In a coordinated effort to appear more popular among Latino voters, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his campaign insisted on a few last-minute changes to the candidate’s participation in a Univision town hall that allowed them to pack the event with fervent Romney supporters.
According to BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins, the Romney campaign asked the town hall’s organizers to be exempt from a previously agreed upon rule that tickets to the event be given mainly to college students. Tickets to the event were split between Univision, the University of Miami, who co-sponsored the event, and the two campaigns, with both sides agreeing to give their tickets almost exclusively to university students.
But when team Romney ran into a dearth of college supporters—they gave some of their tickets to conservative groups on campus and still had plenty of extras left over—they asked for an exemption to the rule. According to one of the moderators, Maria Elena Salinas, the Romney campaign then upped the ante, suggesting that if Univision did not grant an exception, then they would potentially need to “reschedule” the event.
So Mitt Romney had trouble packing a Latino media forum because he couldn’t find enough college students willing to support him. This is getting close to being a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with Mitt Romney’s appeal — older straight white voters like him, everyone else… Well, not so much.
In the end, he did manage to get the adoring crowd he wanted — “the Romney campaign was allowed to bus in boisterous supporters from around Florida to pack the town hall” — which demonstrates another problem with the Romney campaign: an over-reliance on bullshit.
