Posted on 08/15/2012 12:02:43 PM PDT by smoothsailing
August 15, 2012
Jim Geraghty
The Wednesday edition of the Morning Jolt features the Obama campaign’s most indefensible, false, incendiary attack since their last one, a reason to doubt foreign policy columnists with unnamed sources, and then this thought about our political future…
What if 2012 Isn’t Obama’s Last Campaign?
Picture it: It’s December, and folks like you and I are celebrating the recent presidential campaign victory of Mitt Romney. It wasn’t a landslide; something on par with the Electoral College map of Bush vs. Kerry, and Romney winning the popular vote by two or three percentage points.
In that scenario, do you envision President Obama accepting defeat gracefully? Do you picture him congratulating President Romney on his victory, and pledging to do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition? Do you think the president will be ready to move on to post-White House life, focusing upon memoir-writing, building his presidential library, some charitable and foundation work, and plenty of golf?
Or do you think President Obama, and David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett and all of the true believers will find some reason to believe the result is illegitimate? Some combination of SuperPAC spending and voter ID laws that they believe nullifies the results? I don’t mean a constitutional crisis where Obama refuses to recognize the results, I mean just a narrative of “Romney cheated” that will reassure liberals that their views really are popular, and a return to the natural order of their eternal string of victories is one election-law change away. (In liberals’ view of the world, they never suffer a legitimate defeat.)
Seeing that rotund, irate Iowa woman storm the stage at the state fair to berate Paul Ryan, I can’t help but suspect we’ll see a lot of lefty rage in response to a Romney victory. Romney, Ryan, Speaker Boehner and Majority/Minority Leader McConnell will have a full plate, and they may see Wisconsin-style protests on a national scale. Occupy Wall Street may not be completely deflated; a “stolen election” makes a heck of a rallying cry.
If there’s anything we’ve seen, it’s that President Obama loves to campaign – to hold fundraisers, to attend rallies, to attend ‘town meetings’ where the questioners mostly ask why people aren’t smart enough to see how great he is. In January 2013, former President Obama would find himself with a lot of time to do all that.
I’m not the first to ponder this question, or to come to the same suspicions. Mickey Kaus saw a signal in Obama’s gay marriage shift:
Thinking two steps ahead? If Barack Obama loses the 2012 election, do you think he’s going to quit elective politics, serve on a series of corporate and foundation boards, write a best-selling children’s book on being a Dad and a Lugaresque memoir describing how Fox News and Peter Orszag betrayed him? I don’t. I think he’s going to run again, Grover Cleveland style. That casts possible additional (distant) light on today’s endorsement of same-sex marriage: It may or may not help Obama in 2012. But it would much more reliably likely help him in 2016, when public opinion can be expected to have shifted further in favor of this social innovation. It would certainly help him in the Democratic primaries. ….
Aaron Goldstein was even more explicit: “Let’s say Obama loses in November. He has a ready made excuse for his defeat. Obama can say that the forces of darkness (i.e. opponents of gay marriage) are to blame for his defeat while patting himself on the back for his “courage” in supporting same sex marriage. It also helps to position him for a comeback in 2016 or 2020. Make no mistake. If Obama loses this fall it won’t be the last we see of him. By that time with a greater presence of voters born after 1980 chances are there will be more voters in favor of gay marriage which would give Obama an opportunity to claim he was ahead of the curve.”
Back in July, James Pethokoukis came up with five reasons the president might try to come back again:
1. Obama, always trim and fit, would be only 55 on Election Day 2016.
2. Obama would likely still have a deep reservoir of support among key Democratic interest groups including (most importantly) African Americans, gays, young voters, and the educated elite.
3. Many Democrats might be inclined to give an historic president a second chance, reasoning he was dealt an impossibly bad economic hand by George W. Bush. “Bush got two terms, and Obama just one? Please.”
4. While there could potentially be some big name rivals in 2016, including Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, none seem as formidable as Ronald Reagan was to Ford in 1980.
5. The economy the next four years could be pretty rough thanks to high levels of U.S. debt and a possible eurozone implosion. The Obama years might be subject to some positive revisionist history by a friendly media. And as one gloomy economic analyst told me recently,”Whichever party wins the White House in 2012 won’t win again for 20 years.”
There are a lot of people who are emotionally invested in the notion of Barack Obama as a transformative, redeeming, era-defining national leader.
In fact, thinking back to my Jolt of a few days ago, about how political leaders seek to have heroic narratives… perhaps Obama would be even more pleased with himself with “wilderness years.” In fact, if Obama really is a messiah-like figure in the minds of his biggest fans… doesn’t he need to return and demonstrate a political resurrection?
