Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Why Romney Won't Be Reagan This Year

With the President leading in polls, GOP spinners are positing 2012 as 1980 again, when a late Reagan surge swept a Democrat from the White House. That lead balloon won’t float, for numerous reasons:

Obama is no Jimmy Carter. Despite all the venom from the Radical Right, today’s President is far more popular than the former peanut farmer ever was. In 1980, Democrats deserted him in droves—-among them, Leon Jaworski, the Watergate prosecutor, and Eugene McCarthy, who had challenged LBJ over Vietnam in 1968. He called Carter “the worst president we’ve ever had.”

Romney is no Reagan. Behind in the polls at the time, the former actor demolished a sitting President with folksy charm in the October debates, smiling and sighing at Carter’s attacks, “There you go again.” Can anyone picture Romney out-charming Obama that way? Has anyone ever used “charm” and “Romney” in the same sentence before?

Iran can’t control American voters. In the final weekend of the 1980 campaign, Iranians torpedoed Carter by announcing they wouldn’t release their American hostages, depriving him of an “October surprise.” They waited until Reagan took office to do so, but they have no such leverage today.

Looking back at 1980, the political landscape then would unrecognizable today. John Anderson ran as an Independent moderate Republican and pulled 6.6 percent of the national vote.

The Libertarians had their own slate, drawing one percent, with a vice-presidential candidate, David Koch of the Koch brothers, who now fund the Tea Party in its attempt to take down the U.S. government.

The Communist and Socialists were on the ballot as well.

Such rampant diversity is unthinkable today. With Citizens United, the Supreme Court has unleashed money that will wash away minority candidates, narrowing voters’ choice but hopefully not entirely clouding their vision.

In November, they will pull the levers either for Barack Obama, warts and all, or Mitt Romney, who presumably will still be hiding his tax returns and Bain history.

If nothing unforeseen happens between now and then, there won’t be a Reagan repeat this year.

3 comments:

Fuzzy Slippers said...

Hi Mr. Stein, I'm pretty sure that you missed this, but that "Bain history" to which you refer and link is all a lie. And this administration will be, in short order, investigated, as well, for violating Federal election laws.

Here's the truth of the matter:

[quote]The outrageous ad by Priorities USA Action, the Obama Super PAC–the one that accuses Mitt Romney of being responsible for a woman’s death from cancer, apparently on the theory that Romney was personally responsible for providing health insurance and health care services to family members of anyone who ever worked for a company in which Bain Capital invested, in perpetuity–has blown up in Obama’s face like an exploding cigar. The ad is outrageous on so many levels–the woman never worked for Bain Capital or any Bain-associated company; she died seven years after Romney left Bain, at a time when Bain was being run by a major Obama fundraiser; she had her own health insurance that had nothing to do with Bain, and her death had nothing to do with insurance anyway; she went to a hospital thinking she had pneumonia and turned out to be suffering from an incurable cancer–that it has horrified every halfway-objective observer.[/quote]
you can read the rest here: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/08/has-the-obama-campaign-finally-gone-too-far.php

The closer this election gets, the uglier and nastier and despicable Obama gets. It's not attractive, admirable, or appealing . . . and I don't mean just to me and other conservatives/TEA Party/GOP people. He looks not only desperate but downright dirty (in political terms). That's not what people voted for in '08. And you know it.

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's some fuzzy logic that fuzzy slippers is quoting there. Anyway, it's good to know that fewer women will be denied treatment for cancer now that the entire nation will have the type of health care system that Romney brought to Massachusetts.

Bob Broughton said...

"that 'Bain history' to which you refer and link is all a lie."

No, it isn't. I'm pleased to see that calling Obama names and questioning whether he went to Columbia University is all the Romney campaign has.