D-Word Deja Vu
“Romney’s Daunting Challenges” is the title of a new post on the PJ Media homepage by Jean Kaufman, whom you may also know as veteran blogress Neo-Neocon:
When the 2012 GOP presidential contenders first announced themselves it was unsettling. Who among the declared candidates had a truly realistic chance of unseating an incumbent Obama? The uncharismatic, emotionally volatile, baggage-ridden, and long-in-the-tooth Newt Gingrich? Rick Santorum, who could easily be painted as a religious fanatic out to control our lives? Rick Perry, who seemed to implode before he began? Herman Cain, who had no political experience and who turned out to have an exploitable past? Michele Bachmann, prone to gaffes and not unlike Santorum in her weaknesses?
Mitt Romney seemed the best of the available lot. But it was always clear that his road to defeating Obama would be hard (especially in the Electoral College), as it almost certainly would have been for any Republican candidate — perhaps even for the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan everyone has been looking for, and who has somehow failed to materialize. This is because any candidate in 2012 would not only have to be super-humanly squeaky-clean and gaffe-free, he/she would have to know the best way to circumvent and override the MSM’s determination to be Obama’s cheering squad by finding gaffes where none existed in the GOP nominee and boosting Obama whatever he might do.
The events of the past week and a half have brought this all home with great force and clarity. Who would have thought that the Arab street could explode with anti-American riots and violence, an ambassador could be murdered on 9/11, Obama could say Egypt was neither enemy nor ally, the U.S. embassy in Cairo could condemn a film, the Benghazi consulate could be found to have had woefully inadequate security, our UN ambassador could deny a well-coordinated attack featuring rocket-propelled grenades was pre-planned, and it would be Romney who would draw the media’s scorn for criticizing the Cairo embassy’s statement? And that the polls would not fall significantly for the man who had presided over all of this?
Could there be any better demonstration of the power of MSM propaganda and the unwillingness of so many voters to abandon Obama no matter what? Although most liberals and the left were already disappointed in him for various reasons, it doesn’t seem to matter. Like the woman who’s madly in love with the guy who neglects her but still can bring her some flowers and sweet-talk her into anything, they’re standing by their man, and any Republican candidate would have an uphill climb to overcome it.
I also recall reading the D-Word as it appeared around this time four years ago in a post by Steve Green, our friendly neighborhood Vodkapundit. Specifically in an October 3rd, 2008 post where Steve wargamed the Electoral College and concluded — rightly, as it turned out — “The word McCain fans are looking for is ‘daunting.’”
As I’ve said before, I want to believe — particularly given the multiple gaffes and disasters that President Dukakis and his current administration are wracking up, as reality re-entered their world via an angry 3:00 am phone call this past September 11th. But I’m having bad feelings that I’ve seen this movie before.
Tell me I’m wrong in the comments; I still want to believe.
Okay, you’re wrong. Very wrong. Extremely very wrong. 49 state blow-out for Mitt because the media doesn’t pick the President (for now) we do.
Good — I hope you’re right.
– on the economic numbers.
I’ll still stand by my prediction of a few years ago, based on what happened in New York City when liberal voters there elected David Dinkins under the Hope & Change (Gorgeous Mosaic) banner in 1989, with the idea that the election of the first African-American mayor would turn the Big Apple into Shangra-La. Didn’t quite work out that way, but even with a 5-to-1 Democrat-to-Republican registration advantage, voters in New York decided to abandon their liberal white guilt and go with the Republican in 1993 — even though it was really close, and the election turned on Staten Islanders turning out en masse to election Giuliani as their last hope before petitioning to secede from the city.
I have a hard time believing, even 19 years down the line, that the United States as a whole is more liberal in 2012 than NYC was in ’93. The only two caveats are:
1.) Giuliani ran in ’89 and lost after his high-profile stint as Reagan’s AUSA, so the voters knew who he was, allowing him to survive the race card attacks by Team Dinkins in ’93. Political junkies knew Romney going into 2012, but the swing voters who’ll decide the election really didn’t;
2.) Rudy ran a far more confident campaign than Romney and his staff have done when it comes to ideas about what he would do if elected. Team Mitt at times seems to be embarrassed that they have to add ideology to a campaign they want to be about competence, and because of that, they come across as a campaign that would really prefer to play a two-minute prevent defense against Team Obama, and then is left trying to scramble for a late catch-up game plan when they suddenly find Team Obama has scored to take the lead (Mitt had similar problems with Team Newt and Team Rick during the primaries, but were able to money bomb themselves back into the lead. Can’t do that this time. They still have the three debates and 45-plus days of national and world news cycles to work with, but it won’t matter if Romney doesn’t embrace his base and it’s core beliefs more, and act as if he truly has a problem with not just Obama but big government Republicanism).
