2012 Romney Incompetence and the Iowa Caucus Debacle

02/09/2020
By Ed Timperlake

It is time to pause and reflect on what happened when Mitt Romney lost an election he could have won.

With the rancor and justified divisiveness ripping through the Democrat Party after the Iowa epic failure, it is instructive to reach back to see what happened the Romney Campaign 2012 disaster.

Sadly for Democrats (too bad for them) but especially for the Sanders Team, they were blindsided by gross incompetence and conspiracy.

Looking back to 2012, Candidate Romney paved the way for running the same type of horribly inept campaign that relied on untested computer algorithms.

To understand exactly what happened in Iowa, it would be very interesting to lean what poorly educated media mavens mean when they repeat the mantra of the  excuse,  “coding error.”

It is obvious they do not have a clue about computers and the math behind the computer algorithms.

Consequently like in today’s America most current stories factual analysis has taken a back seat to the “soap opera”  dimensions of reporting.

So a blast from the past on Mitt’s “Forrest Gump” moment might be instructive and go back to my 2012 article about the Romney campaign:

Stupid is as Stupid does:

The Romney Campaign was a Failure to Execute at a Very Basic Level

By Ed Timperlake

November 9, 2012

Unfortunately for America, team Romney/Ryan had an historic epic failure on their GOTV. (Get out the Vote-Ed)

Independent of any fundamental points about and his future vision stressed in Romney’s “air game” in both paid and earned media, the Romney team was giving themselves full credit on being visionary.

They bet the future of America on their successfully pioneering a new approach for the basic “block and tackle” mechanics to build and execute a winning ground game for their GOTV national effort.

Since Candidate Romney’s background was as an executive who understood profoundly how to be a “turnaround” specialist in America’s free market rockem sockem capitalism trusting his judgment of betting the future of America on an untested “App” probably looked like a good bet.

Orca (his GOTV app)  also had the advantage of being developed and employed by a team in Boston, one of the great technology visionary cities in America. So what could go wrong, and remember, Boston is also a famous political city, just read the Last Hurrah.

But they went up against a Chicago Outfit that beat Clinton Inc and are are definitely a politically tested and battle scared political Super Bowl team in their own right.

Sadly, if current evidence from the field now being reported in nationwide blogs is accurate, and it appears that it is,  “Orca” failed in Beta Test at the height of the Battle with absolutely NO back-up plan.

Unfortunately for America, team Romney/Ryan had an major failure on simply  executing the basics.

So please everyone before shooting the wounded study the inept Romney/Ryan turnout out effort as a failure to simply execute basics. Remember another famous quote-when faced with conspiracy or incompetence go with incompetence.

To be fair to the volunteers for the Sanders Campaign (one time dispensation on being fair), who  just lived through the Iowa electoral disaster with  unexplained “coding error,”  they would be fully justified  in going  for conspiracy as an explanation of events.