TPM Reader DK chimes on the Mitt Slapfest …
I can’t believe you haven’t made this point yet. All the Republican candidates (except Ron Paul) were jumping on top of one another to basically call Mitt Romney a weak conniving empty suit in extraordinarily snide and disrespectful tones.
All Romney could do in reply was stutter about the unfairness of personal attacks. Isn’t this a perfect example of the bitch-slap theory of electoral politics? What’s important here isn’t the content of the attacks, but the way they made Romney look incapable of standing up for himself. Will voters rally to Romney out of sympathy, as Noam Scheiber suggests? Did they rally to Kerry? I think we have some relevant data on how Republican voters respond to this sort of thing.
TPM Shrink Reader MB too …
Just a bit of psychological thinking from a shrink:
I think what happened to Mitt last night looked more like a football tackle. A pile-on.
If you think of a pecking order, well Mitt for sure is at the bottom of it. Rather than empathize with the underdog, and he acquitted himself poorly in whining about it, people will often distance themselves from a loser. It’s a psychological thing. There’s a sense that the loser deserves it. That they must be piling on him for a reason. People like a winner. At some point they are looking to root for a winner.
So, if it had been one repub only attacking him you could sympathize with that. But the guy kept interrupting last night. Wanting the last word. Hogging the time. I simply don’t think he came off well. What was there to sympathize with?