Our turn out will be massively larger than theirs. Look, Ed, seriously, Obama can’t make the sale. Daunting challenges? Well, with the ten points the media is still worth, with all the advantages of incumbency, with polls assuming that voter turnout will be the same or better for D than in 08 (and please! Not a chance. I both work and live in a blue environment. In 08 I couldn’t go out without tripping on Obama signs. Every student dorm/housing had a poster in the window, etc. Now? There were two in the entire neighborhood, and one went down 9/12. Will some of those people still vote for Obama? Undoubtedly. But I’m guessing most of them will stay home and mope that the hopey changey thing wasn’t as shiny as they expected) they’re virtually tied in Gallup. More, they’re tied among registered (not likely votes.) Counting in BOTH that “registered” skews more heavily left and that they’re counting on dems way outnumbering reps at the polls… I’m guessing Romney is at least +5. Be of good cheer. Is it in the bag? Well, not till it’s done. Work, write, keep up the spirit, but don’t be discouraged by eeyores and media… something that rhymes with eeyores. We’re ahead.
An online fan of mine told me in 04 “the more they know they’re losing, the more they yell they’re winning.” I see no reason to doubt it. I also remember all the doom and gloomers of 10.
Be of good cheer. I’m predicting an awesome preference cascade.
As for embracing the base — please. Don’t START. He has the base, and he knows that. If he “embraces” the base and does attack ads and goes after the media, all it will do — amplified by the crazy news cycle is he’ll give the media the chance to Palinize him and energize the other side to turn out. We don’t want that. Let the man play it. I don’t see McCain at all — I see a man who’s playing this game very well.
As for embracing the base — please. Don’t START. He has the base, and he knows that. If he “embraces” the base and does attack ads and goes after the media, all it will do — amplified by the crazy news cycle is he’ll give the media the chance to Palinize him and energize the other side to turn out. We don’t want that. Let the man play it. I don’t see McCain at all — I see a man who’s playing this game very well.
Please note I’m not asking Mitt Romney to come out and channel Michael Savage or Mark Levin for the next 45 days — that would be hilariously/sadly awful, like watching Joe Biden try to remain coherent though a 20-minute speech. But what he does need to do is show the same sort of passion about the conservatives’ core issues that he showed in mid-August, when he went on offensive after he was personally affronted by the attacks on him by Harry Reid and others.
A large part of Reagan’s win was showing the swing voters that he cared about the issues in a personal way. Romney may feel the same way, but he hides what passion he may or may not have behind a technocratic/competency public image — which is probably what the country needs but can come across to the voters he needs as plain vanilla. I don’t think Mitt likes openly showing emotion, and I don’t particularly want a president who is all about ‘feelings’ — we’ve had that from 1993-2000 and for the past four years. But unfortunately, the moderate voters want to see some of that, which is why it’s vital that Romney connects with those voters over the next 45 days, especially during the opening debate that will garner the highest viewing numbers.
The words you are looking for start with W, for Women, and C, for Coastal Elites. Politics is baked in: Coastal Elites + Non Whites, vs. everyone else. Women break out into unmarried, with Coastal Elites and Non Whites, married (mostly) to everyone else.
Why President Dukakis and the like doesn’t matter, and Obama is favored to win, is that most women are … unmarried. Also, Obama is Black. If you think that does not matter, you have not been hanging around ordinary women much. Stupid White guy is a media matter of dogma, and White guy is used as insult to mean emasculated, dweeby, and stupid. Because that’s how most women most of the time see White guys.
You wonder why nothing sticks to Obama? Its because he’s Black. He’s not Dinkins, the people voting are all those women who rushed out to buy Fifty Shades of Bondage; they are the swing voters and things like the economy, the crumbling national security/foreign policy, the price of gas and groceries literally don’t matter. What was it Dinah Washington sang? “You kissed me, and then you hit me, but I still love … you!”
As long as Obama is worshipped as Jesus 2.0 by the media, he’s the Alpha male, the lock, for most women’s votes. He probably takes 53% of the vote, my guess. I hope I’m wrong btw, things look bleak for me personally if he wins.
Blacks will ALWAYS vote Dem, they’re the anti-White party that hand out anti-White guy based goodies. Same with Hispanics, Dems are the party that hand out welfare for girls pregnant at 16. You could run Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley together and not crack 5% of the Black or Hispanic vote. That’s baked in.
For a Republican to win in a “diverse” (read Whites rapidly moving to minority status, and treated at best like Jews in the Kaiser’s Germany) nation, he or she MUST take at least 70%+ of the White vote. McCain took 60% of the White vote, had he run in the 1980′s he would have clobbered Obama (because there’s a large increase in non-White, mostly Hispanic, voters).
