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Why are people panicking?

Why are people panicking?

The discussion in the video below (h/t jimzinsocal)  is pretty good on where the campaign stands.  Krauthammer is hard on Romney for failing to score hard blows on Obama over the economy, something echoed by Bill Kristol.

Am I concerned?  Sure.  At least based on chatter, it looks like while Obama is missing big hits on Bain, he may be driving a theme through repetition in states like Ohio.

It may run the risk of relitigating the primaries, but I also agree with the points made in this clip about the need to hit Obama harder from an ideological perspective.  He’s not a “nice guy” although he is in “over his head.”

We’re hitched to a horse, and the same people who are complaining are the ones who hitched us.

Given that, at what point do expressions of concern become defeatism?

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Comments

FWIW Krauthammer preferred Santorum to Romney. He wasn’t one of the hitchers.

    Frank Scarn in reply to Soccerdad. | July 8, 2012 at 11:14 pm

    People are panicking because they think that maybe we have another Dole or McCain on our hands.

    Where’s the fire in the belly, Mitt?

    The number of indicia that this One has done one incredibly miserable job for the country is incredibly. A target-rich environment. So, Mitt, WTF are you waiting for?

      TrooperJohnSmith in reply to Frank Scarn. | July 9, 2012 at 12:57 am

      The reason I’m concerned about election 2012 is the same reason I hate professional soccer. What?

      Yes, there’s a definite correlation. Professional soccer, especially World Cup Kickball, is boooooooooring because they play not to lose, versus playing to win. You know, the tortoise and the hare approach, where one must depend on an opponent to make more mistakes than you. The risk, of course, is having an opponent that will just bring it to you, hammer and tongs. Therein lies my worry.

      Romney is playing not to lose, hoping that the gaffe-prone, twisting-in-the-wind opposition will hurt itself more than him.

      Well, Mitt, these boys are from Sh!tcago! If they’re losing in the late rounds, the Obama corner guys are not above putting rosin on, or loading a horseshoe in, their fighter’s gloves. Remember the Sean Connery line from the Untouchables: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!

      I always liked Al Davis Football. Go vertical. Lamonica dropping back in the pocket, and he goes long for Biletnikoff down the sideline…touchdown! Just win, baby. Sometimes, baby, you just gotta win. On your own.

      Anyway, that’s just what I think. That and 8-bucks will get you a frappucino, mocha, chocolate, latte with a swirl on top.

    Juba Doobai! in reply to Soccerdad. | July 8, 2012 at 11:26 pm

    Yes he was. He was leading the pack on trashing Palin, the general who has been spearheading the fight against Obama. When Krauthammer said she should leave the room and let the grownups talk, he dissed the best candidate the GOP had against Obama. Having Santorum as his guy? C’mon, a big government GOPE’er? Please! Santorum didn’t have what it took to win. So who’s left? Mitt, the guy who trashed ALL of them. Mitt wants the presidency as a cap to his career. Is all. Palin has fire and balls, but no, the GOPE doesn’t want her.

Romney needs to take off the gloves. He needs to run ads showing the Liar in Chief claiming that if HIS stimulus bill passed, unemployment would drop to 5.6%. He got his wish and unemployment is still at 8.2% and our national debt has increased by $5,000,000,000,000.
Then run Fast and Furious ads with Brian Terry’s parents asking why there have been no answers to their questions from Holder and why has the Liar in Chief claimed Executive Privilege.
But do something with the gloves off.

    conservativegram in reply to Towson Lawyer. | July 8, 2012 at 9:21 pm

    I agree. Here in Ohio, Romney is getting crushed by Obama’s t.v. ads. I keep seeing ads against Romney and nothing from our side against Obama. (Granted, I don’t watch a lot of t.v.) Though I am pleased to see many people waking up in Ohio, Romney really needs to start getting much tougher. I still think too many people only see those commercials and network news.

      Reminds me of the summer of 1996 when Clinton blitzed the airwaves with commercials slamming Dole. Dole didn’t do a damn thing. By September Dole had been defined by the Clinton campaign and it was all over.
      This makes me suspect Romney’s gonna pick Portman as his running mate hoping Portman coattails in Ohio will add enough votes to their column to carry the state.

    LukeHandCool in reply to Towson Lawyer. | July 8, 2012 at 10:33 pm

    I agree, too.

