Tonight President Obama is hosting yet another high dollar fundraiser, in Boston. Fauxcahontas Warren is introducing him, highlighting the fact that Barack Obama isn’t easily embarrassed (but we already knew that). But this post isn’t about that, it’s about a handy infographic that the Romney campaign is greeting the president with.
It’s very good, but let’s be candid. Obama has shifted his campaign strategy. Gone is the “distraction of the week,” and it has been replaced with the outrage of the week. Last week and this it was immigration; first, the executive order on young illegal aliens which Obama himself admitted last year was illegal; today, it was canceling immigration enforcement cooperation with Arizona. The Romney camp has been strong up to now but it’s going to have to get very shrewd with how it reacts to these outrages/intended provocations. The next one coming is probably over student loan interest rates. The Democrats have already set that one up so that President Obama can claim credit for something the Democrats baked in a couple of years ago. June 30 is the deadline.
The Romney camp will have to gauge its reactions in light of possible reaction from independents and the GOP base. That’s what Obama is setting Romney up for — make either independents or the Republican base angry, by reacting to what Obama is doing. Turn either one off to Romney and Obama wins. Romney can’t keep not reacting, at some point the base will get antsy with him or even conclude that he would not undo what Obama is doing. But Romney can’t over react either. He’ll have to be Goldie Locks and get the reactions just right. No easy task.
I still feel that at some point the independents have to be challenged on their blase-nature vis-a-vis things neccessary for liberty, or the Republic will perhaps slowly turn into Leviathan.
I don’t claim this the job of the Romney campaign.
After all, I’d prefer if it was done well.
I see what you mean, but when I reflect back, this entire presidency has been at least one outrage a week. He’s simply trying to deaden our senses. I was vein popping outraged back in the beginning, when he was bowing before foreign leaders, when he seized GM and Chrysler, and when he said that there was no such thing as American exceptionalism, when he bypassed his military and announced timetables for withdrawal publicly, when… well… they’re too numerous to recount or even recall. I used to scream at my television or when I read news reports and blogs.
Nowadays, his outrageousness is simply unspectacular and entirely expected. It has become almost boring in its predictability.
You’re right about the continuing assault. It’ll be student loans. It’ll be decriminalization of pot. Hell. He might even unleash a bunch of premature presidential pardons, like for John Hinkley, Reagan’s attempted assassin, just to get us to overreact.
We’re mostly numb to the daily usurpances and outrages; and quietly each and every one of us is convincing one personal acquaintance after another that Obama is purposefully destroying the country.
The man is too clever by quarter and the American people are about to unleash an iron fist on this guy in November.
Probably. I have to say that I didn’t see the Tea Party coming, though I knew the ground would be receptive if the message would be put out. I see the change factors of the other side all the time, and can calculate what I suppose the delta v would be down the road. What I can’t see, what none of us can because the media, including the entertainment industry, don’t reflect it, is the mass that has to be moved, the capacitance that brushes back in the form of a Tea Party. The actual hearts of the common people.
The country is a big battleship. Obama doesn’t seem to have enough rudder to go where he wants in the time he has. Nor the MSM.
I agree with both of you: plenty of beyond the pale outrages from the beginning, and now what looks like a campaign of them.
But I do agree that Romney has to seriously address at least some of these, I’m sure he lost support from his refusal to say he’d reverse Obama’s DREAM ukase. Illegal immigration has been a red hot issue for the Republican base, which was shattered when W and company pushed it so hard, to the point the party shut down one of their donation phone banks, it wasn’t worth upgrading the equipment due to the sharp decline in giving.
If all this leaves us with the impression there won’t be that much difference between an Obama and Romney Administration—and do any of you seriously expect the current Republican Congressional leadership to curtail “trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see”?—the Romney could easily lose. McCain would have won if the base had come out for him like they did for W in 2004….
Distractions or outrage anything to get the subject off the economy.
Immigration was a shore up of the Left base. Not an appeal to independents.
Gay marriage was a shore up and campaign funding ploy for his base. Again not for independents.
What do independents want that a little Executive Overreach can provide?
Legalize pot? No. That does nothing and won’t cause Romney to react poorly as he has proven.
So that leaves student loan since most Americans on all sides of the political divide have in common. Does he buy everyones vote by forgiving student loans. No. Higher education, a huge ally of the Democrats would explode in outrage. Not the students, the professors, administrators and all public state schools would fry Obama if he did that. Not to mention the loan companies.
No he can’t touch student loans since it is a cash cow for the Democrats and Democrat allies.
That still leaves the question. What executive overreach/policy choice could give Obama an advantage with independent voters?
The man could be setting himself up for a comeback if defeated. Esp. If economy does not improve. In that case, may be hoping for an incredibly transformative opportunity. Perhaps banking on Latino vote a decade down the road.
– for a donation to the Romney campaign, I put in the postage paid return envelope this paraphrase from St. Pete:
“Gold and Silver I have none, but what I have I give unto you: Bryan Preston.”
I was stuck at Logan for three hours today. Every flight was delayed. Thousands effected. The airline staff were instructed to blame it on the weather, which was a small factor, but it made no sense considering the massive mess. Then the word spread that it was Obama and his entourage fouling up the airport. Thousands upon thousands missed flights, appointments, vacations, time with families. There were curses. We saw women crying with frustration. Disorganization, dissimulation, disrespect for the common people, disgrace, disgust, – just another Obama day! Do we live in a great country or what?
A good friend of mine works for Delta at Logan, and a funny thing – that kind of chaos only seems to occur when Obama or a scant few others pass through.
Oddly, he says that when Romney does so – he’s met him several times now – he just breezes through, no fuss, no muss.
Is Romney being shrewd or just a wimp? I don’t know. From Breitbart, here’s John Nolte’s take on Romney’s near silence on these issues: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/06/25/Romney-Avoids-Media-Immigration-Trap
My take is, he’s being strategic to avoid Obama’s traps.