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Personal weirdness aside, I continue to think (hope?) that Romney is in for
a rude awakening once the real campaign starts. He's been playing in the
minor leagues: in debates, organization in the field, and media attention.
When the spotlight is on him and only him, I think we'll see more cracks.
Obama/Biden are in a different class than the also-rans in the GOP field.


On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 5:55 PM, B <261penn@gmail.com> wrote:

> Since Eric just accused me of not being fun (which is true) and with the
> benefit of the recent CNN poll, my prediction is that Santorum will be the
> story out of Iowa with a strong third-place performance over newt. Close
> between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney for first place.
>
>
>
> On Dec 28, 2011, at 2:10 PM, Eric Schwerin <eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com>
> wrote:
>
> I agree that these comments are invariably taken out of context and
> probably unfair to him, but I think he can work all he wants on the retail
> side and I still think he may have trouble connecting at the end of the
> day. I also think for the general it will be a hard narrative for him to
> get rid of even if he were to get better at it - like it or not the press
> is going to portray him as out of touch, rich and someone with a no moral
> center. This article plays into that whether it is true or not.
>
>
> Eric D. Schwerin****
> Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC****
> ****1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW********
> ****Suite** 705******
> ****Washington**, **DC** **20007********
> (202) 333-1880****
> eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com****
> *P** **Consider the environment before printing this email.*
>
> On Dec 28, 2011, at 2:01 PM, Hunter Biden wrote:
>
> That article actually makes me nervous about Romney-- the press loves
> making fun of candidates as they campaign making what seem to be silly
> comments when taken out of the context of shaking hands with hundreds of
> people in a single day. What it says to me is that Romney is actually
> working at the retail end of campaigning. Before I read the article i
> would have said Paul wins but now I think Romney pulls an upset victory in
> Iowa and goes on to take NH and the majority of super Tuesday delegates.
>
> RHB
> 202.333.1880
>
> On Dec 28, 2011, at 11:10 AM, Eric Schwerin <eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com>
> wrote:
>
> I won't predict order but will say it is pretty much a three-way tie
> between Romney, Santorum and Paul (with Paul likely winning). And I saw
> this article - awesome! I am not sure if I love the "French Canadian?" or
> "Daughter? No, wife" line better.
>
>
>
> Eric D. Schwerin****
> Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC****
> ****1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW********
> ****Suite** 705******
> ****Washington**, **DC** **20007********
> (202) 333-1880****
> eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com****
> *P** **Consider the environment before printing this email.*
>
> On Dec 28, 2011, at 12:04 PM, Alexander Snyder-Mackler wrote:
>
> I think Romney and Paul basically tie, Romney costs in NH, and then Rs
> have to decide if they are any less uncomfortable with Ron Paul than they
> are with Romney. Which means I think Romney has it wrapped up by Super
> Tuesday. If you want to feel good about that, read this story:
>
> December 27, 2011
> The Retooled, Loose Romney, Guessing Voters’ Age and Ethnicity By ASHLEY
> PARKER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/ashley_parker/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and MICHAEL
> BARBARO<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_barbaro/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
>
> DAVENPORT, Iowa — When Mitt Romney<http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/mitt-romney?inline=nyt-per>introduces himself to voters, he has a peculiar habit of guessing their age
> or nationality, often incorrectly. (A regular query: “Are you French
> Canadian?”)
>
> When making small talk with locals, he peppers the conversation with
> curious details. (“We stayed in the Courtyard hotel last night,” he told a
> woman at a diner. “It’s a LEED-certified hotel.”)
>
> And when he encounters a question he particularly dislikes, he smiles
> politely and behaves as if it never happened. (“Will you put Ron Paul in
> your cabinet?” a man asked. The candidate turned away, inquiry left
> unanswered.)
>
> Mr. Romney’s bid for president this year is a carefully crafted do-over, a
> chance to revise and retool a campaign that quickly fizzled out four years
> ago. He has lost the tie, overhauled his stump speech and hired far fewer
> campaign consultants.
