Posted on 09/18/2012 1:26:50 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
One of Romney’s great skills is the ability to turn around failing enterprises. He did it with private firms while he ran Bain Capital, he did it for an indebted Massachusetts, and he did it for the Olympics. He needs to do it for his campaign now.
Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster, attempted to soothe worried Republicans last week by stressing that the race remains extremely close. But the fact that Romney’s pollster isn’t worried is itself worrying. By rights, Romney should be ten points ahead. His campaign seems to think the bad economy will automatically win this race for the Republican.
It isn’t as if voters are unaware that the economy stinks. Yet the morning after the Democratic convention, the dismal jobs report did not prevent Democrats from getting a bigger bounce than Republicans had received. Reflect that three and a half years of miserably high unemployment, slow growth, increasing poverty, falling labor-force participation, record-setting food-stamp dependence, and an average 5 percent decline in household income has not persuaded most voters to support Mitt Romney.
On the contrary, the Gallup job-approval rating for Obama topped 50 percent after the jobs report for the first time since 2010. Job approval tends to be a good predictor of an incumbent’s share of the vote. By contrast, George H. W. Bush, the last incumbent to lose reelection, stood at 39 percent approval at this stage in 1992. And Bush’s economy wasn’t nearly as dismal.
The Romney campaign has failed to make the case that Obama is responsible for the economy, whereas Clinton/Obama have made a spurious but perhaps effective argument that Republicans got us “into this mess” and will pursue policies that will be no better and may be worse. The Democrats argue that Republicans want only to help their rich friends, not the middle class.
Romney needs an aggressive and bold response. After shooting down the lie that he and Ryan plan to increase taxes, he might begin by explaining how the 2008 financial crisis came about — namely that both parties, but mostly the Democrats, insisted that banks give mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them. As Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, 74 percent of the bad loans were on the books of Fannie, Freddie and other quasi-government entities. When the crash came, it nearly sank our entire banking system. Voters may believe that Republicans favor the rich. But they also believe that Democrats are the party of giveaways. It was the Democrats’ insistence on forcing private banks to make unsound loans that led to collapse.
Second, though Obama ridicules tax cuts, they have been responsible for bursts of economic growth every time they’ve been enacted. They worked for Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and, yes, even for George W. Bush. The economy created 8 million jobs under Bush, and the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. By contrast, there is no example of a nation or a state spending itself into prosperity. If that were possible, Greece would be lending Germany money, California would be in the black, and Illinois would be a jobs hub.
Third, the signature policies of the Obama term, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, combined with uncertainty about what Washington will do, are crushing the private sector. The Economist has dubbed the 2,300-page financial-regulation behemoth “Dodd-Frankenstein” because it vests so much unreviewable authority in bureaucrats and drowns financial and other institutions in red tape. “Only 93 of the 400 rule-making requirements” had been completed as of February of this year, the magazine noted, two years after the bill’s passage.
After Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, private-sector job creation, which had been growing, slumped. A Chamber of Commerce survey found that 73 percent of employers cited Obamacare as an obstacle to hiring new workers. Not only does the law impose billions in new taxes and mandates, but, like Dodd-Frank, it vests so much authority in the federal bureaucracy that employers have no idea what to expect and cannot plan. Even if an employer were able to wade through the bill’s 2,700 pages, he would still emerge confused as to what the law demands. Obamacare creates 159 new agencies, bureaus, and boards, and has generated 12,000 pages of regulations — so far. It does include new hiring though — thousands of new IRS employees.
Obama is failing because his policies are wrongheaded and destructive. Uncertainty has kept capital on the sidelines. Obama has frozen employers into a defensive crouch. That is the case Romney has not yet made.
So, just to review, then: publicly and enthusiastically ENDORSING Romney for the presidency -- while (simultaneously) literally festooning NR and NRO's "The Corner" with pro-Romney puffery, over several years -- counts for zero, zip, nyet, nada, and didn't/doesn't help even one minuscule, microscopic bit...
... but, one or two pieces stating (as this one plainly does; read it) "Romney should be doing far, FAR better than he is right now, given Obama's record over the past four years" is somehow -- and I don't even pretend to follow the argument, mind -- "undercutting" Romney, and does materially affect his electoral chances.
