Jencunas: How Romney Can Win in 2016

Jencunas: How Romney Can Win in 2016

Mitt Romney is planning to run for President. 

No, this isn’t a flashback to 2008. Or 2012. Romney is considering yet another campaign, hoping he can win the office he’s been running for since 2006. 

What he needs to do to win

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To finally win the Presidency, Romney will need to show voters a different Mitt than the one they’ve rejected twice before. Democrats always attack Republicans as being the party of the rich. Mitt Romney made those attacks easy in his last campaign and needs to diffuse them early in this campaign. 

What he can't do.

No matter what else Romney does differently, he’ll lose again if he can’t figure out how to relate to voters. During 2012, his campaign was constantly derailed by his own verbal gaffes. Romney alienated poorer voters by saying that anyone who doesn’t pay income taxes wasn’t taking personal responsibility for their own life. He alienated Hispanic voters by promising as President to make illegal immigrants’ lives so miserable they “self-deport.”

Those two statements alone angered entire categories of people, and then there were the constant minor gaffes that reminded voters how little Romney’s life had in common with their own. For example, he told a crowd at the Daytona 500 that while he wasn’t a NASCAR fan, many of his friends owned NASCAR teams. Later on, he would brag about his wife’s success at dressage – the expensive sport of horse gymnastics. 

These gaffes are what trouble me the most about the idea of Romney 3.0. Most problems with Romney’s failed campaign can be fixed. He had inaccurate polls – get a new pollster. He underperformed with Hispanic voters – be softer on immigration. Obama had a much better digital campaign – hire expensive digital communications experts. 

Those tactical problems can be solved by a better campaign. But the constant gaffes are a deeper flaw, showing a candidate who, no matter how hard he tries, simply can’t effectively communicate. Communication is the essence of a campaign, and no new consultant or change in strategy can make Romney better at it. That was clear last election, when Romney’s advisers tried to soften him by switching his suit and tie for jeans and a button-down shirt. Rather than looking like the everyman, Romney just looked like a CEO on his day off. 

Tough road ahead

No matter what, this campaign will be harder than Romney’s last. He’ll have stronger primary opponents, rather than the collection of has-beens and never-weres he defeated in 2012. The media, which never liked Romney to begin with, will be happy to criticize this campaign as an ego trip. Rather than being the only moderate in a field of conservatives, Romney will need to compete with Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and maybe Scott Walker and John Kasich, for moderate voters.

What it will come down to

Ultimately though, Romney controls his own destiny. His biggest problem in the last election was self-inflicted and it can be self-cured. I don’t know what it takes for Mitt Romney to learn how to speak Average Voter, but if he can change from a wooden campaigner to a stronger retail politician, he’ll have a chance to make the third time a charm.

Brian Jencunas works as a communications and media consultant. During the 2014 Providence mayoral election, he worked with the Cianci campaign, focusing on messaging and polling analysis.