    Obama was having a horrible June and the Romney team was even doing a good job of helping Obama have a horrible June.

    We here he just got $100 million … but things seem to have gone quiet.

    Turn that $100 million into a take-no-prisoners blitz or give up now so we don’t have to go through a slow and agonizing loss.

    Stop playing prevent defense when you should be on offense.

    My God, Mitt. Act like you’re 5 touchdowns behind and play to win!!

    Off topic–

    Received this in an email … Turn this into a damn TV commercial … do something for crying out loud!

    Tale Of Two Doctors —

    Two patients limp into two different medical clinics with the same complaint.

    Both have trouble walking and appear to require hip surgery.

    The FIRST patient is examined within the hour, is x-rayed the same day and has a time booked for surgery the following week.

    The SECOND sees his family doctor after waiting 3 weeks for an appointment, then waits 8 weeks to see a specialist, then gets an x-ray, which isn’t reviewed for another week and finally has his surgery scheduled for 6 months from then pending the review boards decision on his age and remaining value to society.

    Why the different treatment for the two patients?

    The FIRST is a Golden Retriever taken to a vet.

    The SECOND is a Senior Citizen on Obama care…

    In November, if there is no change in government, we’ll all have to find a good vet.

    imfine in reply to Towson Lawyer. | July 9, 2012 at 11:41 am

    You see, Romney has taken his gloves off, its just that when you spend your life balancing ledgers and avoiding fights, when you do get into a ring finally, the other guy whose been fighting day in and day out is going to kick your butt.

Soccerdad: If that true, I never saw it. Charles Krauthammer was a stooge for Romney throughout the entire primary race. Maybe there is some confusion between Krauthammer and Mark Levin, who favored Santorum – and clearly stated as such.

Regardless, this statement below is entirely correct from William:

“We’re hitched to a horse, and the same people who are complaining are the ones who hitched us.”

At this point Romney’s silence and nonperformance given the material he’s got in Obama should make every conservative ill. He could be out there every day tearing Obamacare apart, making Obama eat every aspect of it from the 100 new bureacracies, to the IRS as enforcers, to the IPAB. And what about Fast and Furious? Why are these unmentionables?

Why can’t the Republican Party ever find a candidate willing or able to call out the numberless idiocies and crimes and totalitarian contrivances of the Left with gusto and conviction? How hard is it, really? The Left’s depredations are driving this country to the edge of civil war and ruin. And we can’t find a candidate who can say anything but “Obama doesn’t work”? Unbelievable.

    OcTEApi in reply to raven. | July 9, 2012 at 5:20 am

    Michigan had a former Governor who turned up the progressive moonbat knobs to 11 and our new Gov. waged a campaign of “relentless positive action” that silenced his critics.

    There is a backbench of highly visible and worthy conservatives to call out “the Left with gusto” and draw the distinctive picture of a competing ideology, a picture of Obamunism that most people are aware of by this time anyway… ie-living the nightmare.

    There is time … and hopefully it won’t result like the last Republican Convention where McRino yelled FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT … that was an unmitigated disaster for luring skittish fence sitters over to our cause.

    Lastly, this “positive campaign” is important in filling down ballot positions, conservative coattails are essential to prevent Romney from backsliding to the dark side come legislative policy and agenda time.

      creeper in reply to OcTEApi. | July 9, 2012 at 2:56 pm

      Given the smear campaign mailing Romney was responsible for in the primaries it may be that those heavy-hitter Reps aren’t as enthusiastic as they might be about coming to his defense. Scorched earth doesn’t work well if you have to live on the charred remains.

    All you need, at the end of the day, when the voter is about to make a mark on that ballot, i for them to think “Obama – just ISN’T working.” And that simple message may be all it takes.

    It’s also not just up to Mitt to win, It is up to US to carry the day – for HIM and for HOUSE AND SENATE CANDIDATES.

    Get out in your precincts. Make calls. Walk neighborhoods, man booths at the County Fair for your Republican Central Committee, become the arms and legs and voices in your communities, the national committee can’t do it, they don’t know your area, but YOU do. If Romney came to your town, could you introduce him to 50 people? Do you know the other Republicans/Conservatives in your area? We gotta try. The left knows how to do this. we have to learn.