Is that about the size and shape of things, here...? ;)
NRO = beltway prima donnas (with a very few exceptions).
The first debate will make or break Romney - it will be his one chance to bypass the media filter.
He should have chosen Condi Rice for VP to put the media in disarray for a precious few days that might have let him break out of the pre-defined narrative. Even then, even if he could put the opponent’s secondary in disarray, I wonder if he’d have a play to call.
He absolutely should have tapped a woman for the slot, agreed... although I would have steered clear of Rice, myself. (Too easy to play the "Here Comes Four More Years of GWB" card against her, sadly.)
I seem to recall reading someplace (Hot Air, perhaps?) that Nikki Haley was being vetted by the Romney campaign, at one point. That might well have ended up being my choice, all things being equal.
This is th survival of the Republic. So pick up a gun and help fight or run to your purity foxhole and freakin' pontificate while the rest of us sav the country.
This is th survival of the Republic. So pick up a gun and help fight or run to your purity foxhole and freakin' pontificate while the rest of us save the country.
... and Charen (and National Review) are doing what, SPECIFICALLY to "advance Obama to a second term," again? Spell it out, please; details, rather than rhetoric.
I note, with genuine disappointment, that my simple, straightforward query, re: #41, has unaccountably gone a-begging. Ah, well.
Charen is doing the Left’s bidding with crap like this.
AFTER endorsing him for the presidency.
And AFTER publicly lauding Romney, two or three times weekly (at barest minimum), over the past several years on NRO. (They do have a perfectly good Search function over there, you know.)
And she's suddenly doing this, in your estimation... ummmmmmmm... why -- ?!? ;)
Fewer sullen, spittling, self-appointed Morale Officers, hereabouts.
That would make for a considerable improvement, in all naked candor. ;)
FU Romney and the gutless NR, I voted for ABMR in the primary and got the feckless MR anyway. Bye, bye Republican eunuchs!
I think she’s criticizing his campaign, not the man. She wants the campaign to campaign so that the man wins.
I don’t respond to “queries” that are concealed attempts to subvert the Romney campaign. I’ll give you one more chance to come on board, then as far as I’m concerned, I’m done with you. It’s too bad. But I’ll repeat: ANYONE doing anything to advance Obama to a second term-—and you know exactly what that means and you know exactly what Charen. . . and you . . . are doing is a threat to the Republic.
Romney/Ryan needs to turn that tax lie around, and hammer away at the fact that with trillion dollar deficits and a 16 trillion dollar debt, Obama will have to raise taxes on the middle class.
Absolutely. And thank you -- and I mean this most sincerely, sans any sarcasm whatsoever -- for reading for simple, baseline comprehension.
As you've doubtless noticed: not all can, or do. ;)
I'm going to state this as gently (yet straightforwardly) as I possibly can: you are behaving like a profoundly paranoid person, or a frothing, bug-eyed jihadi.
At some point down the road -- weeks, months, what-have-you -- you're going to look back on this sort of overheated nonsense... and flinch. Guaranteed.
I’ll give you one more chance [...] what Charen. . . and you . . . are doing is a threat to the Republic.
All by my lonesome, you mean, like Lex Luthor; or in malevolent, Chthonic tandem with Charen, like Boris and Natasha?
Good heavens.
It wouldn't hurt to mention the trip to Las Vegas and remind people that obama skipped almost half of his intel briefings and tell people that he, his secretary of state and Rice all lied to the American people about the coordinated 9/11/12 attack. He should also ask if we took down AQ's flag yet.
can’t believe that conservative media enters into an alliance with MSM and blames Romney.
Romney does not understand the moment, and there was never any chance that he would.
Far too often, Romney and his campaign act like they don’t really want to win.
In 1980, at this same time, Carter had a solid lead in the polls. In 1988, at this same time, Dukakis held a 17 point lead, according to the msm crystal ball gazers. In 2004, John Kerry was going to be the next president. Stupid people believe stupid things. It's been going on for a long time. This is just more proof. STFU Mona.
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