If, God willing, Obama is defeated and the pubbies take over, the ball is in our court. Hopefully the pubbies have the spine and guts to initiate investigation into Bam,Holder, Jarret,etc and all the corruption that this adminstration has been involved in.
I agree. It looks like this:
Scenario #1
2012 Romney vs Obama: Our socialist wins
2016 Romney vs Their New Socialist: Either way a socialist wins.
2020 Chance for the GOP to put up a non-socialist.
Scenario #2
2012 Romney vs Obama: Their socialist wins
2016 Chance for the GOP to put up a non-socialist.
(If we aren't being prevented from voting by Obama's heavily armed National Weather Service.)
Picture this: The Chairman of the Inaugural Celebration in January 2013 is none other than Senator Chuck U. Schumer (it's true). Minutes after President Romney is sworn in, Chuck U. runs to the cameras to gleefully announce "It's Romney's economy now!"
All the economic time bombs that have been carefully set in place over the last 3 years go off like little IEDs across the fruited plain. The DemocRATs, with the help of their friends in the media, pound Romney and the Republicans. The years from 2013 to 2016 are grim indeed for the GOP.
The GOP takes a bath in the 2014 mid-term elections. Pelosi once again becomes Speaker, and Reid Senate Majority Leader. The DemocRAT message leading up to the 2016 Presidential election? "WE TOLD YOU SO!"
Obama wins his second term.
Maybe Divine judgement will be required.
Carter,Clinton,Obama...card carrying members of the
We still may see a black Republican Conservative if only because the blacks would want a chance to prove one of their own can get it right.
Yes, I really believe if a black Rep was on the ticket for president he would get a majority of the black vote.
For the example most relevant to the article: Same sex "marriage" is clearly an oxymoron. It gains support only when Conservatives simply denounce it, without analyzing the underlying dynamic concepts. When we rest on simply reciting what the Bible says, a generation being conditioned to reject religious arguments continues to drift to the Leftist assault on traditional values.
The alternative is to discuss what is involved--the traditional function of marriage--the multi-generational concept of the family, etc.. Properly handled, what I describe as the correct approach will not only stem the changing attitude in the particular regard; it will actually cause many to reconsider the Left's attack on traditional values; will actually lead many to favorably reconsider the values of the Faith they have abandoned.
We can win the ideological war; but we have to fight more intelligently.
William Flax
No way they will back him if he loses, I just don’t think there is that much true love of him from the people who have boots on the ground.
Yeah they might like him, but will they risk their jobs, retirement, or family by supporting him in that fashion?
I doubt it. and
Even if it came down to that would the Pentagon or the armed forces use threat of force on civilians to prop him up? I think we would far more likely see a task force of Marines gently escorting him and his wife OUT of the White House as opposed to keeping him IN there myself. Remember, their oath is to the Constitution, not the CIC.
Yes, that's EXACTLY what is going to happen. The $20 million dollar book advance, his OWN foundation (c'mon Jim, think), and quit elective politics forever.
He doesn't like it, sharing power with two other branches of goobermint.
And Moochelle really doesn't like it, because it cuts into her Aunt Esther time...
The whole corrupt lot protect each other, since all are dirty.
But sadly the Dems and the GOP-e conspired to make sure we didn't get to run that experiment.
Obama’s presidency has been a bumbling, fumbling disaster and all the Democrat insiders know it. If he tried to run again they’d cut him off at the knees by the New Hampshire primary.
“If he loses, he won’t be nominated come 2016. If no one else, Hillary will trounce him.”
Hillary? I am just hoping that the next four years will see her “meet her Maker.”
LOL!
.
Parties and politicians don't like that. It means their expected patronage time is cut in half. It means they have to start the presidential search process all over again from zero just four years down the road.
If the party is certain to lose, it's possible that they'd put up an ex-President as a sacrificial lamb, but if there's any chance of winning other politicians aren't going to defer to Obama, anymore than they deferred to Adlai Stevenson in 1960 or to Hubert Humphrey in 1972 or 1976.
It's not impossible for an ex-President to pull a Grover Cleveland, but it's harder than it was a century ago. Obama would look like Adlai Stevenson or Eugene McCarthy or Gary Hart, trying in vain to recapture his moment long after it had passed.
Doesn’t matter much. There’s always another waiting in the wings.
SnakeDoc
I believe she has on many an occassion...
Rim shot....we have a winner!
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