Panic? Not yet, but that Democrats everywhere aren’t being shelled constantly and remorselessly by Republicans is inexcusable. To have behaved as the Democrats have over the past three and a half years and not be held accountable for it by the principal representative of your opponent speaks volumes about the opponent. You’ll soon be able to make the case that Romney is to Obama as Obama is to Iran. Alan West, Sarah Palin, Scott Walker, and a dozen others are doing all the heavy listing; they should take the National Republican organization and Romney out to the woodshed before it’s too late.

There’s no reason to panic. I share the feeling, though, of a slump since the Roberts decision.

The holiday week gives time for clearing the mind, and we can start in earnest tomorrow. The latest labor figures really seal it for Romney, and I’ll bet he gains several points by Friday, both in polls and “gotcha” moments like the Solyndra coup.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus on Fox News Sunday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWFTla6wdZI

They’re living in fantasy land, and you what we’re going to put this dream of theirs to an end in November, save America, fire Barack Obama and hire Mitt Romney.

Henry Hawkins | July 8, 2012 at 9:14 pm

“We’re hitched to a horse, and the same people who are complaining are the ones who hitched us.”

On the money.

Like WAJ, I supported Gingrich during the primaries and (I alone) was given to repeatedly posting the prediction: Obama 52%/Romney 48%, in other words, that it would be close until the week of the election, then Obama would inexplicably pull out the victory by 4 pts or so. ‘Inexplicably’ because of Obama’s abyssmal record, of course. But continued sloppiness of message and continued insistence on taking the high road, being the nice guy, refusing the street fight, and this general Romney practice of French milquetoast is exactly how one gets to Obama 52%/Romney 48%, despite Romney’s advantages and Obama’s greatest disadvantage – the fact he now has an actual record.

“Given that, at what point do expressions of concern become defeatism?”

When those expressing concerns conclude that Romney is not going to change his tone or approach, defeatism sets in.

Granted, it’s July, but the prez run is like a heavyweight title bout – 15 hard rounds – and the challenger needs to keep sticking the jab in the champ’s face so the champ never gets set to make his own moves. Romney cannot rest, he must stick and move, stick and move, while setting up the big right or left.

At once, I look at Obama and look at Romney and think, could I have chosen a less applicable sport for these two physical twinkies?

I’ll go with what Mark Levin said many moons ago–after it was clear Romney had the nomination, Probably after Florida-

After a clear missed opportunity/misstep, the Great One said (paraphrase)

‘I want to be clear. Our objective is not to criticize. Our objective is to help the Romney campaign defeat Obama.’

constructive criticism…

The 2010 midterms were a T Party triumph. The 2012 main so far looks to be what we all feared ; a fall short , afraid to engage ,establishment run cliffhanger. The cavalry may never even leave the stables.

    It isn’t all that important who the lead dog is. The beauty of the Tea Party in 2010 is that they not only ushered a lot of Republicans into COngress, but they populated a lot of state houses. The Democratic back bench was decimated for a generation. If the Congress is made up of the right people, Romney will govern the way he should. Considering what he had for a legislature in MA, he was downright conservative.

StrangernFiction | July 8, 2012 at 9:40 pm

Statists have a difficult time making the case for limited government.

Romney will absolutely refuse to take off the gloves against Obama! The ONLY time Romney has EVER taken off the gloves was against Republicans and Conservatives. Romney is one of THEM and he is going to run a campaign much like the last one of THEM to run. And we see where that got the nation.

It has been said before but I’ll say it again. The GOP nominated the guy who couldn’t beat the guy who couldn’t beat Obama. In fact, Romney and McCain largely refused to campaign with the most effective tools in the chest because they wanted to be liked by the Dimocrats and the press. That will get us to four more years of Obama faster than greased lightening!

I fear an all too familiar replay of the pathetically ineffective 2008 GOP campaign again. I WISH I was wrong but I have seen nothing to make me think I am so far…

Yes. What is “incomprehensible” is that these meat heads pushed Romney. We could have had Newt. Imagine.

I’m old enough to remember the daily screaming headlines of Watergate and Iran-Contra. Where ARE they on Fast & Furious. Where ARE they on multiple other Obama issues.

    WarEagle82 in reply to janitor. | July 8, 2012 at 9:55 pm

    Democrats are expected to be corrupt. It isn’t news.

    zazz in reply to janitor. | July 9, 2012 at 1:32 am

    I think the difference is that Fast and Furious looks like a cover up of ineptitude outside the White House, while Watergate and Iran-Contra were illegal ordered from within the White House.

