Friday, October 26, 2012

The Path Without Ohio

If 2010 and the Tea Party taught us anything it is that the truly historic thing about 2008 is that history and conventional wisdom doesn't necessarily apply.

The left leaning pundits and the Beltway types keep pushing the idea that no President in modern history has been elected without Ohio. To which I say, the South used to be a bastion of Democrat electoral votes at one point in time and that is clearly no longer the case. If Dixie-crats still exsisted then why is there not a single electoral map that shows Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia in play as a swing state? Times change. This may be the year of the victory without Ohio.

The simple fact of the matter is there is at least one logical, mathematical formulation that gets Romney to 270 without Ohio. Here's one of mine.


Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Too Cute by Half?

My favorite part about the 3rd and Final debate is the word "final".

I don't know if I could take another one with all the Super Bowl pre-game build up that is only eclipsed by the post game "Spin room" sessions. I mean, they call it a "SPIN ROOM"! They could release the transcripts before the broadcast and before the actual debate for that matter and then I could go to bed at a reasonable hour.

If I've been ready to cast my vote in this election since the Spring of 2009 then I am twice as ready now.


The pundits on the Right say that Romney's Obama appreciation society was a smart tactic; part of a larger strategy. Very little daylight between their positions. Aimed towards capturing undecided women who are more likely to be war weary doves. In retrospect he was able to lock Obama in a boxer's hug, preventing his opponent from swinging big and landing any blows; ultimately taking Obama out of his own strategy to a point of frustration and visible irritation. Meanwhile, Romney just needed to come away looking "presidential" and not lose the debate or at least not lose it through some grande blunder. And the economy is Romney's big winner so diverting attention away from the domestic issues in the final weeks dilutes his strongest angle of attack.

And if it sends Obama back to Chicago in January, I guess I won't say much more about it. But for now . . .

I was really uneasy about a lack of punches by Romney in the final round of the heavy weight bout. I was made to feel increasingly uneasy as he agreed with Obama on so many foreign policy positions and even responded wrong "in the main" by 180 degrees to say that the mission was close to being achieved in Afghanistan which immediately evoked images of U.S. servicemen being gunned down by newly minted Afghani security forces. Its working, you say? Benghazi went asked (sort of) by Bob Schieffer and totally unanswered and unchallenged.

The Right is dining out days later on zingers about a shrinking Navy and Obama's lame and incorrect response about bayonets. There was really only one truly presidential, albeit Reaganesque moment when Romney went on the attack about the "apology tour". The long answer was very well delivered and perfectly capped off with “We don’t dictate to nations. We free nations from dictators.”

Obama was so flummoxed he turned his head and tried to get a lifeline from the moderator.

enough said.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Reagan Question or The 2012 Moment

Years ago, maybe as early as 2009 the bumper stickers and T-Shirts were popping up with the slogan

The comparisons and similarities were only compounded over the past four years by the petulance, the ridiculous "green" agenda that manifested as a war on fossil fuels and skyrocketing gasoline prices, a roiling sea of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East; essentially failed policies followed by negative results and blame-staking by the man in the oval office.

So as we entered the campaign season many of us have been waiting for the moment.

The pivotal moment in the 1980 election came in the one and only debate a little more than a week before the election.

Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loBe0WXtts8

Last night we may have seen that moment.
In The Weekly Standard article by Jeffrey H. Anderson he writes

An undecided voter said to Obama, “Mr. President, I voted for you in 2008. What have you done or accomplished to earn my vote in 2012? I’m not that optimistic as I was in 2012. Most things I need for everyday living are very expensive.”
Obama immediately began his reply as follows:  “Well, we’ve gone through a tough four years. There’s no doubt about it.”

To which Anderson concludes Obama is admitting: I haven’t done or accomplished anything to earn your vote in 2012, and you’re right not to be as optimistic as in 2008, because it’s been a rough four years with me at the helm.  

 

Thursday, October 4, 2012

"Video Killed the Radio Star"

I seem to recall polls that were taken during one of the historic debates between Nixon and Kennedy. Radio listeners, hearing the content and, from a style perspective, only the intonation thought Nixon won. Of course, that debate was historic because the "optics" were very unfavorable to Nixon who looked small, sweaty (read as nervousness) and pale. The people who watched the debate on TV gave Kennedy the win.

Last night I was driving my daughter back from Volleyball practice and thanks to the wonders of a space age technology era (ushered in by Kennedy) I was listening to the start of the debate via satellite radio. I listened to a good 10 minutes of back and forth, heavy on statistics, verbal sparring, occasional jabs but I wasn't hearing anything that grabbed me and so I assumed there was a television audience who's eyes were glazing over. Where Romney was hanging a lot on this debate I felt that he was losing.

Between over-exposed Obama trying to sell the same, tired rhetoric peppered with some outright obfuscation of the facts and a lame attempt to co-opt Republican positions and Romney sounding like the Bain CEO reading a 10-k from one of the many public companies failing to reach their revenue goals in an Obama economy, well, I was growing not only disappointed but bored.

I switched off the radio. Came home. Got the kids to bed and thought I'd come back to it in the morning and hear the pundits who would use a salvo of coordinated DNC talking points to eviscerate Romney.

But I went to the DVR recording and once again, just as they did in the Nixon-Kennedy era, the "optics" provided a fundamentally different impression. The combination of the content and the visuals were in favor of Romney and Obama's own cheerleaders thought so based on their tweets and post debate commentaries.