On Wednesday, Politico ran a fawning profile of chief Romney strategist Stuart Stevens. The article notes that Stevens has been defending the conduct of the Romney campaign, but buries the priceless nugget that he is “rebranding” his firm and changing its eponymous name. The firm, Stevens and Schreifer Group will now be known by the generic Strategic Partners and Media.
Despite the spectacular loss in last year’s Presidential election, Romney campaign guru Stuart Stevens personally is maintaining an unusually high profile. Stevens oversaw all aspects of a campaign that had an unprecedented amount of resources, outside support and an opponent consistently polling at less than 50% approval. In the end, the campaign Stevens directed attracted about the same number of votes as John McCain.
Stevens recently began penning columns for The Daily Beast, the on-line remnant of the once-powerful Newsweek brand. While he will attach his names to opinion pieces, it is telling he has decided to no longer attach it to his business.
The strategic missteps of the Steven’s-led Romney campaign have been discussed extensively. Less discussed are the internal cracks in the campaign’s day-to-day management. While the Obama campaign booked TV ads weeks in advance, the Romney campaign purchased it with just a few days notice. This resulted them in paying a lot more for each ad than Obama. A senior GOP advisor told Breitbart News that TV stations even had a hard time getting the campaign to accept the regular rebates the campaign was due for ads that failed to run because of news or other events.
The problems with the Romney campaign ran throughout the operation. To upend the old adage, the failure of the Romney campaign has a dozen or so fathers. Stevens, however, was the chief protagonist. As a consequence, he has orphaned his old firm and taken his name off the letterhead.
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