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Romney’s Anti-Trump Speech a Rousing Success
Earlier today, politicos across America proclaimed that Mitt Romney’s speech denouncing Donald Trump was a complete bust. Morning Consult polled Republicans and found that the broadside had barely moved the needle in the race:
Thirty-one percent of GOP voters said they were more likely to vote for Trump, while 20 percent said less likely, and 43 percent said it had no impact either way.
The poll, which was conducted March 4 through March 6, also finds that only five percent of Trump supporters said they are now less likely to vote for Trump. And, of those who voted for Romney in 2012, 30 percent said they were more likely to vote for Trump, compared to 20 percent who said less likely. Nearly half (48 percent) said it wouldn’t affect their vote either way.
The 2012 GOP nominee is the foremost representative of the loathed establishment, so it’s no surprise that his University of Utah speech didn’t change the minds of angry voters. But, of course, that wasn’t the purpose of Romney’s speech. Likewise, Marco Rubio’s mockery and Ted Cruz’s lawyerly deconstruction of The Donald weren’t primarily designed to make the Trumpenproletariat abandon their leader. Instead, they wanted to get inside Trump’s OODA Loop.
The OODA Loop
While in the US Air Force, fighter pilot Col. John R. Boyd created a decision-making model which allowed American pilots to dominate every dogfight. Marshaling his exhaustive knowledge of big thinkers from Sun Tzu to Werner Heisenberg, Boyd determined that victory isn’t merely a matter of superior technology and firepower. More important are brainpower, decisiveness, and fast choices.
OODA stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action. The pilot must quickly observe the conditions, orient his jet before the opponent does, decide upon a plan, and then act against the enemy’s weakness. The faster through this cycle, the better. After the pilot’s initial decisive act, he immediately observes the new environment, re-orients himself, decides a second move, and acts on it. By employing this framework, Boyd promised he could best any of his fellow pilots despite starting a mock battle in a vulnerable position. He achieved his goal every time in less than 40 seconds.
The OODA loop is as applicable to business and politics as it is to dogfights. If you run a tech company, success isn’t merely having the best product, being fastest to market, or having the largest marketing budget. Those are helpful, but the essential element is to outmaneuver the competition. By taking fast, decisive action, you can get inside your opponent’s OODA loop, which Boyd said will “make us appear ambiguous, [and] thereby generate confusion and disorder.”
Getting Inside Trump’s OODA Loop
Until the past couple of weeks, Donald Trump has been the only candidate generating confusion and disorder. Always on offense, the media covers him non-stop, whether it’s for the petty insult of the day, a false claim, or strange behavior. When the news channels do cover his rivals, they mostly ask the candidates about Trump’s latest outrage. Nearly all of his opponents’ decisions have been defensive, responding to the frontrunner.
But as anyone who has watched The Donald knows, he is an insecure and undisciplined man who can’t resist responding to any perceived slight — often in embarrassing ways. So Rubio mocked his finger size … to which the Donald assured a vast debate audience that he had a large penis. Rubio exposed the Trump University scam … to which The Donald lied about an “A” rating from the Better Business Bureau which had actually granted it a D-minus. He spent days on Twitter calling the Florida senator a “leightweight” and a “chocker,” fueling even more mockery.
Around the time Rubio was taking it to The Donald, Romney demanded that Trump release his taxes and implied that the multizillionaire was hiding a far less impressive net worth. Trump responded in a long Twitter rant with more insults and over-the-top boasts about his financial acumen. Then Mitt implied The Donald might be hiding financial mismanagement and business failures. Trump jumped on the airwaves to respond, his face red with anger as he lied about his bankruptcies and hiring foreign workers. The press couldn’t help but explain the scandals to their viewers.
Then came March 3, the morning of a crucial debate in the delegate-rich state of Michigan: The ideal time for Mitt to really rattle the GOP frontrunner. Instead of resting up or doing debate prep, Trump watched Mitt’s speech denouncing him, then hastily staged a shouty, rambling speech of his own. He called in to talk shows and spoke of Mitt “dropping to his knees” for him. He again took to Twitter, focused entirely on a man who isn’t running against him. By the time the debate began, Trump was tired, peevish, and completely off his game.
