That darn Mormon continues to pull ahead:
It would appear that the undecideds are deciding. That, or the republicans that have been on the fence are gaining confidence and moving themselves from “Registered Voter” to “Likely Voter.”
And then the big news:
For the first time, Romney is now ahead in the Electoral Map.
To be sure, we have 20 odd days to go, a debate to digest and another yet to take place. Much can, and will, happen between now and election day.
But momentum feels good right now.
Posted in Elections 2012, Mitt Romney, Politics: National
Tagged Barack Obama, Electoral College, Gallup, Poll, Real Clear Politics
Okay, kids are in bed and I’m in front of my TV getting ready to watch the debate.
There is no way, none, that Obama can do worse than he did in the first debate. He’s simply too competitive and too skilled to allow that to happen again. I’m not sure what happened that first time; I suspect that the theory that speaks to his never having been challenged to be the closest to accurate. That failure will be addressed this time around.
The key for Romney:
Continue to demonstrate that he has better plans and that those plans will directly help the average American.
The key for Obama:
Take responsibility and appear Presidential. This includes not passing blame AND presenting a plan.
We’ll see.
UPDATE #1
Right. Obama is not voting “present” tonight. He’s much stronger and is going toe to toe with the Governor.
Romney – First and Last, he didn’t answer the question as to how he’s going to get Jeremy a job.
Obama – Left himself open on two points: GM Bankruptcy and Green Energy job. Romney tagged him on one and missed on the second.
UPDATE #2
Obama’s answers on energy are the same as the answers when he ran the first time 4 years ago. And his insistence that he’s for fossil fuel energy just isn’t believable.
Romney delivered a body blow in his answer; permits are down and production is down; though he did mix his % between the two.
WOW! I love the direct back and forth. I didn’t see that coming.
Hmmm……Crowley gives Obama a third whack at the question and is talking down Romney. Out of bounds but good on Romney to muscle ahead. Obama doesn’t help his cause with comments from the sidelines.
UPDATE #3
GREAT question on asking Romney to speak to the deduction he might consider eliminating.
And Romney addressed the main point with his first statement, “I want lower taxes for the middle class.” His second point is also a strong one. He clarifies his position that the wealthiest Americans will continue to pay the same proportion of taxes that they’ve been paying in the past.
In his response, Obama draws on Romney’s “60 Minutes” interview and delivers a strong blow to Romney. It’s hard to defend the claim that “it’s fair” for Romney to pay a lower rate than a bus driver. [Though to be fair, the pay the same rates].
Obama goes off the rails on his follow up response. No one thinks that Romney is going to reduce tax revenue by $5 trillion. The defense spending might score a point, but then Obama comes back with the continuation of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. He’s double counting that.
But Obama does score big when he challenges Romney on the specifics.
Let’s how Romney plays Obama’s tactic of rolling out the critiques in the last follow up.
Good on Crowley; she gives Romney an extra go at it. But then he makes a mistake; he mixes up deficits and debt. Obama DID promise to cut the deficit in half when he took office. But Romney then mentions the debt has doubled.
UPDATE #4
Oh you poor little misguided woman. I’m going to skip the update on this one because women do NOT earn 72% of the wages their male peers make.
UPDATE #5
Romney, dude, this is right to you – “Shut the hell up about equal time. You look petty and dumb.”
So, how is Romney different than Dubya? Sigh. Serious?
He answered the question well enough but what people wanna hear, the money shot, is that he won’t get us into two foreign wars. Romney didn’t touch on that and the moment is lost.
UPDATE #6
The man asked a question about how Obama would help his situation. Obama talked and then Romney talked. Neither one answered the man; all they did was repeat talking points.
Blah.
This is the late rounds of a heavy weight bout. No knock downs and the fighters are “defending” waiting for the last round or two. Fantastically boring.
UPDATE #7
Is it just me or does MSNBC always show the time clock in Romney’s shots but NEVER in Obama’s?
UPDATE #8
Okay, there’s the clock behind Obama.
Immigration. Little difference I suspect between the two. However, Obama goofed on the Arizona law. Police officers may NOT stop one because they look foreign. Once stopped they may request papers…..
Romney is clearly not listening to me. Stay on topic and leave the whole, “I need to answer the President” bit alone.
That being said, holy moly but I love it when they fight!
UPDATE #9
One hour and eight minutes in and we get Libya.
Finally.
Obama VERY strong on the first response to this question.
Obama, “We are gonna find out who did this and hunt them down.” He even choked on that part he sounded so much like Dubya!
Incredible how you can tell when the candidate is reading the script and when he’s not.
All in all, I’m impressed with Obama’s response. He took responsibility.
Jeepers Romney is weak on the response. It’s as if he didn’t rehearse this response.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Romney rambled on to include “apology tour.”
Obama’s answer to Libya has been powerful, Romney was unprepared for the canned answer and was schooled in the give and take.
Ooo. Obama just lost the gain by being happy to move off the subject. Reminder of debate #1.
For the record, I’ve read the transcript, the President does not describe the incident as a terrorist attack. In fact the administration continually took the position that the attacks were spontaneous and a reaction to YouTube.
Obama is lying.
UPDATE #10
Okay, now I’m tired.
However, the question is outsourcing jobs.
Romney has an answer in two parts:
1. America doesn’t make it attractive to hire here. He’s right.
2. He’s going to label China a currency manipulator and will impose tariffs. He’s wrong.
Posted in Elections 2012, Mitt Romney, Politics: National
Tagged Barack Obama, Debate
It turns out that a debate can be huge.
Going into Wednesday last week Romney had experienced a series of perceived setbacks. The video of Romney talking to high dollar donors about the 47% certainly played into Obama’s attempt to characterize him as a member of the rich white guy club. This only contributed to the continued bad press Romney was generating for his critique of the White House during the Libya crisis.
