Mitt Romney: Not as Unlikeable as the Media Wants You to Believe

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Steve Benen sends me to Benjy Sarlin and Kyle Leighton, who write:

What If Voters Just Don’t Like Mitt Romney?

Mitt Romney may be on the verge of securing the nomination, but his campaign is still struggling with a pretty basic problem as it looks towards the general election: people just don’t like him very much.

I admit that what I’m about to write sounds like a snarky #slatepitch (“America is Falling in Love With Mitt Romney!”), but is it really true that people don’t like Romney? Well, I don’t like him much. Most of my readers don’t like him much. The press corps probably doesn’t like him much. But the truth is that the only reason Romney has this label pinned on him is because the media anointed him a front runner and is now feigning surprise that he hasn’t sewn up the nomination sooner than any candidate in history. But that doesn’t mean Romney is unlikeable. It just means he’s fairly normal.

As further evidence, Sarlin and Leighton cite a new PPP poll showing that Romney’s unfavorables are high. But let’s take a look at everyone, not just Romney. Here are the unfavorables for all five candidates still in the race as of early this week:

  • Rick Perry: 63%
  • Newt Gingrich: 60%
  • Ron Paul: 57%
  • Mitt Romney: 53%
  • Rick Santorum: 51%

Not bad! Especially for a candidate that everyone knows is starting in a hole because a certain segment of the evangelical community is just never going to approve of a Mormon for president. The fact is, these are just not the numbers of a guy that no one can stand. Rather, they’re the numbers of a candidate in a tough race, where negative ads have forced everyone’s unfavorables pretty high.

Sarlin and Leighton acknowledge this later in their piece. But the headline and the lead are all about the fact that people just don’t like Romney. Watch out, though. The DC media invented an identical narrative for Al Gore in 2000, and it was more a self-fulfilling prophecy from a bunch of reporters who disliked Gore than it was a reflection of the actual truth.

Look: I’m not going to vote for Romney. His willingness to abase himself to the tea party wing of the GOP is nauseating, his obvious fealty to corporate interests is offensive, and — well, you know, he’s a conservative. Of course I’m not going to vote for him. But that doesn’t mean he’s unusually unlikeable. Frankly, of the five guys listed above, I’d probably prefer him as a next-door neighbor to any of them.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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