Posted on 04/19/2012 2:35:46 PM PDT by neverdem
The odds of defeating an incumbent president should be slim but they are in fact at least 50/50. Here are some reasons that this is true.
1) Romney is a more experienced and better candidate than he was in 2008. That often happens after a run or two. Nixon was tougher in 1968 than in 1960 in the way that Reagan was wiser in 1980 than in 1968 and 1976, and George H. W. Bush was better in 1988 than in 1980. McCain ran more effectively in the primaries in 2008 than he did in 2000. The Republican primary rough-housing sharpened Romney’s debating skills, and he seems far more comfortable than he was four years ago.
2) The old mantra that at some point the massive $5 trillion borrowing, the fed’s near-zero interest rate policies, and the natural cycle of recovery after a recession would kick in before the election increasingly appears somewhat dubious. The recovery is anemic, and seems stymied by high gas costs, fears over Obamacare, and a new feeling that lots of businesspeople with capital are strangely holding off, either scared of what more of Obama’s statist policies have in store for them, or in anger about being demonized by Obama, or in hopes Romney might win. The net result is that the recovery by November might not be as strong as was thought six months ago.
3) Romney is going to be a lot tougher on Obama than was McCain in 2008. For all the complaints against his moderation by the tea-party base, they will slowly rally to him as he makes arguments against Obama of the sort that McCain was perceived as unable or unwilling to make. So far Romney’s attitude is that he is in the arena where blows come thick and fast, and one can’t whine when being hit or hitting — a view far preferable to McCain’s lectures about what not to say or do in 2008. Left-wing preemptory charges that Romney is “swift-boating” or “going negative” will probably have slight effect on him. Just as Bill Clinton saw that Dukakis in 1988 had wanted to be liked rather than feared and so himself ran a quite different, tough 1992 race, so too Romney knows where McCain’s magnanimity got him in 2008. Romney won’t be liked by the press, knows it, and perhaps now welcomes it.
4) In 2008 Rudy Giuliani’s idea that Obama was out of the mainstream and a Chicago-style community organizer was not pressed in fear of the counter-charges that one was racialist or at least insensitive to the historic Obama candidacy. In 2012, there is a record, not an image or precedent, to vote for or against; and Romney will find it far easier to take down Obama than McCain found in 2008. That Obama did not reinvent the world as promised won’t mean that his supporters will vote for Romney, only that they won’t come out in the numbers or with the money as they did in 2008. There is no margin of error in 2012 and turnout will be everything for Obama.
5) The Republicans seem so far to have a lot more interest in defeating Obama than Democrats do in reelecting him. That enthusiasm level can change; but so far we are not going to see, I think, a lot of moderate Republicans writing about Obama’s sartorial flair and his first-class temperament, or screeds against a Republican incumbent. One meets lots of people who sheepishly confess they voted for Obama in 2008 but learned their lesson, less so those who regret that they voted for McCain and now promise to rectify that.
6) Obama is a great front-runner who can afford to talk of unity and magnanimity, but when behind he seems to revert to churlishness and petulance. The more he references Bush, the “mess” in 2008, tsunamis, and the EU meltdown, the more one wants to ask: When will he ever get a life? Them versus us is not “hope and change.”
7) Ann Romney, whether she is used in a more partisan style or more in the manner of a reticent Laura Bush, is an invaluable asset, both her narrative and her grace — a treasury really that somehow was under-appreciated in 2008 but won’t be in 2012.
8) Obama is becoming repetitive and tiring in his speechifying in a way that Carter did by late summer 1980 and George H. W. Bush did in 1992. Before he gets to the podium, Americans anticipate that he will blame someone for a current problem rather than introducing a positive solution — and they are beginning to get to the further point that they cannot only anticipate the villains of the hour, but the manner in which Obama will weave together the usual straw men, the formulaic “let me perfectly clear.” “make no mistake about it,” and the fat-cat/pay-your-fair share vocabulary. The public finally grows tired of whiners and blamers.
9) Juan Williams and others have made the argument that race explains the disenchantment of the white male working-class voter. I think that is hardly persuasive: Give that clinger voter just a year of 5 percent unemployment, $2-a-gallon gas, 4 percent GDP growth, a balanced budget, and he would gladly vote for Obama. The better point is not that race is a determinant in 2012 but that the charge has lost its currency. The minority of working-class white male voters who voted for Obama in 2008 was vastly higher than the percentage of African-Americans of all classes and both genders who voted for McCain, a moderate Republican who one would have thought might have gotten a larger percentage of the black vote than did George W. Bush. Based on percentages in 2008, I think that one could logically infer that the number of blacks who did not vote Republican as they had once done in the past was larger than the number of white male working-class voters who did not vote Democratic as they had in the past. Playing the race card in 2012 will prove a boomerang, especially if the Sharpton-Jackson nexus turns the Martin case into a reverse O. J. trial, and if Holder or Obama editorialize any more, or revert to the exhausting “stupidly,” “punish our enemies,” “cowards,” “my people,” tropes.