>
> But perhaps the trickiest part of this reinvention is changing who Mr.
> Romney is when he steps out from behind the lectern and wades into a
> roomful of voters: a cautious chief executive who is uneasy with
> off-the-cuff remarks, unnatural at chitchat and spare with his emotions.
>
> At coffee shops and veterans’ halls, on sidewalks and factory tours, the
> reworked version, it turns out, is not all that different from the
> original.
>
> A close-up study of Mr. Romney’s casual interactions with voters captures
> a candidate who can be efficient, funny and self-deprecating, yet often
> strains to connect in a personal way.
>
> Even those who praise his style after meeting him sometimes do so in ways
> that feel backhanded: “I don’t mind stiff and formal,” said Holly Sirois,
> who spoke to Mr. Romney a few days ago at a pizza shop in Newport, N.H. “I
> don’t want the guy sitting in the backyard drinking beers with his buddies.
> I want my president to act presidential.”
>
> Mr. Romney has plenty of moments when he wins positive reactions and some
> when he seems to make a genuine link, undercutting his caricature as
> robotic. And he is hardly giving up on mastering the art of the soft sell:
> he personally insisted on spending more hours talking to voters this
> election and fewer sequestered in his Boston headquarters. The calculation
> may prove crucial in a year when a procession of rivals — Rick Perry, Ron
> Paul and Newt Gingrich — has roused the Republican base with colorful
> personalities and dynamic speaking styles.
>
> The informal, humanizing interactions are so essential to the campaign’s
> image that Mr. Romney has scheduled back-to-back bus tours in New Hampshire
> and Iowa, the latest of which began here in Davenport on Tuesday, crammed
> with events like Coffee with Mitt, Pizza with Mitt and Spaghetti with Mitt.
>
> “No one is an expert at it when they first do it,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a
> senior adviser to Mr. Romney, who has watched him ring hundreds of
> doorbells over the years. “There has been an improvement over time, just as
> you would expect.”
>
> Here is a guide to Mr. Romney’s habits and quirks on the campaign trail:
>
> *Guesswork*
>
> For a candidate who is exceedingly risk-averse, Mr. Romney has developed
> an unlikely penchant for trying to puzzle out everything from voters’
> personal relationships to their ancestral homelands.
>
> “Sisters?” he asked. (Nope, stepmother and stepdaughter.) “Your husband?”
> he wondered. (No, just a friend from the neighborhood.) “Mother and
> daughter?” he guessed. (Cousins, actually.)
>
> The results can be awkward. “Daughter?” he asked a woman sitting with a
> man and two younger girls at the diner in Tilton, N.H., on Friday morning.
> Her face turned a shade of red. “Wife.”
>
> Oh, Mr. Romney said. “It was a compliment, I guess,” said the woman,
> Janelle Batchelder, 31. “At the same time, it was possibly an insult.”
>
> Countries of origin are another Romney favorite. When a man in Bethlehem,
> N.H., stood and introduced himself as Randall Loiacono, Mr. Romney asked,
> “Now, is that a Northern European name?”
>
> “Sicilian,” Mr. Loiacono said, before standing and spelling his name at
> Mr. Romney’s request.
>
> Mr. Romney relishes meeting young voters and rarely misses an opportunity
> to guess their age.
>
> “What are you, about 9, 10?” Mr. Romney asked a young boy, shaking his
> gloved hand in a parking lot in Lancaster, N.H. “Seven,” the boy’s mom
> said.
>
> When another boy corrected Mr. Romney a few campaign stops later (he was
> 12, not 14), his aides burst into laughter at the familiar mistake. Mr.
> Fehrnstrom called his boss’s frequent questions “an icebreaker.”
>
> “It’s better than going around and trying to guess people’s weight,” Mr.
> Fehrnstrom said. “It’s safe.”
>
> *Congratulations*
>
> Mr. Romney likes to congratulate people. For what, exactly, is not always
> clear.