    Also, regardless if how unsavory the Sandinistas were, the idea of an arms deal with the regime that held Americans hostage in Iran was rather disgusting. Daniel Ortega wasn’t even close to being a Hugo Chavez.

    Surely there are bigger fish to fry than this

      Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. F & F is a WH coverup because Obama asserted Executive Privilege. By the time that the Court rules on this, the election will be over.
      Romney should say, “I produce my 1040’s when Holder produces the documents.”
      Keep it simple.

I guess Im just not seeing it.

Its going to be an early night November 6th. Everyone just needs to relax.

Ps. Many of us have been working for years for this time in the campaign. We dreaded this nominee. To have him live down to our expectations is depressing & make the work we’ve done questionable. The GOP does this everytime.

Romney’s team was doing a great job counterpunching until the Supreme Court decision. What’s wrong with taking a breather during the holiday week? Everybody I know did.

The only traction that I see Obama getting is the Swiss bank account. My reaction? OMG Romney made 1800 dollars in a money market account.

    Juba Doobai! in reply to gmurphy222. | July 8, 2012 at 11:35 pm

    Romney’s team is taking a breather on bashing Obama. They’re still bashing Palin.

      klsouth in reply to Juba Doobai!. | July 9, 2012 at 12:15 am

      Yes. Evidence of such is Kevin Madden is back in the wagon!

      Romney’s team is taking a breather on bashing Obama. They’re still bashing Palin.

      I haven’t been paying that much attention to politics — taking a much needed breather — so I was surprised to see this:
      Kooky Facebook Group of Romney Supporters Dreams Up Palin Conspiracy Theory
      It’s a veritable nexus of dumb, and it seems to be composed of Romney supporters who seem to believe Sarah Palin is an evil genius, setting up for a 2016 Presidential run in which she expects to face Hillary Clinton in what these brain-addled doorstops term a “mud-wrestling match.” It would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that they have nearly one-hundred members.
      {snip}
      Editor’s Note: While it is clear that these people claim to be Romney supporters, it is certain they aren’t doing this with the blessing or endorsement of the Romney Campaign. Then again, he couldn’t tell the SuperPacs what to do when they were bashing Newt Gingrich, either. (Wink Wink) They could also be Obama-shills, attempting to stir up trouble between the Palinistas and Romney-bots, but at least on the surface, these appear to be genuinely nutty Romney supporters. Go figure.

      http://sarahpalininformation.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/kooky-facebook-group-of-romney-supporters-dreams-up-palin-conspiracy-theory/

If they forget their spines and ignore perfectly legitimate information AGAIN, it will be McCain 2.0.

Let’s see if the establishment has learned.

Operation Counterweight. All in.

It does feel as though the ObamaTax decision took the wind out of Romney’s sails.

Here’s an up-the-flagpole, saluting-optional thought: maybe Axelrod’s new tactic, dutifully implemented by the MSM, is to have the media minimize coverage of the Romney campaign.

Afaic there is a lot the Romney campaign might should be doing better. I’m just wondering if the appearance of listlessness is entirely of their own making.

This is what happens when you choose a Massachusetts left-of-center squish.

People – SNAP OUT OF IT. Spend your emotional dollars wisely until Nov. 6th, 2012. Keep in mind that: Las Vegas Oddsmaker Predicts Obama Will Have a Landslide Loss.

Some of us seem to relish panic, Prof.

I kind of enjoy optimism. There are lots of voices on the right, and they are being effective.

BannedbytheGuardian | July 8, 2012 at 11:09 pm

Cheer up . George W Bush is in Zambia building a cervical screening clinic. Yet at home in Texas there is a perfectly safe innoculation available to young girls & boys that has been demonized. Something to do with Freedom .

Meanwhile you have only one chance to start the climb out of the Bush/Obama debacle. If you do not take it then you are finished.

It is just the first rung of the ladder . It is not a ladder to opportunity -it is a ladder out of the pit to survival.

It is Mitt Romney or death . Who /What did you expect to come save you ? The Messiah?

The comments I am reading across the ‘conservative’ blogs are pathetic. Get a grip.

Mr Compassionate over there in Zambia burnt too many bridges & Obama & hillary are bombing the rest.

I know you dont believe anything I say but I am not saying anything different to Niall Ferguson & Mark Steyn.

