaimed. He used to work for Governor Perry and taught him math back in Texas.

3CPO delivered his polling numbers of the Palmetto state in a single breath (like Shankar Mahadevan’s Breathless) and slumped in the chair. Just then there were two distinct sounds. One was the sound of a soft thump when the Mixer fell down in a heap with a dazed expression on his face. The other was the electrical cracking sound that came from the Mixer’s Romney-mixing machine as it short-circuited automatically after hearing the polling numbers.

From Iowa to New Hampshire

The Iowans finally settled on Rick Santorum as the official not-Mitt Romney. However, Mitt’s campaign of dissimulation by faking himself to be not-Mitt Romney also bore fruit by dint of the millions he spent on this image makeover. Roughly the same number of Iowans believed that Mitt Romney was not Mitt Romney as those who believed that Mitt Romney was Mitt Romney but Rick Santorum was not Mitt Romney. Also Iowa showed the rest of America that the state contained about 22% people with a questionable grasp on reality by voting for Ron Paul. This figure was later used by Iowa’s perpetual Governor Terry Branstad to demand more federal funds for the care of patients with mental issues. 

Michelle Bachman garnered only 6% of the vote and once again showed exceptionally unsound judgment by dropping out of the race. Bachman’s exit has considerably reduced the leeway to several humor columnists and bloggers. I am sure that I could have collected a substantial amount of money from like-minded people for Ms Bachman to stay in the race, just to get her to expound her theories on other topics similar to vaccinations. With that, my secret wish for another masterpiece like ‘Who’s Pricking Bachman’ (similar to ‘Who’s Nailin Paylin’) or some such corny title faded away. Perry garnered 10% of votes. These 10% had severe mathematical challenges and could not count beyond two; hence they never realized that Perry could not name the third colossal example of federal waste. Jon Huntsman (who dat again?) was perplexed when he actually garnered some votes and mumbled something in Chinese. The most interesting result was the 13% garnered by Newt. Within a couple of weeks, Romney’s Super Pac had pulled down Newt from a front-runner to an also-ran. Newt didn’t take this lightly.

When I was in college, one of our most beloved movies was Tezaab where Madhuri Dixit took our collective breaths away with her ethereal beauty (and much else!). But the movie also had other highlights. One of them stayed in my mind. This is when Munna (Anil Kapoor, the protagonist of the movie) and his pals visit Lotiya Pathan (the villain character played by Kiran Kumar) in his den and destroy it. Just before the interval, Lotiya Pathan surveys the destruction of his empire with a boiling rage and solemnly swears thus: ‘ab Lotiya ki zindagi ka sirf ek hi maqsad hai, Munna ki tabaahi!’ (Henceforth, Lotiya lives for one and only one goal in life, to destroy Munna!). When Mitt Romney’s Super Pac practically destroyed the nascent and ephemeral Newt Gingrich rise in Iowa polls, Newt vowed something similar. Henceforth he would live for the sole purpose of hurting Romney, the fake conservative, the moderate Massachusetts manipulator, the epitome of everything that was wrong with Republican Party in Newt’s exalted opinion. This was going to be just another war of Northern Aggression, where once again the son of soil from Georgia was going to be locking horns with the carpetbagger Yankee from Massachusetts, but the Georgian was damned if he was going down quietly. And anyway, as a History professor from some third-rate college in the South, Newt’s grasp of history was tenuous at best, the millions paid to him by Freddy Mac for giving them history lessons notwithstanding.

And Newt had legitimate grievances against Romney. Newt believed that a few connubial indiscretions were hardly worth commenting upon, especially by his own Party-people. What are a couple of discarded wives and a few extra-marital dalliances, between the torchbearers of the Conservatism? Newt felt that the attacks sponsored by Romney’s Super Pac were a transgression of the oath of a positive campaign that Newt had taken. Nobody had the temerity to ask Newt if his oath of positive campaign was also reciprocated by others in the field. And Newt’s oath of a positive campaign can be summarized by an apt Hindi proverb: ‘Sau choohe kha ke billi chali hajj ko’ (The cat dons the mantle of penance after gorging on a hundred mice. I think the flavor of the Hindi proverb is impossible to impart to an English translation). But in spite of Newt’s height of hypocrisy, he remained a potent threat to the rest of the Republican field. They, especially Romney, never knew when Newt might don a suicide bomber vest and take down the entire Republican field in an orgy of mutual recriminations gleefully thrown about at a nationally televised debate. They wanted the ex-speaker to stop speaking altogether. Bill Clinton had a Schadenfreude moment when he recalled how he had cautioned against this ex-speaker when he was not ex and was merely boinking his soon-to-be ex-wife (the one who had cancer) and also his much later-to-be ex-wife while simultaneously ranting about Bill Clinton’s ex-tra curricular activities. But Newt, like Lotiya pathan, was way past sensible politicking and was baying for Romney’s fake conservative blood. He found some investors (rumor has it that the Obama-camp gleefully orchestrated the financing of Newt’s post-Iowa revenge trip) who financed his Revenge Super Pac that launched TV ads that could really hurt Romney, especially in the general election. Newt always believed in scorched earth policies.

During all this time, Rick Santorum enjoyed his moment in the sun. Finally the thick-headed Iowans had figured out that he was not Mitt Romney, even though he lost that race by 8 votes. He took it as a nationwide endorsement of his bigoted policies of anti-abortions (even though he and his wife had come within a whisker of having their own abortion, in fact, the purists might have accused the Santorums of having opted for an abortion when they opted to inject Mrs Santorum with a drug that probably eventually caused her miscarriage), anti-homosexuality (which he equated with bestiality, polygamy and a host of other Biblical transgressions), anti-federal spending (even though his signature was there on the famous ‘bridge-to-nowhere’ earmark and hundreds of other earmarks) and many other typical right-wing shibboleths. This is a special feature of the Iowa caucuses – they always throw up the most rabid candidates. Mostly they make the rest of the sane America throw up in disgust. 

So on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, it still looked like Mitt Romney and his other avatars were likely to romp home, in the granite state at least. Gingrich looks set to self-combust at the altar of revenge, Rick Santorum looks set to eventually self-combust in his zeal to appear like the Old Testament disciplinarians, but that would probably require the Super Tuesday. Ron Paul would peter out somewhere between the Granite State and the Super Tuesday as he always does. Huntsman would make a feeble showing in NH but being a Mormon businessman would realize the futility of throwing good money after bad and retire after endorsing the front-running Mormon. The Iowa caucus was the fun time, from NH onwards the fun will diminish unless either Gingrich or Santorum continue to stand up. I know I will be rooting for either of them.