And that is a challenge because White men and women vote RADICALLY different. They expect different things out of life. A White guy is severely penalized in life’s options, romantically and career wise, if he has to kowtow to guys of other races, in multicultural world. Think about it. A White woman, on the other hand, as long as she has no husband’s earnings to consider and no White son to think of, does very well as the junior-junior member of the diversity spoils club. Kowtowing has no penalty for her, she’s not less of a woman for bowing and scraping the way a man becomes when forced to it.
The only way to win, IMHO, is amp up the economic desperation by making a vote for the White guy candidate a matter of economic survival. No one wants to live in the dirt. But that requires realistic appraisals of growth and prosperity. Lets get real, almost no Black and Hispanic people will be working in Silicon Valley, or the oil fields of North Dakota, or skilled manufacturing, any more than you see those guys hot-rodding cars and fiddling with computers. That’s a White guy thing. The same applies to women — they’re not looking to become oilfield workers or engineers. “Respectable” NGO-minders, funded by the government, yes. Women WANT to be Julia, in Obama’s ad; because that’s utterly respectable and they are not suited for risk (nor should they be).
Mitts message of economic growth is utterly irrelevant to non-Whites and most women. Who are risk averse and know they won’t be part of that hip, trendy Silicon Valley start-up writing code, or working the oil fields in North Dakota. As for the Cultural Elites, they are the new “landed gentry” only without the lands, who hate hate hate change and disruption, and would rather have genteel decline (and not threat to their progeny’s chances of dominating society). Bill Gates is not exactly going to embrace Linus Torsvald, for example.
Obama in 08 took single White women at about 70%, for Mitt to win he needs to cut that to about 50% or so. I don’t think he can do it, unmarried White women just don’t like most White guys save natural Alphas and whatever Mitt is (likely a natural) the Media treats him like chump city and that’s how they vote.
A) Unmarried women doesn’t mean stupid women, and sorry it’s gotten bad enough some of these women are back home with mom and dad and noticing.
B) It might interest you to know Ryan/Romney events seem to be arranged and run mostly by Hispanics. You’re assuming legal Hispanics and illegal Hispanics are the same.
C) No, you’re not going to get most blacks to vote against Obama (which is funny considering he’s descended from slave dealers on both sides but never mind) HOWEVER a lot of them are hurting enough not to vote.
D) Women aren’t the only group that carried Obama to victory. And in all the groups he’s losing ground — yes, even among minorities. The only group holding solid for Obama is the dead in Chicago cemeteries, which is why the dems are so nuts on true-the-vote initiatives.
E) Spreading despondency with false data achieves nothing except spreading despondency.
Oh, yeah, Obama is not now and has never been an alpha, natural or not, and TRUST me women know. Why do you think all the staged swooning, etc in the first campaign to give the IMPRESSION he was. That impression didn’t stick, though. Most people — men and women — would rather stick pins in their eyes than watch another Obama speech.
The whole idea of the War On Women was to nail down THAT demographic, which should have been already nailed down. If Obama is campaigning to a group it’s because he doesn’t own it.
Again, with the “we’re doomed, doomed, doomed.” If you want Obama to lose, remember he didn’t close the sale and get to work.
If you want Obama to win, contemplate what “Skyrocketing electricity” will do to you and yours. Remember everything you have, own and eat requires power to produce and you’re not a magical unicorn.
Cousin Whiskey is 100 proof captain of lumping people into groups and stereotypes. He has taken this theory to ridiculous places.
I still believe Mitt will pull off a somewhat big win (not a Reaganesque blowout, but a respectable EC trouncing). I believe this because I think that the current Lick Spittle Media spin for Barack makes a huge mistake, in that they continue to misinterpret the reason for 2006 and 2008 Dem big wins. They see the Dem wins in those years as some sort of turn by the majority of the country to a left or center-left political orientation. Instead, I think that 2006 and 2008 were actually mostly the result of conservative exhaustion with constantly fighting GWB’s and the DeLay Republicans’ ideological battles, and – like Charlie Brown – having the football constantly snatched away and looking foolish. Think back to those years and honestly ask yourself – besides the WOT, was there ever a time when you felt GWB really had your back if you were conservative? By 2008 I think conservatives were EXHAUSTED with the Bush/DeLay problems and mostly sat out the election, especially considering that it was John McCain who was asking for 4-8 years in the WH (what a prospect THAT was – 4 to 8 years of constant anti-conservative snark and bile from the guy who was supposed to be your standard bearer – who needed that?!).
44 cents of every dollar Obama spends is borrowed from our grandchildren, but Romney can’t get the message out.He hasn’t built a ground game and he has no coordinated messaging with the rest of the party. He seems totally unprepared for the hostile msm,as if he was living on Mars for the last four years.Romney obviously never reads conservative blogs.If Romney had stood up for Palin when she was butchered by the media,he might have been prepared when the same thing is being done to him.
We all need a yard sign saying “Why aren’t we hearing about HIGH GAS PRICES in the media, as we were in ’04 and ’08?”