Please vote for Mitt Romney.

I will also take an American Military Coup.

    theduchessofkitty in reply to BannedbytheGuardian. | July 9, 2012 at 2:43 am

    You have a point here.

    I’m not panicking – yet. The fact is that this is the Summer, and a lot of people are paying attention to vacation plans, BBQs, beaches, pools, etc. than this. We are just past the Fourth of July, for cryin’ out loud! People are thinking of hot dogs! Hamburgers! Swimsuits! The People don’t want to look at another image of another national politician until at least September.

    So, that alone benefits The One. If anyone should not be worried because the People in general are NOT paying attention right now is The “Lord and Savior” himself.

    Yet… I found this headline at Drudge, “SWING STATES BATTLE ZONE: OBAMA 47% ROMNEY 45%”

    Again: a gap of only 2 points, more or less. In the Swing States, of all places. What does this tell you?

    This tells me that plenty among the People of the Swing States, who are supposed to be paying NO ATTENTION whatsoever to what’s going on in spite of all the parties going on, actually are. And yet The One is up by about two percentage points.

    Two. Percentage. Points. As of early July 2012.

    W’s numbers were much higher than that in 2004, Good Ole’ Bill Clinton’s were the same way in 1996. And yet The One, “The Lord and Savior, the Fundamental Transformer of the Country” is only up by two.

    And that’s only July.

    Kudlow already is saying The One’s goose is cooked. And this is in July. Just wait until September – when people really, Really, REALLY start to pay attention…

    I bet you more people know others who have lost their jobs and are in some sort of unemployment turmoil right now than The One thinks there are. With the jobs numbers dismal as they are, and his narcissism as it is, he’s going to eventually ask the People (who have seen the disaster unveiling before them), “Who are YOU going to believe – ME or your lyin’ eyes?”

    Those people are the ones The One fears the most. He doesn’t want them to vote – he wants them to stay home and receive their unemployment checks, to keep them in line. “Hush. Keep it down now. Voices carry.”

    I personally don’t think Romney has unveiled everything yet. If he does something fundamentally stupid before the convention, then worry, and plan for a total throwing of him off the podium at Tampa.

    So, I’m not going to be panicked. Yet.

I came to the Romney side sometime during Rick Santorum’s initial surge. The thing that conservatives don’t like about Romney is what will win him the election. He’s perfectly willing to play dirty, but he’s not going to do it four months out. He’s going to let the Obama campaign punch and spend themselves out and he’ll money bomb them with negative ads about a week after the convention is over.

The way it looks now, there will be plenty of fresh bad news for ammunition.

    Juba Doobai! in reply to 1539days. | July 8, 2012 at 11:39 pm

    Really now? Romney’s been playing dirty on Palin unceasingly since 2008. Non stop. He’s a squish who keeps his fire for those in the GOP. After all, he’s the man who said his only connection with the GOP was the R after his name.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to 1539days. | July 8, 2012 at 11:46 pm

    The problem with any prospective late-round rope-a-dope tactic is surviving until the late rounds. Romney’s standard primary tactic was the nuclear preemptive strike, not rope-a-dope or hang even till the late rounds.

    Wait till the October Surprise. “He who counts the votes…” and all that. Watch when the unemployment rate somehow magically drops from 8.2& to 7.9% to 7.7%, a ‘recovery’ is announced, and only the right, already voting against Obama, understands that the government just put the fix in on the numbers. We KNOW the Obama team is capable and willing to do anything to win. They’ll suffer a lot of political fallout… after the election. If not falsified unemployment numbers, make up any of a dozen other possibilities, including two or three women making false claims of Romney’s infidelity. Doesn’t matter if it’s bullshit – the media will run with it and the election will be over before the allegations prove false. These bastards will do it in a heartbeat. Romney team = Horse-mounted British gentleman lords of 1776. Obama team = Viet Cong + Al Qaeda.

    Romney needs to bang hard and keep banging all the way through to November. Want to set campaign fundraising records, Mitt? Start throwing punches, hard and fast. Romney will not win a close contest. He’ll win by 5 or more, or lose by 4 or less. These fascist bastards are not your Daddy’s Democrats.

      That’s sounds like the Kerry strategy of 2004. The Democrats pounded Bush on the economy in late 2003 and early 2004, with only Howard Scream talking about Iraq. By the summer of 2004, the economy was roaring again and Kerry tried to pivot to Iraq.

