"Mr. President, Take Your Campaign Out of the Gutter"

The brand new Romney-Ryan ticket experienced quite a Sunday -- addressing packed rallies in North Carolina, sitting down for a joint interview on 60 Minutes, then wrapping up in Wisconsin for an humongous homecoming rally for Paul Ryan. Official estimates pegged the crowd at roughly 13,000 in Waukesha. This is what enthusiasm looks like: (picture at link)

Ryan got the crowd energized with a sentimental ode to the state that he and his family have called home for generations. He wiped away tears of emotion as the Badger State audience showered him with cheers. After ceding the microphone to Mitt Romney, a handful of Left-wing hecklers attempted to shout over the Republican candidate. The large crowd drowned them out with chants of "USA," then Romney let loose. He directly chided one of the disruptive attendees, then parlayed the rebuke into a stinging indictment of Barack Obama's relentlessly negative and dishonest campaign. The gathered throng erupted:

Romney proceeded to run down a litany of Obama's policy failures and promised to turn the country around, if elected. This is the most focused and electric I've ever seen Mitt Romney, having covered him for more than a year. The Ryan pick -- reportedly made over some Romney advisers' early objections -- has galvanized the candidate, as well as the electorate. The GOP ticket has raised more than $5 million just online since Ryan's Saturday morning roll-out. Game on.

Running against Obama's peanut farmer utter failure predecessor? Yes. Bush would also have won that election and maybe by an even greater margin than Reagan.

A lot of people in 1980 bought into the image of Reagan as a dangerous loon and those of that type who could not stomach voting for Carter voted instead for John Anderson (over 6% of the total). If Bush had headed the ticket it's doubtful Anderson would even have run and the bulk of that 6% would probably have gone his way.

As the 1980's played out, particularly after he survived assassination, the Soviet Union got pushed and pressured by us, the Afghan debacle, and their own decrepitude toward collapse, and by 1984 the U.S. economy had made what seemed an almost miraculous recovery Reagan became the popular and respected figure we now recall. His real landslide election (49 friggin' States!) came in 1984.

I would argue that if Bush had been president between 1981 and 1984, following what we now call RINO policies (because Reaganism is identified as REAL Republicanism), there would not have been the same kind of economic recovery, the USSR would have been coddled into longer viability, small pieces on the board like Nicaragua, Grenada, El Salvador, etc. would have slipped into Communist control unmolested, and Bush would have lost reelection in just same way as he did in 1992.

Providence smiled on America in November of 1980 in a way I am not sure but pray she may again. But considering how much of the culture of the country has changed and moved toward overt demonic evil, and to paraphrase a line from Unforgiven, deservin' will have nothin' to do with it.

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