I am currently reading (thanks for the tip Rodan)  on my kindle “Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America”. The danger of not responding to attack ads (thank you Karl Rove, Stuart Stevens and the rest of the corrupt consulting class that the G.O.P. is wedded to), the ultimate legacy of  George W. Bush of turning the other cheek and ignoring vicious slander and lies,  cost us Ohio and in the end, the election.

by Brent Larkin

Early in the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama’s brain trust had grave doubts about the president’s ability to convince Ohioans he deserved a second term.

But Senate Bill 5 and, to a lesser extent, the controversy over attempts to limit early voting in Ohio offered Obama a “route back.”

It was a route the Obama team traveled with such breathtaking precision that, by August, Mitt Romney’s campaign in Ohio was pretty much a lost cause.

These are among the many insights in “Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America,” a riveting new book by longtime Washington Post politics reporter Dan Balz.

Balz is one of Washington’s most respected journalists. And the book, which was No. 8 on The New York Times bestseller list of Aug. 25, has earned rave reviews. […….]

In the chapter titled “Ohio and the Path to 270,” Balz writes that after Republicans swept Ohio’s statewide offices in 2010 and the Tea Party piled up victories across the country, Obama’s battleground state director Mitch Stewart admitted to being “very, very worried” about Ohio.

“The Ohio electorate is older and less well-educated than some of the other battleground states,” Balz said, in a telephone interview. “The working-class vote has always been a tough vote for Obama. And there’s a significant portion of that in Ohio.”

The Senate Bill 5 campaign in the fall of 2011 was a godsend for the Obama campaign, which used it as an organizing tool, hoping it would energize the president’s base.

It did.

And when it became clear Romney would be the Republican nominee, the Obama campaign carpet bombed Ohio with attack ads. From May through August of last year, the Obama campaign spent $30 million in Ohio on effective television ads accusing Romney of outsourcing jobs, having a Swiss bank account and investing in the Cayman Islands. During that same period, Romney countered with $10 million of his own ads.

It wasn’t nearly enough. Obama’s ads inflicted irreparable damage to Romney’s reputation.

“In retrospect, it (the election in Ohio) was probably over at that point,” Balz told me. “The Obama campaign didn’t take anything for granted. But the ad campaign sort of put a weight on top of Romney.”

Balz writes that the Romney campaign’s strategy in Ohio irritated Sen. Rob Portman, referred to in the book as “one of the campaign’s most valuable assets,” someone with special access to the candidate.

In September, Portman complained Romney wasn’t buying enough advertising time in the smaller television markets that helped President George W. Bush beat Sen. John Kerry in 2004. A review of Romney’s spending in Ohio also found that ads they thought were running in western Ohio markets weren’t even on the air.

[…….]

No issue hurt Romney in Ohio as much as his opposition to the automobile bailout. And it was especially damaging across the state’s northern tier.

Again, a frustrated Portman urged the campaign to deal with the issue. But Boston vetoed use of some television commercials on the bailout. By the time the campaign responded, it was too late.

Looking ahead, Balz said it appears Gov. John Kasich is in the early stages of “an interesting balancing act” that involves running for re-election in 2014 and contemplating a race for president in 2016.

[……..]

Balz is regarded as perhaps Washington’s fairest journalist, so Republicans should heed his warning in the book’s epilogue that the GOP has lost touch with the changing demographics of the American electorate:

“Democrats have tapped into this new America, which in a matter of decades will no longer be a majority-white nation. Republicans awoke to this new demographic deficit after the election as if it had caught them unawares.”

“In fact it has been a persistent and visible problem for years, which, with some notable exceptions, has been either ignored by the party or dealt with in such superficial and ineffective ways that it has done them no lasting good.”

Asked if a lot of Republican leaders have figured this out, Balz answered, “I don’t know. We’ll find out by 2016.”

And the state that supplies the answer in three years will probably be the one that gives us the name of the winner almost every presidential year.

[……..]

Read the rest – How Ohio slipped through Romney’s fingers in 2012