      If the unemployment rate suddenly drops, which is unlikely because they already put the fix in the numbers, Romney will looks like a one-trick pony for harping on a dead issue. He also can’t defend against every stupid charge, because the Obama campaign is a big lie machine. It will be a full time job.

      Romney is already running ahead of Obama in a number of states, better than McCain in 2008. McCain, as bad as his campaign was, polled ahead of Obama as late as the convention in September. The kind of people who are still “undecided” remain so for quite a while. What Romney needs is Republican turnout and to be the last messenger in voters’ heads on election day.

        Henry Hawkins in reply to 1539days. | July 9, 2012 at 11:33 am

        “If the unemployment rate suddenly drops, which is unlikely because they already put the fix in the numbers..”

        Show me the Obama rule book where he promises to only fix numbers once. All the Obama team has to do is order the appropriate office to report the number they want reported. Anyone who objects or whistleblows is easily fended off till after the election. Playing with the unemployment numbers is just an example of the sort of lying this administration is fully capable of doing, indeed, is doing it as we speak.

        Comparisons to Bush, Kerry, Dean, et al, don’t much apply – those guys are Cub Scouts compared to these Chi-town thugs.

        Unlike any previous administration, one cannot predict the depths of lying and illegality this administration is willing to lower itself to in order to win. For that reason, Romney needs to build as big a lead as possible because any small lead can irretrievably disappear too late in the race to overcome it by a planned Obama trick. Given that Obama’s biggest liability is the economy/jobs, that is where I’d expect the pre-election Big Lie. If not there, it will come against Romney directly, along the lines of some ‘leaked’ false story denigrating Romney’s character, whether along lines of marital infidelity, business/tax cheating, screws his dog in the basement on Sundays, something/anything like that.

        Whether falsified economic news or falsified Romney character scandal, the media will run with it even knowing it’s false, because they know that by the time it is debunked, the election will be over.

chilipalmer | July 8, 2012 at 11:32 pm

Romney is the worst of McCain and Dole. He only wants to run, not to win. Now he’s put his wife in front. She interrupted her husband during a recent 60 minutes piece. Dr. Savage noted this, how it weakens Romney, which of course it does. Romney loves his wife, he wants her in front. I absolutely do not buy that Romney’s ‘saving his heavy fire’ til closer to election day. This is the standard establishment reply to everything, ie, don’t worry, we may look weak now, but we’re really going to give it to them down the road,’ and they never, repeat never, do. Romney has made it clear he won’t “light his hair on fire” to please the base. The estab. guys who gave us Romney agree completely with that view. They don’t care if they win the White House anyway. They like Obama and they love ObamaCare.

    David Yotham in reply to chilipalmer. | July 9, 2012 at 4:40 am

    Yes, it sounds like another Juan McCain moment is approaching the GOP. I remember Palin’s zeal and how McCain was busy trashing his own running mate – is this going to be Mitts methodology for winning the election as well?

Please not Rob Portman. PLEASE. With Ohio up for a Senate contest already – and no reliable (R) to run for a vacated Portman seat – it nearly guarantees a loss in the Senate.

That, and a milquetoast Bush “compassionate conservative” who can’t articulate a libertarian-conservative position to save his skinny life?

Ryan, Jindal, Toomey, Santorum, SARAH, if she’d run. But PLEASE – not Portman. Please.

Most voters will be introduced to Romney at the convention.
If we stop and think, McCain looked pretty good (thanks in large part to Palin) after the convention .. then the economy dived. This time, if the economy dives, it will be Obama’s problem.
I see no need to worry till after the convention.

    gs in reply to Neo. | July 9, 2012 at 12:15 am

    No Republican has won the Presidency without carrying Ohio.

    That’s a hard argument to ignore, if Ohio is at risk and if Portman can deliver the state.

    Is it and can he?

      gs in reply to gs. | July 9, 2012 at 12:17 am

      Probably my mistake, but I woulda sworn I clicked ‘Reply’ on Ran’s 11:33 comment.

Here is William’s Money quote:

“We’re hitched to a horse, and the same people who are complaining are the ones who hitched us.”

The battle has always been the GOP elite versus the Tea Party conservatives. The Inside the Beltway boys won out. Get rid of the Establishment and you’ll get rid of future Romney/McCain/Dole nominee’s.