10) It is no longer “cool,” the thing to do, neat, or making a statement to vote for Obama. The 2008 lemming effect is over; no one believes any more that he will lower the seas or wants to believe that he can. Michelle’s lightness/darkness biblical image is hokey not moving. The fading 2008 Obama bumper stickers are no longer proof of one’s noble nature.
I hope and pray that you and others who believe as you do are wrong, and that your campaign to re-elect Obama fails.
Romney is not my choice for President.
HST, I will invest as much time, talent and treasure as I can to ensure that Obama IS NOT re-elected, and that Real Conservatives ARE elected to the House and Senate.
After the election, I’ll work to reform the Republican Party as a constitutional, conservative force in American Politics.
Well, if you like Romney, you vote for him.
Romney will be worse than Obama, because he’ll have his supporters in the Congress and in the public supporting Obama-like programs.
So, again, if you like Romney, knock yourself out, but I want no part of him or his agenda.
Thanks neverdem, nice link selections:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2874159/posts?page=58#58
I have made it clear several times that I am voting AGAINST Obama!
Obama is a dictator wannabe, and Romney is not!
If Obama wins, and is able to push through the rest of his plan to destroy America and rule us like he was one of the ancient Egyptian Pharoahs, then where will you be?
I’m telling all of you who aren’t willing to bite the bullet, however distasteful it may be, and vote for Romney are going to regret your stupidity if Obama wins!
And, when your slave grandchildren ask you what happened in 2012, what are you going to tell them?
Willard IS Obama, just with a GOP-e, RINO cheering section. I don’t want to sit in that cheering section or sing in the Romney choir.
I will not support Obama and I will not support Romney. I will not support the agenda they share.
This year affords me the opportunity to tell the GOP that they cannot count on me to support them in perpetrating an Obama-Romney false choice. Obama and Romney are repugnant traitors. They hate this country and want to destroy it.
But, again, if you like what they’re selling or think it smells sweeter with an (R) label, go for it. Most people will support one of them. I won’t.
You are pathetic. It is not my campaign to re-elect Obama. The GOP-E wanted Romney, now it looks like they have him, they have to figure out how to get him elected. Quit blaming the skeptics for the fact that the GOP-E pushed about the worst possbible candidate, and let him annihilate any viable alternatives.
And who were the perfect conservatives in the race ?
These purity tests are a joke. Did you vote for McCain or GWB?
The Conservative Cause is clearly served by an Obama re-election rather than a Romney win.
A Right leaning/Conservative Congress can easily remain united behind an Obama re-election....whereas the same Congress will be sliced and diced by the RINOS if Romney is in the White House.
The Powers That Be fully understand this....
But in 2010, something else happened. Conservatives beat RINOs in the primary. And the GOP-E turned on the Tea Party candidates and knifed them in the back.
So the GOP-E can try and win with Romney. They have shown by their example that party loyalty only applies when their guy wins. So I'm reciprocating. I will work for a congressional candidate like I did last election. Whether Romney or Obama wins, we're going to need a counterweight for their liberalism.
So you gave up your principals to vote for mclame but you won’t do so Romney , even as Obama gets worse than anything we ever imagined?
McCain never tried to run to the left of Ted Kennedy on abortion.
I have no idea what Romney stands for, other than fulfilling his own personal drive for power. He takes away all kinds of GOP advantages while offering no advantage of his own. The only advantage he had in the GOP primary - money - will not be an advantage in the general.
I am simply expressing how poor a candidate Romney is. Since the GOP-E is so enamored of him, they can figure out how to get him over the finish line. Me, I'll work for someone who is actually a conservative. I guess you are willing to swill the GOP-E koolaid that we have to vote for the primary winner, even though they refused to go along with that in 2010. I think I'll pass.
Dear Glock, there is a Soviet Union-sized difference between a “less than perfect conservative” and a pro-abortion, gun-grabbing, Liberal judge appointing, homosexual agenda pushing, State-run healthcare crafting sham of a Republican.
The worst evil Obama has done to America is in convincing Conservatives to vote for a Liberal Democrat like (R)Money.
I am back to “carefully reconsider your position.”
A Romney Presidency MAY not meet all of your needs, or my needs, or the TEA Party needs, or America’s needs, but it is FOR SURE that four more years of Obama WILL NOT!
What part of the fact that Romney was the worst possible candidate for this cycle do you not understand? The GOP-E wanted him, fine, let them shove him across the finish line. I will work for a down-ticket candidate with at least some conservative values and a chance of winning.
I’m going to help make you wrong.
Knock yourself out.
Not me, Obama!
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