Anti-Mitt Romney web ad shows advance of new technology, challenge to message control

By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff

Walk into the Boston campaign headquarters for Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney and one of the first things you see are offices on the second floor set aside for in-house video making.

It’s allowed his campaign to nimbly produce low-cost ads and churn out “commercials” without the traditional expense of outsourcing to a production house or buying broadcast television time.

In fact, Romney didn’t air his first TV ad until last week, although he has been disseminating his views via web video since even before April, when he announced his exploratory committee through one.

He is not alone in seeing this potential, though, and now his rivals have harnessed that same technology with brutal effect.

Ron Paul released a web video yesterday that accused Newt Gingrich, now challenging Romney for frontrunner status, of rank hypocrisy.

Jon Huntsman today released a web video that strained his courtly reputation, saying Romney’s agitated response to questions during a Fox News Channel interview on Tuesday showed he was “Scared Mittless.”

It also offered a “Mittstant Replay” of one of the interview’s pivotal segments, interspersed with video segments that seemed to contradict the rebuttals Romney offered during the conversation.

It was a melding of a mainstream media moment with new wave digital technology and distribution channels.

“After watching Mitt evade, distort, and eventually blame Bret (Baier’s) questions, it’s no wonder he is ‘Scared Mittless’ of the press. When you are on both sides of every issue, it makes it hard to answer tough questions,” said an emailed statement from campaign spokesman Tim Miller. “More importantly, can Republican voters trust Mitt Romney to beat Barack Obama when he can’t even defend his own record?”

The Romney campaign offered no immediate response.

The interview and fallout from both Democrats and Republicans - via emails, statements, and web videos from both - pierces a carefully crafted media strategy in which the Romney campaign has controlled the candidate’s exposure to uncontrolled press interactions.

Since losing his first bid for the presidency in 2008, Romney has worked assiduously to create the basis from which he would mount his second campaign for the White House.

He wrote a book, “No Apology,” which served as the foundation for his campaign and has been his touchstone when he has confronted questions this cycle about his views on the issues.

Romney also developed a penchant for the op-ed column, preferring an unfiltered medium in which he could articulate his views without follow-up questions.

Meanwhile, he has limited his press availabilities to a few questions, a few times a week.

He reiterated his policy on Tuesday along a rope line in Tampa, Fla.

“We have press avails and press conferences almost everyday, and that’s when I answer the questions,” Romney told accompanying reporters, many of whom subsequently disputed that. “When I’m meeting people, it’s not a good time to answer questions that are important and require good attention and a thorough answer.”

Romney is especially concerned about any gaffe caught on something as ever-present as a cell phone becoming YouTube fodder.

Aides argue that cumulatively, through his “avails,” interviews, and debate appearances, he has answered more media questions during the past three years than has the Democrat he hopes to replace, President Obama.

Nonetheless, Romney has not appeared on a Sunday talk show since, as Gail Collins put it in today’s New York Times, “‘The Hurt Locker’ beat ‘Avatar’ for best picture.”

Even when he has gone on TV or radio, it’s generally been with supportive hosts, such as Sean Hannity or Hugh Hewitt.

It’s also been on chosen networks, most particularly Fox News Channel, the choice of the conservative thinkers Romney is trying to attract to his campaign.

Yet on Tuesday in Florida, Romney was hardly coddled by a Fox News anchor, Bret Baier of “Special Report.”

And their tense exchanges about abortion, health care, gay rights, and immigration focused on perhaps Romney’s greatest campaign vulnerability: his history of flip-flopping, or at least adjusting his zeal, on major political issues.

“This is an unusual interview,” Romney remarked at one point, shifting in his seat and trying to control his emotions. “All right. Let’s do it again,” he said, before launching into a defense of his position that the health care plan he enacted in Massachusetts isn’t necessarily the law that should apply to the nation.

Afterward, Baier said that Romney complained to him that the interview “was overly aggressive,” and later came out again from his holding room and said “he didn’t like the interview and thought it was uncalled for.”

By that time, it was too late.

The video had been broadcast and recorded onto the video editing decks both at Romney’s campaign headquarters - and those of his rivals and critics.

The careful control of message via book, op-ed, and chosen outlet had been lost to one of the perils of politics and great measuring sticks for would-be presidents: the unscripted moment.