Explaining Romney's Surge
By Hugh Hewitt
10/13/2012
"Tonight the part of Wile E. Coyote will be played by Vice President Joe Biden."
Thursday night's debate between Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan went according to the super-secret plan of Karl Rove to not only defeat but deeply embarrass the Democratic Party.
Rove had previously arranged for President Obama to take two Ambien before the first debate.
Not even a maniacal, all-powerful Rove could be blamed for the Democrats decision to attempt to cover-up the details of the terrible tragedy in Benghazi or the serial malfeasances before or after the attack of 9/11 that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans --Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods. The collapse of the president in the first debate and the implosion of the vice president in the second were mere political misfortunes, but the murders in Benghazi were horrible personal tragedies and a national nightmare.
That Obama spokesperson Stephanie Cutter then politicized the deaths by blaming the attention paid to them on politics rather than on the trauma of a shocked nation left her radioactive and forever branded as the operative willing to say anything.
These are the events that changed a nation's mood and the election that is to be held after the shift.
Many will always argue that Mitt Romney would have surged into the lead in any event given the underlying economic havoc the president has wrecked upon the country, and indeed that is the fundamental premise of the University of Colorado model that has correctly predicted the result in presidential elections back to 1980.
It is the state of the state-by-state economies that drive their votes according to this model, and this model, updated and released this week, shows Mitt Romney accumulating 330 electoral college votes and romping to a victory.
Whatever the reason --terrible debate performances, a searing national tragedy brought about by terrorists and its cover-up, or economic misery on a state-by-state basis, Mitt Romney is winning, and the country will be ready to celebrate when he does. A fresh start is needed.
Most economists still don't see another recession looming, but the number who do is rising rapidly and Europe is sinking deeper into a recession that could pull us along with it.
The price of gas has topped $5 a gallon in many places in California, and the consequences of the president's feckless energy policy are everywhere coming into clear view and brining with them agony for the middle class.
Devastating cuts to the military's personnel and equipment are poised to occur under the "sequestration" and the president is cheering them on.
And of course the fiscal cliff looms and we are headed towards it in Thelma and Louise style, with the president hitting the gas and demanding the "Bush era tax cuts" fade and the country fly off the side of the canyon into who knows what.
Did I mention Obamacare unfolds in all of its maniacal bureaucratic density in the next year?
All of these factors have driven the surge towards Romney, and poll after poll shows that the country is shaking off the torpor induced by the endlessly talking, talking, talking president and the endlessly gesturing, gesturing, gesturing vice president.
Democrats are hoping that the president can work some of his old magic on Tuesday night, in effect requesting an entire nation to step up on to the stage and be hypnotized --again.
Who is going to volunteer to sleep walk through another four years?
There is a fine new satire out by Jamie Weinstein and Will Rahn of the Daily Caller. It is The Lizard King: The Shocking Inside Account of Obama's True Intergalactic Ambitions by an Anonymous White House Staffer, and it is wildly funny as only good and timely satire can be.
What it mocks are (1) conspiracy theorists who spin bizarre tales about the president, and (2) most especially the president and his inner circle, the Chicago Gang.
Knocking the nutters about is pretty easy stuff though funny, but the art is in laying open the many, many conceits of Team Obama, especially those of its world-weary senior advisors and their deep seated belief that they know what they are doing at all times.
In fact they are and have been from day one a group of bumbling, stumbling amateurs, bereft of real experience in anything outside of the ward politics of Chicago, and propped up as best as was possible by a permanent governing class and especially by an incredibly effective military, and covered for by a Manhattan-Beltway media elite that fell in love with the president's story (especially those parts that closely resemble their own.)
Having blown through all the intelligence and all the world position willed them by President Bush --Mark Steyn is especially good at recognizing how this cupboard has been stripped bare-- Team Obama is now witnessing the rolling collapse of the president's ego-driven plans that is materializing at breakneck speed, and the consequences are terrible for the country and the West it leads (or used to lead.)
"But wait," they cry, "unemployment is down to 7.8%!"
Put aside your suspicion and believe the number.
That's it? That's the re-election campaign? Unemployment down to 7.8%?
Yes, it is. That and the promise of four more years of Joe Biden's unintentional comic relief.
There are many reason behind the rise of Mitt Romney to the top of the polls, and for his continuing momentum. Chief among them is the country's desperate hunger for competence and for integrity, for candor as to the problems and transparency in the explanation of the choices ahead.
A turnaround is possible and we are lucky to have a turnaround specialist at hand.
Whatever the next two debates bring us, whatever Rove has cooked up, the essential dynamic of Election 2012 was, is and will remain the need to make a U-Turn.
We went down a wrong road in 2008, for a lot of very good and understandable reasons. But it was a huge mistake, a mistake we can begin to correct in four weeks.