By Quinn Wonderling
If you tuned into the show this morning, you caught the early-morning recap of last night's big to do. And if you didn't, then we'll give you a breakdown on how today's panel viewed Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum's post-result speeches.
“A win is a win is a win,” Joe commented about Mitt Romney’s nail-biting, 3-point squeaker over Rick Santorum in Michigan on Junior Tuesday.
Of course, winning is always the bottom line. But a candidate’s speech style can have a big impact on their success or failure, and the panel today took a look at the very different styles we’ve seen so far in the race for the Republican nomination.
One problem is clear: the candidates’ aren’t repeating or delivering one powerful message in their stump speeches, and it’s hurting them.
“Throughout this entire campaign, we have had some weak political athletes, on the basics, the blocking and the tackling – having a message, a clear message, and hammering that message home,” Scarborough said. “We saw with Jon Huntsman, a guy that we liked very much, he could not deliver a 5-minute stump speech. Every night it was something different, every night he went on to a different topic. He couldn’t stay on message because he had so many messages. This is Rick Santorum’s same fault. He is so undisciplined on the campaign stump. It’s maddening and it’s making a lot of the supporters angry.”
Jon Meacham: “The only person I know in modern political history who can ramble on message is Bill Clinton, and these guys aren’t Bill Clinton.”
Joe Scarborough: “Ronald Reagan…the man gave the same speech for 30 years. The speeches that Ronald Reagan gave for GE in the 1950s are the speeches Ronald Reagan gave on the campaign trail in 1976, in 1980, in 1984 and at the Republican National Convention in 1988 when he said goodbye to America. The same speech! And these guys can’t deliver the same speech a week apart. It is maddening how undisciplined they are.”
Michael Steele: “I think that’s the core of it. The messaging has been the enemy of the party since last year, and this inability to communicate what you believe and how you’re going to move the country forward, I think has been a large driver here. We’ve seen it reflected in the slow or low turnout of Republicans who were really juiced up coming into this cycle, to do this campaign to defeat the president and we can’t seem to be getting them into the polls. That has to do with how these candidates are communicating. I think if Santorum had taken that big speech and condensed it to a 30-second ad, and just hammered that in Michigan you’re looking at very different results last night.”