Rubio and Cruz observed this fact, reoriented, decided on new attacks, and acted with vigor.
I’m sure Mitt and Marco would be happy if their attacks on Trump had convinced his fans to abandon their hero and join one of his rivals. They would have loved to see his poll numbers plummet overnight and his frontrunner status collapse like Herman Cain’s did in the 2012 race. But that wasn’t their primary goal.
Instead, they wanted to get inside Trump’s OODA loop, put him on the defensive for the first time in this campaign, and force him into costly mistakes. And, in that, they succeeded.
Published in General
from #60 Brian Watt
Brian,
I have no facts. Just a dream.
Right. This is why Bloomberg was deciding at this point. He would need the rest of the month for paperwork, and I think some petitions.
Trump won’t decide until the convention or close to it. At that point, he might even have to patchwork together a collection of fringe parties. But some would be willing to do it because some states have provisions that if you hit a certain threshold, you get state funding in the next election. I remember the Marijuana Reform Party in NY campaigning on that.
Mitt, a man of metrics if not relevance, might check the scoreboard and find the worst of all results: absolute flatness, no impact whatsoever.
Mitt has chosen to ingratiate himself to his peer group in the elites, at the price of alienating ordinary Republicans who voted for him out of loyalty. He has also angered many of the people who chose not to vote for him in 2012, but went out of their way to attend Trump rallies this year. Maybe that was the point.
By playing Willard the Rat in this scenario, Romney has underlined divisions which are most likely to help the Democrats. Some of us wish this nasty boy side had surfaced when he let President Obama intimidate him on Benghazi in the debate four years ago.
Romney’s speech was outstanding. It’s good, Jon, to read you giving him the credit he deserves.
Off the subject, but ever since I saw that picture of people raising their hands to Trump in a pledge to vote (You can’t tell me Trump didn’t know how bad a picture of it would look.) I’ve been convinced Trump is deliberately suckering justifiably angry people into making themselves look dangerous and ridiculous. I think he wants to be the nominee so that Clinton can win.
Re : comment #63
Sometimes people’s first reaction is anger and denial, but thinking about the message soon enough after is the delayed reaction. I think that was the point.
Also off the subject, but isn’t it peculiar how relaxed, natural and light hearted, the ordinarily stiff Mr Romney seems when he’s grimly taking someone apart.
Alert to all suffering from Trump Denial Syndrome: It’s Tuesday night — do you know where your excuses are? Trump victories to be announced shortly.
In chess and in war, “The best way to defend is to attack, and the best way to attack is to attack.” George Patton
There is a big difference between the questions of whether Trump will win and whether the country is better off if he wins.
Hilarious!
Thank you. :) :) :)
People outside Massachusetts don’t know him well politically.
Mitt Romney is the anti-establishment candidate.
It is funny to see him characterized as being one of the party elites.
He ran against an incumbent Republican governor in Massachusetts.
He would be the president that the Trump supporters want in many ways, certainly on immigration. It’s too bad the Republican establishment never ever got behind him.
I can’t help thinking that if the portion of the (Republican) electorate which was suffering from Romney Denial Syndrome in 2012 (He’s Not MY Candidate!! He’s Mean To Dogs!! He’s Not A Christian!! He’s Too Conservative!! He Wears Strange Underwear!! He Reeks Of The Establishment!! He’s Not Conservative Enough!! He’s Too Rich!! He Doesn’t Care About Meeeee!! He Wasn’t My First Choice!! He Hates Womyn!!!) had managed to either drink or drug themselves out of their unfortunate condition before the election, we would have been spared the last four years of Barack Obama.
Still, speaking of excuses, better to look forward in anger and tenuous hope, I guess, than backward with an eye to self-understanding and accountability.
