Posted on 11/08/2012 4:58:29 PM PST by Zhang Fei
Once again, Barack Obama has proven to be the luckiest politician alive.
Just when the race was tightening to a dead heat in the election’s closing days, one spectacular betrayal and one rank miscalculation on the Republican side have turned the contest back in Obama’s favor.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who will tour his storm-ravaged state today with President Obama, was all over the networks Tuesday telling what a wonderful leader his president was.
“I spoke to the president three times yesterday,” Christie boasted, calling Obama “outstanding.” When Fox co-host Steve Doocy meekly asked Christie if he planned any events with Romney, Christie snarkily replied, “I have no idea nor am I the least bit concerned or interested.”
Christie’s caper, of course, is so opportunist that it almost makes Mitt Romney look principled—almost. What a swell party of back-stabbers is our GOP.
For Christie, who is up for re-election next year in a blue state, this caper accomplishes three things: It portrays him as a bipartisan; provides extensive publicity in service of his image as a good leader in a crisis; and hoses away Mitt Romney, the better to position Christie for a presidential run in 2016.
Of course, if Christie thinks he has a snowball’s chance of being the Republican nominee, he is delusional. Republicans will never forgive Christie for this act of high treason. Assuming Romney loses, the 2016 nomination belongs to Paul Ryan, probably by acclamation. Christie has a better shot at being appointed by Obama to head FEMA.
(Excerpt) Read more at prospect.org ...
3 mil. Republicans had already decided not to go to vote at the polls way before Hurricane Sandy moved in!
“Obama’s photo op was completely unnecessary”
I get your point, but this prez has a policy of politicizing EVERYTHING, so we shouldn’t be surprised if Christie feared his goodies from DC.
...even so, he spent a LOT of time trying to get Romney elected, but when Romney’s people said “Please Don’t”, he gave them the finger. This was not good.
The optimistic polls were the ones that did not have D+6 (which more honestly should have been put as R-6).
OMG! Christie this time you really got your biiiiiiiig panties in a Wad.
Days before the election? Unlikely.
Christie will lose the NJ Governor race next year, and he will NEVER get the GOP nomination for President.
[Most notable is the fact that the few polls that showed Romney with a consistent small lead (Gallup, for example) turned out to be completely incorrect in their Democrat/Republican turnout models.]
What about Wash Post/ABC?
“Days before the election? Unlikely.”
I know enough not to mess with a man of your wisdom (LOL, I love your name). Anyway, you’re also right...if he were doing it for the goodies, it still doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah...he’s one cheeseburger away from his heart exploding.
I contend that every one of those voters would have voted for Obama even if Hurricane Sandy made landfall a week after Election Day ... and they would have cited some other "most important issue" that motivated their vote.
If a Republican candidate who is facing a half-@ssed, mediocre incumbent in a presidential election ends up losing because of the votes cast by retarted voters who vote for a president based on the last four days of an election cycle, then he simply wasn't a very good candidate to begin with.
Two can play this game. Please provide for me the evidence that "the 15%" would all have voted for Obama and none of them would have voted for Romney if Sandy H. had never existed.
Kristie Creme and Sandy helped Obama which hurt Romney with these flaky voters, which appears to be the consensus opinion around here. And Kristie is acting like he wants to change his party. The Dems can have him.
The fact is that ABC, Gallup, and Rasmussen had Romney 5% to 6% over Obama with about a week to go, and on election day, these national polls were down to a 1% difference which is really too close to call for any candidate.
At 400 pounds, he’s pretty much a non-starter anyway.
Maybe he will switch parties, like that loser Charlie Crist is FL. Christy is so over.
Great point, Fighter.
First time I thought about that.
The perfect political compromise.
Christie looks important in front of the home crowd, Romney doesn't get burned, and Obama can't say no.
New Jersey will spend every dollar that Christie squeezes out of Washington, D.C.
Then they will kick his giant rear end right out of office in 2013.
Here's my statement: Obama would have been re-elected even if Hurricane Sandy made landfall a week after Election Day. There are any number of reasons for that, and those are all worthy of discussion.
Shit happens and so does Chris Christie. All I know is the Democrats and liberals were ecstatic at his endorsing and praising Obama multiple times. It proved that Obama was a commanding figure who inspired bipartisanship.
Maybe CC go Obama elected. Obama won swing states by narrow margins so who knows
But if party affiliation is as loosely defined as you've described (and it may very well be), then nobody doing a poll has any business even making adjustments for it. You can't go out and do a poll with all of these party-affiliation adjustments in it, project Candidate X as the winner, and then come back after Candidate X loses and say you were wrong because party affiliation is "highly fluid."
Something else to consider here is that most people are completely overlooking the whole concept of a "margin of error" in a poll. That is an absolutely meaningful number, and what it indicates is that any polling margin within that margin of error is basically meaningless. If a candidate is up by 2% in a poll with a 2.5% margin of error, then you can throw the poll out the window because it's not telling you anything. It's not even telling you that the candidate has a slight advantage.
A better indication -- and one that everyone here on FreeRepublic either ignored or tried to explain away -- would be something like an Intrade projection. This is basically an online auction/bidding site that allows people to place bets on all different kinds of things. It's probably a pretty good indicator of how things like an election will go because people are putting their own money on the line and they are placing bets regardless of party affiliation or even preference for a candidate. Nobody has a vested interest in placing a bet on a candidate they expect to lose, and the odds are adjusted accordingly as bets are placed.
In the final months of the election season Intrade was consistently giving a pretty strong indication (65% at first, then growing to 80%+) that Obama was going to win, which meant that behind all the nonsense was an underlying sentiment that polls may not necessarily capture well within their margins of error.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.