Romney Campaign Considered 'Yes We Can' As Campaign Slogan Before Obama, Says New Book

WASHINGTON -- "Yes We Can" was the rallying cry of the Obama campaign in 2008, fueling a belief that his election would prompt meaningful change in Washington despite all odds and the oft-mentioned "naysayers." But a new book reveals that the iconic chant, so closely linked to Obama and his message, was first a creation of Mitt Romney's team.

"The Real Romney," a new book about the GOP frontrunner by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, details how Romney's media staff presented the slogan as part of a brutal self-assessment in 2007.

It was a few months after the Ritz-Carlton meeting, and Romney's advisers had gathered to try to address a series of questions: Who is Mitt Romney? What is the perception of him among voters? How could the campaign shape or reshape that image?

The answers were not pretty, including terms like "phony" and "You do not know where WMR [Willard Mitt Romney] comes from..." The media team's presentation made clear that Romney needed what they called a "'Primal Code for Brand Romney' -- a core message that could be embedded in the minds of voters."

One of the suggestions for that cornerstone message was Obama's future tagline:

One of the campaign's chief concerns was that Romney would be tagged, as one slide put it, as "Flip-flop Mitt," given his changes on issues such as abortion. The media team urged Romney to counter that with a forward-looking brand. One of the slides suggested that Romney use this as his catchphrase: 'Yes, we can.' But Barack Obama would take it before Romney could. Whatever the phrase, Romney had to be sold as an 'optimistic, conservative leader who is calling upon the strength of the American people [to] lead us into the future, to a better place.'

While the book does not detail how or why Romney did not use the phrase, the fears of his media team were well-founded. The McCain campaign successfully portrayed Romney as a say-anything candidate, eventually besting the former Massachusetts governor for the Republican nomination, while Obama rode "Yes We Can" and his forward-looking image to the White House.

Kranish and Helman, reporters for the Boston Globe, already published a piece for Vanity Fair adapted from the book revealing that Romney pressured single mother Peggy Hayes to give up her baby for adoption in 1963. At the time, Romney was a young church leader in Massachusetts.

Comments

[se72748]

05:19 PM on 01/14/2012

Apparently Romney couldn't.

[fworfe]

04:44 PM on 01/14/2012

Can't help feeling that conservative politics is sold to us by Tea Party and Evangelical Party Republicans like technology, makeup, hardware and grocery store items in accordance with the findings of focus groups.
We can't question the legality or the effectiveness of this, but doesn't it insult our intelligence?
Doesn't it make it seem like we're being retailed, bought and sold for profit like so many widgets?
OK, so it is just our capitalistic free market system. I don't quarrel with the free market system as such, but I do feel a bit uncomfortable with the assumption that my vote and I are considered by the Republican operatives to be saleable items. --To know that I'm being 'marketed' by clever words, phrases and images hatched up by professional focus group manipulation.
Or, am I getting a bit over-the-top in my paranoia?

[Shane Cline]

05:38 PM on 01/15/2012

Conservatism has intellectual foundations as well. It's not just a popular, marketable fad. The electoral system is based on marketing. The alternative is to find an unbiased and neutral disseminator of information. HAHA. Now you know why marketing is preferred.

[JakeBrakeThat]

12:06 PM on 01/18/2012

To think that it's any different on the other side of the aisle would be over the top.

[lkamer56]

03:48 PM on 01/14/2012

Anyone else notice that when unemployment new files fell below 200000k (since 300000 people are retiring monthly ,not that impressive)CNN ,ABC,HP etc ran HUGE headlines. Last week it was 299000and NONE of them reported it. The drop under 200000 was talked about for TWO days on HP. HP your bias is showing AGAIN>

[philliplojek]

03:23 PM on 01/14/2012

Obama's 'Yes We Can' is not the original slogan from Obama. It originally was "Yes We Can Take Another Vacation'.

[se72748]

05:21 PM on 01/14/2012

Phill How very trite of you.

[philliplojek]

07:10 PM on 01/14/2012

Trite, but true.

[AkaFidelis]

03:20 PM on 01/14/2012

Mitt is trying to sell his idea that class envy has divided America and that the President is promoting a "bitter politics of envy." This is a crock of s**t, Mitt. I don't envy you for a second. I came up the hard way--no one gave me any financial help, and all that stood between me and the curb were my own abilities, and like a lot of Americans, I made it well into the middle class on my own. Mitt never had to prove himself all by himself, and now he puffs up his chest as an apologist for his fellow one percenters.
Tell me, people, have you ever noticed as I have that, among all my friends of differing political views, the ones who yell the loudest about the poor getting help are the ones who themselves got the most help. I mean, I don't know a lot of conservatives who came by their views honestly--they seem to think that, because their parents put them through college, that doesn't count as help--it was from their family, not from "the government". BS--they got help, period--they didn't have to make it on their own, and now, they are repulsed by the poor, as if to say, "There am I, if not for the help I received," and, in their insecurity, they overcompensate with indignation because they will never know if they would have made it alone.

[Shane Cline]

06:18 PM on 01/15/2012

Romney is a center-right conservative. His political position has little to do with his upbringing - thankfully. Politicians who shape their views of how to best improve society on their own experiences make a lot of trouble.

Conservatives currently see government spending taking up over 40% of the GDP. This is a problem because we're trying to compete with the likes of South Korea, China, Australia, etc. We want to have good high-paying jobs here. But with our expensive government services and safety nets, it's difficult to offer a business-friendly environment.