>
> “Congratulations,” he told a grandmother at an event on Thursday night,
> presumably because she had a large brood.
>
> Over three consecutive days last week, he congratulated a girl who said
> she was attending college, a woman who said she owned a small business and
> a mother who said she was going back to school. “Congratulations!” he
> exclaimed upon learning that a woman had three children.
>
> Every candidate has default greetings, of course, standard lines that can
> be trotted out almost mindlessly, day after day, hour after hour, room
> after room.
>
> “Good to see you,” Mr. Romney says.
>
> “Hey, buddy, how are you?”
>
> “Thanks for being here.”
>
> Sometimes, when a voter brandishes a camera, his greetings become more
> elaborate: “Hi, there. You know how to make that work? Ha-ha.”
>
> Mr. Romney, never much of a hugger or backslapper, stands with his hands
> straight down at his waist, tilting forward ever so slightly and turning
> from side to side as he searches for the next hand to shake or poster to
> sign.
>
> In Bedford, N.H., he turned to find a man who proudly told him, “You
> already have my vote.” It was the kind of comment that might normally
> elicit an expression of gratitude, or an inquiry into the voter’s
> background.
>
> Mr. Romney replied, “Well, that’s good.”
>
> *Dodging the Question*
>
> Few candidates are as deft as Mr. Romney at genially brushing off
> unwelcome queries and comments.
>
> In Bedford, N.H., a woman walked up to him after a speech and declared: “I
> have a lot friends who say you are the robotic type. And I am like, no, you
> need to stay that way because you are a leader.”
>
> Mr. Romney’s mouth arched into a somewhat pained smile as he rushed to
> conclude the conversation. “Nice to see you guys,” he said as he walked
> away.
>
> A few moments later, a voter named David Rivers asked Mr. Romney whether
> there would be place for Mr. Paul, a Texas congressman, in a Romney White
> House. Mr. Romney treated the question as a joke, letting out a laugh and
> walking on by.
>
> “I was actually kind of serious,” Mr. Rivers said in an interview
> afterward.
>
> Sometimes Mr. Romney will engage in a back-and-forth with tough
> questioners; in Concord, N.H., a woman told him that she favored socialized
> medicine. “I’ve got someone for you,” Mr. Romney said. “His name is Barack
> Obama. He agrees with you. Ha-ha.”
>
> *Finding a Connection*
>
> Mr. Romney’s fascination with arcane, technical information can
> occasionally leave voters scratching their heads.
>
> When he mentioned his hotel’s LEED designation — an imprimatur of energy
> efficiency — to the woman in Keene, N.H., she acknowledged that she had no
> idea what it meant. “Is it something to do with being green?” she asked
> after he had moved on.
>
> But his inner wonk has at times endeared him to potential supporters, as
> it did at a farm supply store in Lancaster, when Mr. Romney began
> discussing the intricacies of cow milk with Jessica Hebert, an Obama voter
> who was at the store.
>
> Mr. Romney delved deeply into the topic, with real curiosity and a barrage
> of questions, after Ms. Hebert, who has shown dairy cows, explained that a
> prize animal produced about 100 pounds of milk a day. He began a series of
> rapid-fire calculations to determine how many gallons are in a pound:
> “Eight-point-three pounds per gallon. So 8 into 100 is going to be about
> 13, 14, gallons. Oh, 12 — there you go.”
>
> He beamed with satisfaction at solving the puzzle — and Ms. Hebert said
> she liked what she had heard.
>
> “That is a lot of milk,” Mr. Romney said.
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Beau <261penn@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have no idea
>>
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>> On Dec 28, 2011, at 10:12 AM, Eric Schwerin <eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Eric D. Schwerin****
>> Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC****
>> ****1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW********
>> ****Suite** 705******
>> ****Washington**, **DC** **20007********
>> (202) 333-1880****
>> eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com****
>> *P** **Consider the environment before printing this email.*
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Alexander Snyder-Mackler
> (302) 598-8678
>
>
>


--

Alexander Snyder-Mackler
(302) 598-867