I’ll crawl through glass to get Obama out. But, its painfully obvious Romney is not to be trusted, even if he were to pull out a win.

Here’s another take on the same theme – http://www.trevorloudon.com/2012/07/rupert-murdoch-should-get-tough-on-obama/

Rupert Murdoch is upset with the Mitt Romney campaign and its failure to go after Barack Obama. Murdoch says he wants to “save us from socialism” but that Romney, who told Bill O’Reilly that he doesn’t want to call Obama a socialist, isn’t prepared for the task ahead. Murdoch refers to the tough “Chicago pros” around Obama. They “will be hard to beat unless he [Romney] drops old friends from team and hires some real pros.”

Murdoch should take a look at his own network. While O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have examined some of the controversy over Obama’s socialist agenda, there is a bigger story to tell—one that could win the channel a major journalism prize. It is the Obama connection to Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis….

These two researchers, Kengor and Gilbert, could explain, better than anyone, the mystery in the Oval Office. All that it would take is an order from Murdoch to Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, to get to the bottom of the controversy over Obama’s Marxist roots. Four years after Obama was elected president, isn’t it about time for what the late Andrew Breitbart called “the Vetting?”

Directing his comments to Rupert Murdoch personally, Gilbert says, “Why doesn’t Murdoch do his job—rather than worrying about Romney’s campaign?”

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to Rose. | July 9, 2012 at 5:32 am

    It is not Rupert’s job . He is CEO of a publishing / Entertainment network.

    He already has 60 million Britons blaming him for their failures.

    Rupert does like to give advice but he does not expect people to jump.

    Currently he is after Scientology.

    Besides he is only an American of convenience.

We’re panicking because we have incompetents running Romney’s campaign. Worse, it might be turning out to be that Romney is the true incompetent.

Maybe Shirley Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church crazy) is right: America is damned.

We can’t stand by idly and watch the disaster of Romney’s campaign. We must exert as much pressure possible to force him to fire his incompetent campaign manager.

Good grief. Romney was not our first choice, but people have not been paying close enough attention to the Tea Party. Good I guess, because we are going to knock the Marxist out of his boots in November. Out.Of.His.Boots.

Holy cow. It’s July! Most people aren’t paying attention. They are on vacation. The campaign hasn’t really begun in earnest. If Romney stays close, it will be a blowout in November. Republicans aren’t voting for Obama. Democrats aren’t voting for Romney. The ones who are remaining are not sold on Obama. They are softly supporting the President. I look at the polls and Obama is spending like crazy and only 2 points ahead in the swing states. That’s really fungible support.

Still plenty of time to win this thing. The spending onslaught by Romney will probably begin in early September and then by mid October we should see this race crystallize. People forget that Jimmy Carter was beating Reagan all the way through their debate in late October 1980. Reagan was being criticized for running a lousy campaign. Romney is in a much better position right now and also closer to Obama in the polls than Reagan was to Carter.

We just need Boehner and McConnell to shut up. This has the potential of being a wave election. Voter discontent is very high.

It’s summer. The only ones paying attention are political junkies like us who always pay attention, but we won’t be the ones to decide the election. Those people won’t start paying attention until after Labor Day, and at least half of them will make up their minds in the last 30 days before the election.

Notice that in nearly every poll this year, even among “adults” or registered voters, Obama’s support comes in under 50%. That is not a good sign for an incumbent, it is rare for the undecided to swing back to the known quantity late in a race.

Only Bush in 2004 won the late deciders as an incumbent.

We have to quit the circular firing squad. If Romney’s bad, vote him out in 4 years, but you absolutely must get Obama out of office if you want to HAVE an election in 4 years.

You want incentive? Think Supreme Court Justice Eric Holder.

Now get out there and work every day to get Romney elected. Keep the House, Take the Senate. Volunteer, Donate. Make calls, walk precincts. Everything in your power. If he doesn’t fight, you do it for him. If he won’t say it, you say it for him.

Bitch if you want. But save your anger at each other, and over whether or not a guy is conservative enough for your taste. We’ll rent a big rink, and fill it up with mud and oil, and you can have a giant mud-wrestling pillow fight to the death AFTER NOVEMBER! Dammit.

AFTER NOVEMBER. AFTER A ROMNEY WIN.

    Well said, Rose.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to Rose. | July 9, 2012 at 11:41 am

    The exact same things were said to us once before. In 2008. John McCain?

