ROMNEY FINALLY TOOK THE GLOVES OFF–ROMNEY STYLE

In 1994, businessman and longtime presidential aspirant Mitt Romney ran for Senate against incumbent  Ted Kennedy. As the debate season approached, Kennedy grew nervous. At least that was what was reported in the press. After all, Mitt Romney was a very bright, lawyer businessman, and Ted Kennedy was a college throw out and scene of a motor vehicle accident leaver. Even more, not long before this election, he was out drinking with his nephews close to the time one of them was tried for rape. Not exactly a stellar resume. In fact, his only claim to fame was being, well, a Kennedy.

When the debate began, Kennedy was visibly nervous. He was tremulous, shaking. He started the debate on the ropes, with two strikes against him, on three of all fours. You get the picture.

As the debate went on, however, Romney never delivered a knock out punch. He never threw the third strike. Rather, he was gentlemanly. When Kennedy interrupted him with school yard barbs, he did not strike back. Time and again, Romney allowed Kennedy to get punches in.

About half way through the debate, Kennedy’s shaking stopped. His anxiety was resolved, and his courage grew. By the end, the race had been won. The rest of the debates were meaningless. The advertising was meaningless. Kennedy got up off the canvas and won.

Fast forward to last week’s Republican debate in Florida. About eight hats were in still in the ring, but Romney and Perry were the two main event contenders for the crown. In the post event commentaries, bright young political analyst Frank Luntz showed the responses of thirty Republicans he brought together in a focus group. While Luntz’s approach is very, very powerful, I’d like to add a bit to it.

Luntz has been quoted as saying politics or decision making is 80% emotional. I’d like to say it’s more, but that’s not the point. The point is that an important part of that 80% is unconscious or at least pre-conscious.

To define terms a bit, conscious is what’s in our minds that we are aware of. Unconscious is what is buried in our minds so deeply that we are unaware of it  and would have to devote lots of energy and time to in order to render even parts of it conscious. Pre-conscious refers to what is in our minds that we can reach awareness of without all that much effort.

So, what is in the unconscious minds of the focus group members plays a role in their decision making, but they would not be able to see it. However, what is pre-conscious is where the action is. That is, information perceived by us pre-consciously drives our more current lives, emotionally and otherwise.

Now, when the panel members commented on why they felt (notice I use the word felt, not thought) Romney won and shifted their allegiance from Perry to Romney, they offered only standard, stock reasons. That is all they would be expected to do. “Perry was not specific.” “Romney was direct.” OK. Some even gave examples. Of course, many were influenced by their peers, sitting right next to them.

But the thing I ask is why and how did Romney get their allegiance. Remember, they would explain it only in the stock reasons I just cited. But why? What nerve (emotion) did Romney touch, what persona did he present, that led the focus group to feel they should follow him, leading to their seemingly rational comments.

This is an important question, for it gets to the bottom, or at least deeper, than even Frank Luntz does, and much more deeply than almost all the other political commentators do.

Here’s what Romney did. First, he used a technique honed to perfection by Barack Obama, when he would politely demean his opponents. He’d say things like, “That’s silly,” or “Don’t be ridiculous.” Used properly, these expression are a piercing as a sabre. They mean, “You are silly,” or “You are ridiculous, so stop it.” They are embedded criticisms.

Embedded criticisms are difficult to defend, for they are not easily recognized as such by opponents on a stage, trying to remember all their talking points. However, the viewers get it. They see an attack with no response, a punch without a counter-punch. One who uses an embedded criticism/sabre gets away with it. It’s an unparried thrust and makes the person using it seem superior, even, even, parental.

I talk about the importance of appearing parental at great length in other posts, so let’s just say that parents use this kind of criticism when children, each of us in our early lives, were silly or ridiculous. It pierced us then, and it pierces us now–though we’d never say, “Well, I think Romney will make a good leader because he used an embedded criticism, as my parents used them openly when I did something wrong.” This is because we are unaware of them. They are perceived in our pre-conscious minds, and they move us–because we are unaware of them and their similarity to our parents.

That’s why the focus group members would never use them as reasons. First, if they did, they would be seen as bizarre, not have well thought out politically accepted phrases and reasons for their decisions.  Moreover, if the embedded criticisms were mentioned, they would move from the pre-conscious to the conscious mind. Then, the focus group members would be aware of them, and they could evaluate them as reasons for our votes with our adult, mature, logical minds.

What Romney did was to say, in response to positions of his opponents, “That doesn’t make any sense!” Whoa. Let’s think about that. Sorry, can’t. The debate’s moving ahead. We are just left with the pre-conscious perception that Romney just acted like a parent. He demeaned his opponent, as our parents demeaned us, and we didn’t even notice it–consciously.

That, and, second, his body language, were his knock out punch. Yes, Mitt Romney finally took off his gloves, and moved one more step closer to the crown!