Summary: Dana Milbank’s Washington Post opinion column outlining Mitt Romney’s personal shortcomings as a presidential candidate is congruent with my assessment that Mitt Romney lacks the personality qualities necessary for successfully challenging Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. Specifically, Romney’s score of 6 on the Personal Electability Index (which has accurately predicted the outcome of every presidential election since 1996), ranks near the bottom among presidential candidates evaluated in the past four presidential election cycles.
Summary: Politico reports that Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee. However, the Obama campaign would be sorely misguided if it diverted inordinate resources to fending off Romney as Barack Obama’s likely opponent. Despite being the early front-runner in public opinion polls, Romney is unlikely to be the Republican presidential nominee, with the vastly underestimated Michele Bachmann potentially posing the greater reelection threat to Obama in terms of personal charisma. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 9, 2010, Aubrey Immelman appealed to Minnesota voters to support Independent Tom Horner for governor in the August 10, 2010 primary election.
Summary: Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s reluctance to go toe-to-toe with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the CNN-hosted GOP presidential debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., on June 13, 2011 is consistent with his personality profile. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on June 16, 2010, Aubrey Immelman chronicled the rise of right-wing extremism in America following the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States in November 2008, reporting that the growing fear among some citizens of losing their rights and freedoms had created a political backlash toward the U.S. government that was manifesting itself in violent rhetoric and anti-government groups who want to “take their country back.”
Summary: A psychological analysis of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, conducted in fall 2007 by Julie Seifert, Mick Lundstrum, and Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics revealed that Romney’s primary personality pattern is Conscientious/dutiful, with secondary features of the Dominant/asserting and Ambitious/confident patterns — a personality pattern that does not predict presidential electoral success. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on June 2, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that al-Qaida’s third in command, Mustafa al-Yazida (AKA Sheik Saeed al-Masri), had been killed in Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan in one of the most severe blows to the terror movement since the U.S. campaign against al-Qaida began in 2001.
Summary: With former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee bowing out of the 2012 presidential contest as a potential Republican contender, only two remotely viable candidates remain — former Massachussetts governor Mitt Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. Much of the rest of the field has been characterized as reminiscent of the “Star Wars” bar scene: “passionate-about-his-country-and-worked-so-hard-that-he-felt-compelled-to-seek-God’s-forgiveness” Newt Gingrich; birther Donald Trump; and conspiracy nut Michele Bachmann, to name a few. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on May 15, 2010, Aubrey Immelman commented on the opening of Minnesota’s 2010 open-water fishing season.
Summary: NBC’s Chuck Todd writes that if the object of 2012 Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney’s May 12 health-care speech was “to put the health issue behind him, then the address was an ‘un-Mitt-igated’ failure.” Research conducted at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics under the direction of Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., suggests that Massachusetts’ health law, enacted during Romney’s tenure as governor, may be the least of his problems as he vies for the Republican nomination in a crowded GOP field. In short, Romney lacks the personal charisma to sway non-base voters, as measured by the Personal Electability Index for presidential contenders, developed at the Minnesota-based political psychology research unit. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on May 12, 2010, Aubrey Immelman announced that Independence Party-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner scheduled a press conference at Stop Light Bait in St. Cloud, ahead of the weekend’s Minnesota’s fishing opener.