    The chief issue drawing complaints is not that Romney isn’t conservative enough, it’s that he’s currently taking the exact same milquetoast, high road, be a nice guy approach as did McCain, against the same opponent, and it is reasonable to expect the same result.

    Voicing these legitimate concerns will not harm Romney and may help.

    To tell conservatives, in essence, to sit down, shut up, and go along is probably not going to be well received since we sat down, shut up, and went along in 2008.

jimzinsocal | July 9, 2012 at 7:33 am

I sure agree with raven and others. Also maybe part of what we feel is media generated where Obama has a huge advantage. But thats a given.
Lets hope Romney gets to it in some strong ways this week and can regain some momentum.
Now see? stuff like this bugs me. Romney wont get a headline like this but Obama adopts the notion…a republican notion and tries to run off with the talking point.

Obama to launch push for middle-class tax cuts in address

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/09/obama-to-launch-push-for-middle-class-tax-cuts-in-address/#ixzz207h4JlXq

Obama’s surrogates are just nasty fellows and very desperate. That Swiss Bank account theme is just plain cynical. These guys were not unhappy with John Kerry or Herb Kohl or Jon Corzine but Mitt is somehow a bad person for doing what others have done. They can’t highlight Obama’s record (even when they do, they fail miserably) so they try to get personal.

This is why the campaign needs to get McConnell and Boehner on board saying the right things. For this exact moment.

“Panic” must be today’s meme. This gets top billing at TAS: Romney’s Doldrums

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/07/09/romneys-doldrums

pyromancer76 | July 9, 2012 at 9:57 am

It is time to stop whining about Romney. He is our candidate — “our” means Republicans, Conservatives, horrified and homeless Democrats, most Libertarians, most Independents — if we wish to slow down (too early to stop) the leftist (and I believe Islamist) attempt to fundamentally change the U.S. government, Obama must go, first in November, then in January. Imagine all the dirty authoritarian deeds he can do even in the last 2-1/2 months.

If “conservatives” wanted an alternative, “they” would have had to field a much stronger slate of candidates than ran in the primaries. The group was pathetic in my view and the “flavor-of-the-month” swings of voter support made “conservatives” look kind of silly. Romney was the only candidate who took running for the presidency seriously and planned for many years.

We need serious candidates who have planned and who have proven their governance-mettle on the state level. It simply was too early. More conservative governors are in training now. (And I actually am grateful to the crew who had the courage to run in the primaries in the face of a leftist media attempt to destroy them.)

Laately, I have noticed the absence of “coverage” of “Romney” on the many blogs I read and have wondered. After much enthusiasm, a kind of silence has settled in, and Obama’s name has become much too prominent, even with negativity. I think “we” must pull together, stop in-fighting, suck-it-up, stand tall, and every other way we can think of to support this first step of ridding our country of government-bureaucratic control. We must find everything good about Romney and publish that; we must support all those candidates for House and Senate who will discipline him when he becomes President.

Unfortunately, George Bush the Younger left us a huge hole of larger, meddling government, foreign adventurism, and energy dependence to dig our way out of. The current President is not just feckless, he is America’s enemy and has been proud of that fact his entire life.

A political campaign is like a piece of music. You don’t start the music with all of the orchestra; you build up to a crescendo. If you made any points in Ohio, those people would not even remember them in 4 months. Remember, they are Americans and have a memory capacity of days, not weeks.

Romney’s strongest point is that he is not Obama. The people who voted for Obama in 08 were fools, those that vote for him in 12 will be stupid fools. How do you make points with that bunch?

The point that Romney needs to play is that Obama is unstable. That is why no one is investing. It is the reason I am out of the market. It I put money into an industry I would be worried that Obama might wake up the next day and either take over the business or outlaw it. The main thing that Reagan did to improve the economy was to show he was a man of character and sense. That alone made people more confident and things began to happen.

The democrat media wanted Romney as the GOP candidate, and they got him. He’s behaving exactly how they expected him to.

We can’t accept this — unless everyone wants 4 more years of a lunatic calling himself ‘Barack Obama.’ We’d be better off going down fighting than going down in a whimper like we did with McCain.

[…] Still, according to polls, Obama is slightly ahead in all battleground states, hence the panic in some quarters.  From the latter link: Barack Obama believes that politics is a knife fight, and […]