Time magazine caught my attention – what with a cover showing a close-up of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s face and the headline, “So you like me now?”
Which struck me as downright absurd. There may be those political pundits who are trying to claim that the former Massachusetts governor is running away with the political battles that will get him the Republican presidential nomination for the Nov. 6 elections.
BUT REAL PEOPLE are more inclined to see what is happening and realize that no one is “pull(ing) ahead of the pack” – which is how Time chose to characterize Romney’s campaign performances in a subhead to the same magazine cover.
Maybe it’s because I see a candidate who took 25 percent support of the caucuses in Iowa and 39 percent of the voter support in the New Hampshire primary – and see a few states coming up where the conservative ideologues of the world typically do well in elections.
What I see is a candidate who had overwhelming majorities of voters wanting somebody else, ANYBODY ELSE, except for Mitt. That sentiment is running strong. If anything, IT is the dominant theme of Campaign ’12.
We have the ideologues who have had their hang-ups ever since Election Day 2008 who have been biding their time for the day when someone can come in and erase the memory of Barack Obama as president.
THOSE ARE NOT a compromising batch of people. The last thing they’re ever going to do is get excited about the thought of Mitt Romney.
That is why it did not shock me to learn that on Saturday in Texas, a group of ideologically-motivated political people came out in support of Rick Santorum. The one-time Pennsylvania senator who has a record of being more than willing to spew against people who aren’t just like himself may well be the kind of candidate they want.
In short, they’re trying to pressure all the other candidates who remain in the various elections to drop out. Because then, the ABM vote will combine into an overwhelming majority – instead of all those “Anybody But Mitt” votes being split among so many candidates that Romney’s quarter-of-the Republican electorate is large enough to “win” on the primary election days.
Of course, I don’t expect to see those other candidates drop out. They’re a stubborn batch who probably are convinced of their own moral superiority – even though when I look at them, I see a batch of blowhards (and no, I have never succumbed to the appeal of Ron Paul).
SO ROMNEY MAY well “win” these primaries and wind up getting the nomination to run against Obama. Although I’m not convinced of the line of rhetoric that claims he’s a political “moderate” who is the only GOPer who can possibly win the general election.
I just can’t help but see a candidate who creates a sense of apathy among the Republican faithful that will be more intense than what occurred in ’08 with John McCain.
And if, somehow, the GOP voters were to somehow nominate one of their ideologues as some sort of hard-line approach by which they take over and the rest of us have to shut up and like it, all I can say to that theory is that those ideologues must be using some pretty hard-core drugs in order to believe such nonsense.
I couldn’t help but notice a pair of reports from the Gallup Organization – which on Sunday had Barack Obama with a 46 percent “favorable” rating, compared to 48 percent “unfavorable.”
BUT A STUDY released late last week said that 46 percent of people surveyed want a federal government with Barack Obama to have more influence over its direction, compared to only 42 percent that would want a Republican Congress to set the tone of public policy.
The man holding the presidency is not as unpopular as the ideologues want to believe, and most people who are distrustful of Obama these days are distrustful of all political people in general – even the Republicans.
So I can’t help but laugh at the people who are trying to portray Mitt Romney as some sort of GOP steamroller and political force. It just isn’t so!
I can’t help but think we’re going to be getting a laugh out of that Time magazine cover come autumn, and Romney may wind up making the McCain campaign, in retrospect, look competitive by comparison.
IF ANYTHING, IT has me wondering if somewhere up in the cosmos, there is some force looking out for Obama.
For this is the guy who got elected to the Illinois state Senate by successfully knocking an incumbent opponent off the ballot, then went up to the U.S. Senate by seeing both his primary and general election opponents implode.
Seeing the possibility that history will record that Obama ran for president against two GOP nominees despised by their own party faithful just seems too ironic. For it has me wondering about those ideologues – some of whom go about thinking they’re spreading “God’s will” with their activism.
Maybe they are – if you believe that whatever Supreme being exists doesn’t object to “Four more years!!!” of Barack Obama and is using the ideologues to “take down” his challengers.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment