Romney Editorial Close Read

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/underdogged/?ref=opinion

Jill Lepore, author of the editorial from the New York Times strongly feels that Mitt Romney misrepresents himself frequently as an "underdog."  She uses the elements of rhetoric detail, syntax, and diction to communicate her opinion.

One of the key pieces of rhetoric in the piece is Lepore's use of detail.  She has a systematic inclusion of evidence that describe the different uses of the word "underdog" in history.  This is done to strengthen her argument because then the reader sees how the definition has always been different from who Romney is.  Some examples of this are the opening topic sentences of each paragraph like "In the 1940s, social scientists used the word “underdog” as shorthand for “socially and economically underprivileged Americans” (Lepore para. 6 ln. 1) and "IN 1963, Howard Schuman at Harvard and John Harding at Cornell published an article called “Sympathetic Identification with the Underdog” (Lepore para 7. ln. 1). In all of the evidence, an underdog is more or less defined as usually little, weaker, and fighting person.  Lepore wants to make it clear that in no point in history has Romney been an underdog because he is rich and powerful.  

Lepore also uses syntax within her editorial to emphasize points.  She frequently uses brevity and conciseness to make her opinion clear and to make it sound more objective than opinionated.  This technique is highlighted in paragraph 15 in the first and last lines.  She says, "Mitt Romney is no Downtrodden Man...This is not a man who loves underdogs" (Lepore para. 15 ln. 1-6).  Lepore also weaves quoted words from historical texts in her sentences to add weight and authority as well.  In this sentence, she references a Harvard study: "They defined an underdog as an “ethnic minority facing discrimination.”" (Lepore para. 7 ln. 2-3).  Because the words were lifted straight from a scholarly source as denoted by the quotation marks, her opinion appears to be supported by a reputable source.  

A final use of rhetoric within the editorial is Lepore's use of diction.  In the final paragraphs she uses loaded words with negative connotations to summarize her point.  In the last line, "Mr. Romney’s branding himself an underdog to earn voter sympathy might not be the weirdest feature of his topsy-turvy campaign" (Lepore para. 17 ln. 1) she uses the word "branding" because typically things are branded artificially or wrongly.  The word specifically carries negative connotations.  She also uses the word "topsy-turvy" in referring to his campaign itself, which has the negative connotation of being unstable or haphazard.  Lepore utilizes diction to further enforce the tone of her editorial which itself communicates a negative opinion.