The Houston Chronicle has a long history of endorsing Republicans for president, but in 2008 the paper got caught up in “hope and change” and endorsed Obama. This time around, though, the paper has soured on the man actor Russell Crowe says is “the light.”
The Chronicle’s editorial brings up more than just Obama’s failures. It brings up his obvious hostility toward the Lone Star State.
Four years later, President Obama’s deeds have failed to match his words, much less his specific vows to cut the national debt by half and bring the nation’s unemployment rate to 6 percent. As Texans, it is a particular vexation that this president’s attitude toward the interests of our state has occasionally bordered on contempt, particularly in decisions relating to the NASA budget and the energy sector. The hurtful symbol of this attitude of insensitivity to Texans’ feelings was the administration’s choice to deny Space City’s bid to become home to one of the retired space shuttles.
We do not believe four more years on the same plodding course toward economic recovery is the best path forward for Texas or the nation. And so we endorse the Republican team, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, in the belief that they can do better by Texas and the nation.
It’s difficult to see how they could do any worse for Texas. When Obama wasn’t cynically shipping our space shuttle to New York, he was on the border with Mexico mocking our concerns about the drug war violence south of the river. When Obama wasn’t promising the Brady Center that he was working on gun control “under the radar,” he was promising the Russians more “flexibility” on missiles, and walking assault weapons to the Mexican drug cartels. When he wasn’t wasting billions of our dollars on greendoggles, he was using the EPA to assault our vital energy sector.
The Chronicle’s endorsement notes that Obama blocked the Keystone pipeline, and reprints Romney’s five-point agenda for economic growth. It follows several newspapers around the country coming out for Romney in the past week or so, papers from places as diverse as Tennessee and New York. If news editors are going public with Obama disenchantment, they’re making it easier for people to keep their disenchantment with him private and walking it right into the voting booth. The Chronicle’s editorial is timely too: It hit yesterday, a day ahead of the start of early voting across Texas.
As for Russell Crowe, look, the man is an actor and has never been confused with Clint Eastwood. When it comes to men, Crowe is an outlier foreigner. He’s not worth the energy it would take me to get up, find the Gladiator blu-ray, and toss it.
Wow, that Chronicle endorsement gave Obama just one of the many spankings he so richly deserves.
Apropos of endorsements and the phenomenon of “2008 voter’s remorse,” one of the prime and earliest proponents of the Preference Cascade’s relevance in this year’s election has been the Ace of Spades HQ blog.
I’m not here as a sockpuppet or the like, but do want to mention that there is a highly insightful (if lengthy!) post Ace has up today 22 October about the independent/swing vote — I highly encourage folks to read it and to act on what it indicates vis-a-vis the GOTV/Get-Out-The-Vote effort on behalf of Romney/Ryan.
Bottom line: Swing voters are strongly ticked off at Obama/Biden (i.e., they’re consistently polling as having a lot of voter’s remorse) — *but* there is a huge risk that they will simply stay home on 06 November, in an effort to shut out the world at large and the negativity churned up by the Obama campaign.
Indeed the Obama go-negative strategy is intended in strong part to produce exactly this reaction of disgust among Independents and a decision by many of them to declare “A pox on both your houses” and sit out the election.
We have to get them to vote — this takes getting them to see that it is indeed the scorched-earth Obama approach that is to blame, through and through.
You forgot the Texas wildfires. Obama refused to declare it a disaster zone. An area the size of a small State was burning, and Obama refused to help. Punishing his enemies. And, oh yeah, you did not mention the Gulf spill and the drilling moratorium.
I found the editorial exasperating in some ways. After 44 years of Republican endorsements, they flipped for Obama? What effing idiots. All the evidence for his unfitness and dishonesty was there.
When Julian Castro starts spouting poetry in 2016 or 2020 will they flip again?
Well. So much for going to see Russell Crowe movies.