Romney was having a hard time of it.
People said his only hope was the debate. However, there was little belief that Romney would even win the debate much less win it by enough to influence polls:
The overwhelming odds on favorite was Obama heading into the debate. While I favored Romney, he has better ideas and isn’t hampered by Obama’s habit of “aaahhhhing” everything, I thought the win wouldn’t matter. Further, I was sure that the polls would suggest Obama won regardless of what I thought.
I was wrong:
It wasn’t just “not close” it was historical. Never before has a debate been so lopsided as this one. From the opening bell to the final round Romney completely dominated Obama. There wasn’t even one time where Obama even looked like he might rally and make a showing of it. The night was completely and wholly Romney’s.
Obama’s fate was sealed when he issued this advise to the moderator:
You might wanna switch topics Jim.
Even Obama knew this was a disaster.
However, what NO ONE could have anticipated was the impact this debate would have on the race. As I mentioned, Romney came into last week’s contest behind, way behind. And today…? Today’s he’s not only closed the gap, he’s leading:
Romney has moved ahead of Obama.
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has the ability to be objective. Obama has been an abject failure. His policies haven’t led to prosperity, they’ve led to a suppressed recovery. His policies overseas are failing, or worse, are undefined to the point that success or failure can’t be determined.
Last week we saw what happens when a life long community organizer goes up against a successful CEO.
It wasn’t even close.
In 1948 the Chicago Tribune printed a headline announcing that Dewey had defeated Truman. History shows, of course, that Truman was victorious. I resonate with this feeling as we enter the final stretches of the 2012 election. And to rely even more on historical anecdote, I’ll cal upon the old Nixon rag, “I can’t believe he won. No one I know voted for him.”
This is where I find myself now. I’m surrounded by everyone that thinks Obama will win. But I know only a few people who will vote for him.
Everyone I know feels that Obama is going to win the election this fall. This includes the folks I talk to that are Obama supporters as well as those who are Romney supporters. Obama is going to win.
But.
Very few people I know are going to vote for Obama. And this includes a significant number of people who voted for the President last election.
Obviously the election will come down to individual states and who will win the electoral votes. And that’s where it gets interesting. National polls showing such and such ahead are fun but in the end, not very useful. A more accurate view of who is going to win comes down to who wins each state.
And it i s possible to predict who wins each state:
A University of Colorado analysis of state-by-state factors leading to the Electoral College selection of every U.S. president since 1980 forecasts that the 2012 winner will be Mitt Romney.
The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.
“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.
Based on the individual state economies, Obama loses to Romney. Obama isn’t able to overcome the unemployment levels that have dominated the experience of voters in states all over the nation.
Will Obama win? I continue to think so. However, “no one I know is going to vote for him.”
For a very long time I received my news exclusively from CNN. I used to watch Aaron Brown every night. However, I lost interest in Anderson Cooper almost right away and Lou Dobbs sealed the deal; I was gone. As the campaigns for President geared up in the spring of 2007 [remember, Obama announced in February of that year] I began to listen to some talk radio with my initial fix being Alan Colmes. I was hooked.
Since then I’ gravitated to Fox News. Not so much because of how the reported the news but because of what news they reported. I’ve never felt that the actual content of the stories they cover was skewed, rather, the stories themselves trended right.
Then I started blogging and needed to rely on sources not just Fox. I now read Reuters, NPR, The NY Times, The Hill, The Wall Street Journal and MSNBC. As I continue this hobby, I wanna start reading more liberal main stream “media” types and so have found myself hitting Slate, TPM, The Nation, Salon and Mother Jones. Now I know what the left must feel like when they read what they consider conservative sites.
Just consider this article from The Nation:
The idea of Mitt Romney in the White House is a scary, scary thought after his bungling of the Libya crisis, and the Stormin’ Mormon just keeps making it scarier—including putting out Liz Cheney as spokeswoman for his anti-Muslim bigotry.
I get that this is a liberal outfit, but really? Stormin’ Mormon? But it continues:
So far, not a word from Romney about radical right Christian anti-Muslim bigots, including: Florida’s Terry Jones, the nutball, Koran-burning preacher who promoted the film; various extremist, Egyptian Copts; Steve Klein of California; and the mystery man who supposedly made the film.
So, I think there should be a message from Romney about the film and the folks that created it. But I find it wonderfully ironic that Robert Dreyfuss is asking Romney to call out “radical right Christian anti-Muslim bigots” even going so far as to label them nutballs and extremists. I think that if we wanna ask people to stoop calling people names, we should start by not calling those people names. And not for nothing, but making a crummy YouTube movie is hardly considered “extremist” when compared to the extremists who protest and breach embassies, burn flags and kill people. In fact, some liberals might even find making movies wonderfully “artsy.”
Moving on, Dreyfuss critiques Romney by saying:
To recap: after the Libya attack, which killed four American diplomats, Romney found himself compelled to attack President Obama for supposedly expressing sympathy for the terrorists. His statement:
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
So, what Dreyfuss is saying is that Romney is wrong to criticize the response from the Cairo embassy. After all, that is the origination of the statement in question. And in retrospect, that statement is NOT sympathizing but rather acting as a calming note. But it’s important to remember two things:
Not a word from Dreyfuss.
Last I’ll leave you with a case study in tolerance from the gentle left when engaging in discussion with those in whom you may disagree:
Liz Cheney, satanic offspring of the ex-VP, was trotted out by the Romney campaign for her Wall Street Journal screed, which said in part:
Nothing like being lectured by the tolerant left.
Posted in Politics: International
Tagged Barack Obama, Egypt, Libya, Mitt Romney, Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation