Robert B Bluey: And finally, Governor, recently on HumanEvents.com, one of our bloggers, Matt Lewis, suggested that you hire a full-time staffer to work with bloggers and new-media people. You took that advice and now employ Stephen Smith, who formerly worked for VOLPAC. Why do you think it is important to dedicate resources to this?

Governor Mitt Romney: I think that the opinion leaders in the country, particularly those in primaries, are people who are very involved on the Internet and are watching the blogs and seeing what’s being said. They’re getting ahead of the news cycle by oftentimes weeks. And that kind of lead and that kind of awareness is very powerful in a primary setting, where the voters tend to be well informed and very involved in party politics.

Particularly in a primary kind of setting, you want to be very closely connected to the online world, to the blog world and make sure your perspectives are being understood, and that the misperceptions, which inevitably creep up, are being nipped in the bud. That’s something which, by virtue of the fact that I do not yet have an exploratory committee—that decision to file for that has not yet been reached—so I’ve sort of had to sit here and watch a lot going on without being able to respond and clean up some of the misperceptions that were out there. That’s something Stephen Smith is going to be able to do for us. I’m looking forward to that.

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