Friday, January 20, 2006

Breaking news! Mitt Romney and Mike Murphy are splitsville.

Will this hurt Romney's presidential candidacy? Hard to say. Last February, the Herald's Ginny Buckingham offered a pretty damning assessment of Murphy's track record. (You'll find the whole thing at the bottom of this post.) Then again, Murphy's tenure as a Romney strategist produced a truly remarkable run of fawning, uncritical articles dedicated to parsing Romney's greatness. (Here's one, and another, and another.)

It'll be interesting to see if Romney's sales pitch changes in the coming months. In the meantime, here, courtesy of Buckingham, is why Murphy's departure could be good news for the governor:


GURU TRACK RECORD A GOP TRAIN WRECK (February 7, 2005)

Gov. Mitt Romney has put himself in more than a few boxes he'll have to get out of if he's serious about a run for president. But the most puzzling is why is he tying his presidential fortunes to the Republican Party's version of Bob Shrum? OK, so Shrum is zero for eight, including John Kerry. But political consultant Michael Murphy, the architect of Romney's national ambitions, is zero for five in presidential races, including Lamar Alexander, John McCain and Bob Dole.

And how is it possible that Murphy could preside over the spending of $40 million on behalf of former New York Rep. Rick Lazio only to transform this moderate alternative to Hillary Clinton into a caricature of an extremist Republican?

Maybe Romney figures at $11,000 a month from Republican State Party coffers, Murphy's a bargain. But given the results of those 2004 GOP legislative races, it appears the party is getting what it paid for.

Sure, it's easier to blame the consultants for a poor showing than for candidates to look in the mirror. But McCain was more than a decent candidate.

One particularly bad move McCain made - running an ad in South Carolina comparing President Bush to Bill Clinton - was a Murphy special. And when McCain turned up in Virginia attacking the Christian Right, it was the "middle of the end" of McCain's candidacy, as one Washington-based Bush strategist told me.

And then there's that nasty little business of Catholic Voter Alert calls before the 2000 Michigan primary essentially calling Bush an anti-Catholic bigot - which the McCain camp at first denied its involvement in.

Murphy also has his nose under more than one presidential aspirant's tent. He may be telling Romney he's the horse for 2008, but doesn't Romney wonder what he's telling Gov. Jeb Bush and McCain. "Forget it, get out of the way for this guy from Massachusetts?" Seems unlikely.

What kind of loyalty can Romney expect from a guy who once referred to McCain as "the meat?" Loyalty to the candidate comes in handy in the heat of a campaign. Just ask John Kerry about the Clintonistas who came on board to "save" his campaign and the Newsweek post-mortem, where had lots of tales to tell about Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Murphy has also put Romney at a disadvantage for 2006. My money's on Romney not running for re-election, but if he does, forming a PAC in July 2004 to spread goodies among party leaders in key states like South Carolina was unnecessarily premature and will make the re-election going rougher.

And reformer Romney ought to read the news coverage in Sacramento about consultant Murphy opening up shop across the street from the state capitol to lobby his client Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a plan he dropped under fire.

Having been involved in campaigns with Clinton strategist Dick Morris (in his Republican iteration) I've seen the sway fast-talking and smart strategists can hold on a candidate. But of some 10 ideas these hired gun consultants put on the table, usually one or two are brilliant, three are just OK, and five would lose the candidate the election.

(I vaguely remember Morris suggesting the Weld campaign blow up an airplane for one TV ad.)

The 2008 campaign is still far away. Romney has plenty of time to shop around.

1/20/2006 5:11:10 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [1] |