Furthermore, when government spending reaches 50% of GDP, it hits a natural economic limit. You can't go higher than that in today's world and Europe has hit the wall - hence their problems. Conservatives are trying to prevent us from reaching the 50% wall and trying to dial us back from 40%.

Having studied it, the best way to pull back is to means-test social programs - stop paying out to upper middle class and wealthy families. The banter you hear about entitlements is the populist arm of an intellectually-based solution to a real-world problem. Likewise, the recent banter about the filthy rich is the populist arm of the realization that we need more money pay for our big spending and big debt. The rich have money, and that will probably come into play as a component of solution too.

[Honest Babe]

02:46 PM on 01/14/2012

Romney should be embarassed at making this claim. Anything to take away from the President. The slogan is not new to either campaign and tracks back to at least 1972 when workers objected to abusive treatment by their employers and were working to obtain better conditions in their workplace. The term referred to being effective when the people spoke with one voice to make change. It hardly seems that Romney would have any commonality with those who worked under abusive conditions for poverty level wages. It is no wonder that they would not have used the slogan - first because it didn't fit their circumstances, and because Obama also had used it during his 2004 senate campaign. Please do us a favor and don't claim this was Willard's original idea. Another misrepresentation of fact doesn't add anything to his credibility.

[Honest Babe]

02:31 PM on 01/14/2012

It's interesting that when they have not better choice, Republicans are willing to accept the same guy who hasn't changed a bit - still the flip flopping, say anything to get elected guy he has always been. The real question is "Who is Willard Romney?" The only core information is that he didn't earn his money the hard way (he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth), he is able to still obtain money through investments only (meaning he pays less as a percentage of his income in taxes than most of the rest of us do), rather than building companies, he took over companies, laid off employees and tore them down in order to sell at a profit, and he seems to lack conviction for anything other than making money for himself. He lacks the strength of moral character to lose his bid for the presidency, to actually state convictions that would be important to the health and rebuilding of the country. While being touted as a "businessman", he has no experience in innovating, restructuring and rebuilding. Corporate raiding is not a constructive trait to lead effectively.

[sks504]

01:51 PM on 01/14/2012

It is sad to the the left hate success. That is why the country is going downhill. These libs bankrupt a company and cry when it closes or someone eles buys it. No more $100,000 union factory jobs. The auto workers can not make $85,000 to turn a wrench. Obama means yes we can bankrupt the country.

[Honest Babe]

02:34 PM on 01/14/2012

It's sad when anyone calls it a success that a person guts companies and sells them for a profit. That's not hard to do. And success is in the eyes of the beholder. did he make money for himself? Yes. did he do anything constructive to build the company? No. Did he do anything helpful for the people whose work buit the company in the first place? No, he stole from their retirement funds and then sold the company after firing them. It's all a matter of cynical perspective.

[se72748]

05:25 PM on 01/14/2012

As a republican ,it was you and your republican cohorts that have bankrupted the economy.Yes you share the responsibility for the shape America is in.100,000 thousand dollar factory jobs and 85,000 dollar mechanic jobs are blatant republican lies and you are telling them.

[amwa]

01:47 PM on 01/14/2012

Yes we can give to the wealthy and make you all pay, yes we can send jobs overseas, yes we can make you work for peanuts, yes we can change our mind on giving you healthcare, yes we can do anything we want as we are the 1% . No thank you Willard.

[dencuddy]

11:54 AM on 01/14/2012

I thought about it before Romney did! What is this? Romney's only idea?

[burtonburtoncom]

11:12 AM on 01/14/2012

What does Mitt Romney likely mean by "Yes We Can?" Let's outsource jobs to make businesses more profitable. Let's downsize business while raising the salaries of some CEOs to $24,000 PER HOUR, give others huge retirement packages, and pay some stakeholders $120,000 to $300,000 PER HOUR. Let's hire high priced lobbyists to negotiate tax breaks for highly profitable big businesses outsourcing jobs. Outsourcing kills private sector jobs, and giving tax breaks to highly profitable big businesses enriches the elite while reducing tax revenues needed to repair roads and bridges; hire teachers, policemen and firemen. Let's raise the income of the elite 275% compared to 68% for the middle class.

"Yes We Can" means having rank and file government workers reduce their salary and benefits while upper government management, appointed officials and elected officials don't.

"Yes We Can" means let's destroy Social Security while politicians supposedly get the following retirement packages for life: House and Senators: $174,000 per year for life; Speaker of the House $223,500 per year; Maority/Minority Leaders $193,400 per year.

[GHY1]

11:06 AM on 01/14/2012

Mitt is more like "yes I can, No you can't

[NancyY]

10:20 AM on 01/14/2012

From the article: "WASHINGTON -- "Yes We Can" was the rallying cry of the Obama campaign in 2008, fueling a belief that his election would prompt meaningful change in Washington despite all odds and the oft-mentioned "naysayers." But a new book reveals that the iconic chant, so closely linked to Obama and his message, was first a creation of Mitt Romney's team."

Me: the "Yes We Can" is actually plagiarized to a point - "Si se puede" ("Yes we can") was the rallying cry of Hispanic illegals who marched in our streets in 2006 and demanded amnesty as well as tax-based goodies.

[fehc]

10:13 AM on 01/14/2012

I thought his identity was defined by his favorite color - Plaid I Am!!

[philliplojek]

09:53 AM on 01/14/2012

Obama's 'Yes We Can' is taken out of context. The full slogan is 'Yes We Can Take Another Vacation'.