To merge two topics–Romney and talk radio–I listened to Mark Levin take Romney to the woodshed tonight. Now Levin is not giving Trump a complete pass–he did say he had issues with some of his positions–but he blasted Mitt as someone who was a terrible candidate who ran a terrible campaign. Levin is probably in the Cruz camp, as others have noted, but still can’t bring himself, as father of the “establishment” meme, to take Trump on in a meaningful way.
My husband is Mark Levin fan. I’ve heard him on the subject of Mitt Romney.
I think Mark and Drudge are a big reason there is so much focus suddenly on the RNC.
It makes me so mad.
Hey, Mark, I’ll tell you what. You sit down and address a thousand envelopes, hold signs for your candidate in the pouring rain until your arms fall off, and do that for a few elections, and then tell me who runs the “GOPe.”
Wait until the new parties try to re-create the millions of volunteer man-hours that went into building the national Republican Party.
Why didn’t they just start their own party?
As a native Bostonian, I’m with you all the way. I do understand the criticism that Romney’s background in MA with healthcare affected his ability to go after Obamacare, but the degree and severity of the criticism is way over the top.
I’m in VA now, and hope you don’t mind that I checked your profile. I’m jealous! Ever go to Spanky’s in Hyannis? Well, you probably can get lobstah any time you want it :)
Interesting. I wonder if he couldn’t do it for his own benefit, but for the benefit of others, he is OK?
Could have used some more fangs in 2012.
^ This.
Re: comment 76
If he had been anywhere near that harsh with Obama, everyone would have called him a racist.
No argument there. WYSISWYG and maybe there’s no perfect candidate if one is a Republican.
Well, Thank You. The mention of Spanky’s was the first time I’ve smiled all day.
You’re right. Summer is coming.
Rush reminded me of something I had forgotten. George Romney did the same thing to Goldwater. He came out against him and tried to peel GOP support from the candidate.
Apparently it is a family thing.
Well looks like old George really had that one wrong. Goldwater’s 52 electoral votes probably taught him a lesson, so I’m surprised Mitt! didn’t learn from it.
Trump may be flattening or deflating, but I doubt that Romney’s speech had much if anything to do with it.
All I heard on talk radio in the days after the speech is cuts of Romney’s speech played back-to-back with cuts of Romney’s speech when Trump endorsed him in 2012. Romney’s slavish and slavering gut-sucking in the latter destroys his credibility in the former.
Thinking only of the opponent’s OODA loop is self-defeating. To be able to exploit the OODA template of conflict, one has to review one’s own OODA processes with rigor and impartiality, and dispassionately flense and cleanse those processes that impart friction to one’s own OODA cycle.
My supposition is that the RNC hasn’t done this.
Maybe the lesson for Romney and people in his position is to reject the endorsement of people to whom you would not want to return the favor.
Before everyone goes nuts on this story about George Romney, please read this story about it. They are very different circumstances. George Romney was very concerned about the direction the party was going in at that time, not Goldwater’s character:
Re: comment 85
Well, and then there’s this little thing: George Romney may have been wrong about Goldwater or the danger of the direction the party was going at the time. ( I don’t know enough to have an opinion.) Mitt Romney isn’t wrong about Trump.
MarciN, Am I understanding this letter correctly? It sounds as if Goldwater was as reluctant to risk loosing support by offending racists or people sympathetic to racism as Trump is. And George Romney—after a large, unsuccessful effort to get Goldwater to take an unequivocal public stand for racial equality—was therefore unable to endorse him.
The letter is intriguing. I’ll be rereading it later today when I don’t have so many interruptions. Thank you for making me aware of it.
If Rubio is inside Trump’s OODA Loop I hope you never fly with Rubio into combat. Maybe you already have.
Yes, it is fascinating look at where we were and how we got here today.
The article is really really interesting. Glad someone took my bait! :) :)
If anyone is inside anybody’s OODA loop it’s Trump inside the GOP establishment’s.