Mitt Romney on Artificial Turf

Presidential candidates have to go all over the Country for months on end making speeches about how they have all the answers and how their opponents are unqualified so they can convince supporters to fork over campaign contributions. An important decision at each stop is selecting the right venue for the speech and here is a fine example of how not to do that. Mitt Romney's speech to the Economic Club in Detroit yesterday may have been a thousand words long, but one picture tells the whole story. 

Mitt Romney makes a speech at Ford Field in Detroit on February 24, 2012.

They selected Ford Field in Detroit with space for some 65,000 people to accommodate a crowd of 1,200 guests.  I've seen more people on that field during halftime of the Motor City Pizza Bowl when two marching bands competed.  I do think it is highly appropriate that the speech took place on artificial turf, seeing as the city of Detroit is Mitt's very own artificial turf.   He likes to refer to the city as home even though he has had no connection to anything here in decades other than a line on his birth certificate.  On a semi-related note, ground-up recalled Firestone tires from Ford Explorers were symbolically chosen to be used as filler for the field turf when the stadium was built.   The irony of how Mitt the retread "recalled" some boyhood memories at Ford Field was not lost on me. 

They could have agreed to hold the speech at the stunning Wintergarden in the Renaissance Center. The place would have been packed, making for more excitement and a better photo-op, but the Ren Cen is GM's headquarters and Mitt is on record saying it would have been better if GM had been liquidated rather than bailed out by the Government.  Awkward.  Perhaps it is part of the reason why they opted for a place with Ford in the name instead.  Mitt hopes people around here forget those comments from last year.

He could have made his speech up Woodward Avenue a bit at the stately Fox Theatre, but his staffers probably thought it might make him the butt of more late night jokes involving the word Fox as in News.   

They could have easily fit that many people in several of Detroit's large churches, such as Second Ebenezer  but then Mitt is a super-rich white guy from a super-white rich State. Further, Mitt is on record saying he doesn't care about very poor people, and Detroit has a lot of them and none are going to either vote for him or donate to the cause. Besides, Mitt's peeps would be scared shitless to even drive through that neighborhood much less get out of the car.


He could have had ditched the idea of making his big pre Super Tuesday speech in Detroit and held a main event at the Novi Expo Center or elsewhere in the suburbs, but that would have been fuel for Mitt's foes who like to point out his elitism and lack of connection to the commoners.  

So perhaps by default Ford Field was the most appropriate place Romney's campaign and the ECD could agree upon for the speech.   Actually the Detroit Lion's fight song describes this GOP race.  "Four Weird down the field"