Mitt Romney

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About

Mitt Romney (born March 12th, 1947) is an American politician, former Governor of Massachusetts and candidate in the in the 2012 Republican Party presidential primary. Since the beginning of state elections in January, he quickly rose to the top as the frontrunner in the race and virtually won the Republican party’s nomination in April 2012 after the runner-up candidate Rick Santorum announced the suspension of his campaign.

Online History

MittRomney.com^[1] was registered on February 8th, 2002, the same year he presided over the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002. Romney joined Twitter^[2] on June 23rd, 2009 and gained over 360,000 followers in less than three years. His personal Facebook^[3] page has over 1.4 million likes as of February 2012.

2008 Republican Presidential Primary

On February 13th, 2007, Romney formally announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. His website was relaunched with a new design and several new sections, including the video gallery MittTV, merchandise store MittGear and Romney’s sons’ blog Five Brothers. On February 7th, 2008, two days after John McCain posted strong gains in the Super Tuesday primaries, Romney announced the end of his campaign and endorsed McCain.

  

2012 Republican Presidential Primary

On June 2nd, 2011, Romney announced that he would seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Romney was able to raise more than any other Republican candidate with $56 million in 2011. For a front-runner candidate, Romney’s poll numbers remained relatively low with only 25% of prospective GOP voters in October of 2011. Romney came in second in the initial 2012 Iowa caucuses on January 3rd, 2012, with only 34 votes behind winner Rick Santorum. The following week, Romney won the New Hampshire primary pulling in 39% of the vote. Romney came in second to New Gingrich in the January 21st South Carolina primary but went on to beat Gingrich in the January 31st Florida primary. During the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses on March 6th, Romney won six of the ten primaries (For more information, see the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary entry).

Reputation

Awkwardness

Since embarking on his 2012 presidential campaign, Romney has been characterized in the news media as being socially awkward and unable to relate with other people, particularly the core demographic of Republican voters. On June 6th, 2011, the Twin Cities Star Tribune^[15] published an article titled “Mitt Romney, America’s awkward stepdad” claiming that Romney was trying too hard to be “cool.” Satire news site The Onion^[18] published an article titled “Mitt Romney’s Goal To Connect With One Voter By The Time This Is All Over” making fun of Romney’s inability to win over voters on October 24th, 2011.On November 23rd, 2011, The Huffington Post^[17] published an article titled “Mitt Romney’s Awkward Exchanges With Humans” which featured several awkward videos of Romney interacting with other people. The single serving site MehRomney.com^[23] also illustrates the point with a pun on his first name Mitt (shown right).

  

On December 12th, 2011, Time^[16] Magazine ran the cover story “Why Don’t They Like Me?” (above) about Mitt Romney’s inability to connect with certain members of the Republican party. Romney is often characterized as wealthy and out-of-touch in skits on the comedy show Saturday Night Live.

Personal Wealth

Romney was able to accumulate a large amount of his wealth by working at the asset management company Bain Capital. Romney has been criticized for cutting jobs when Bain bought other companies. On December 19th, 2011, The Daily Kos^[20] published a story about Bain Capital cutting jobs under Romney’s management in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Romney’s campaign disclosed that the candidate’s net worth was between $190 million and $250 million on August 12th, 2011.^[18]

Spreading Romney

Similar to the Spreading Santorum campaign aimed at fellow GOP candidate Rick Santorum, the campaign Spreading Romney^[21] was created to pass around a new definition for the word “romney.” The campaign was reported by the web news site Blogger News^[22] on February 11th, 2012.

Parody Pinterest Account

In early February 2012, humorist Eric Spiegelman^[4] began a parody Pinterest account for Romney with the handle “MittRomneyGOP.”^[5] The site initially contained four separate pinboards, or image collections, titled “Favorite Things,” “Snacks,” “Pet Accessories,” and “Great Deeds.” The site was initially covered on February 8th by Uproxx^[6] and on the 9th by the Daily Dot.^[7]

When the account caught the attention of Mitt Romney’s campaign team on February 10th, the Pinterest community manager Enid Hwang got in touch with Spiegelman, stating that they felt it was misleading and requested that the username be changed to “fakemittromney.” Spiegelman responded stating that he did not feel comfortable changing the name by saying:

…you’re a publishing entity that’s more or less open to the public, and I can’t in good conscience change my parody at the request of the subject of that parody. It should be obvious to the Romney campaign that nobody sees this as official, and that I am exercising my Free Speech rights in making fun of Gov. Romney’s utter tone-deafness when it comes to matters of privilege and class inequality.

Ten minutes after he sent his response, Hwang went ahead and changed the username of the account^[8] anyway. Their email interactions were later published on Gawker^[9] and was covered by the Inquistr^[10] and the Daily Beast.^[11]

“Etch A Sketch” Gaffe

On March 21st, 2012, Romney’s senior campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom appeared on CNN’s Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien and was asked if Romney might be hurt in the general election by going too far to the right during the GOP primary. Fehrnstrom responded that the general campaign is similar to an “Etch A Sketch”, a mechanical drawing toy which can be erased by shaking it. Romney’s critics interpreted this statement as implying that Romney’s political views were fabricated in order to win the nomination and would be altered as soon as the primary election was completed.

“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Shortly after, Rick Santorum’s campaign deputy communications director Matt Beynon tweeted^[9] a photo of Rick Santorum holding an Etch A Sketch (shown left) and CBS reporter Rebecca Kaplan tweeted^[27] that a Santorum spokeswoman Alice Stewart was handing out mini Etch A Sketch boards outside a Romney campaign event. That evening, the parody Twitter account @MittsEtch-A-Sketch^[8] was created, which tweeted support for both sides of rival fandoms (shown right), and Ann Romney appeared on CNN to defend her husband calling Fehrnstrom’s gaffe a “distraction.”

The following day, the Wall Street Journal^[26] published an article titled “Etch A Sketch Stock Soars! Thank You Mitt Romney” which reported that share prices had doubled for the Etch A Sketch manufacturers Ohio Art Co. after the Fehrnstrom gaffe. The website “Etch A Sketch Mitt Romney”^[10] was launched which featured a photo of an Etch A Sketch board that cycled through contradictory quotes attributed to Mitt Romney drawn on top.

Related Media

On October 14th, 2011, a Bad Lip Reading video (shown left) was uploaded featuring with new audio edited over footage of Romney speaking. On February 9th, 2012, the Shit People Say video “Shit Mitt Says” (shown right) was uploaded to YouTube featuring various awkward and strange things Romney has said on camera.

Several Quickmeme pages have been created for Romney including Scumbag Mitt Romney^[12] (left), Socially Awkward Mitt Romney^[13] (middle) and Badass Mitt Romney^[14] (right).

Search Interest

Search for Mitt Romney had a small peak in January 2008 before peaking again in January 2012.

External Links