A remarkably civil thread given the topic. I’m a Florida registered Republican who lives in Australia. So I have a far away view of all this. A couple of observations. Keystone. Voters pump gas every week and it is going to irritate them every week. Unforced errors are silent vote killers. So is Gun Walker – like Waco and Ruby Ridge – it just violate American values in a way that will seal the case against Obama in many minds. I think Obama loses if the independents who will decide the election see his reelection as four more years of ‘the failure we know’. And I think he will win if those same people decide ‘better the failure you know than the failure you don’t.’ I voted for McCain confident I was voting for a great American whom I had some serious doubts about as a president. I had more concerns about Obama’s inexperience, which proved justified, but seriously underestimated the extent to which he would try to take the country in a direction it didn’t want to go. The explosive rise of the Tea Party and the shellacking of 2010 demonstrated that. Divided government may be the best the Republicans can do this time, but I personally think (hope?) the country will be better off if we get to 2016 with Paul Ryan’s budget in place and a more robust foreign policy led by even a Romney- I don’t mean attacking Iran, but I do mean a return to forthrightly supporting Israel.
