Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The GOP Wants To Lose in 2012

Obama is hard not to like as an American centrist. He prefers not to rock the boat with Congress. He's backed off his pledge to stop harassing state sanctioned marijuana, quietly of course. He has continued the Bush era wars, and expanded drone attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere. He has even continued the Bush era tax cuts for the rich.

And who are the Republicans most like to put up against him? Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney - of RomneyCare, Taxachussetts, and Latter-day Saints fame - is the All-Star in the lead for the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination. At least John McCain could claim to be a war hero.

Right now only 35.4% of Americans claim to be Republicans: folks who can be expected to vote straight ticket for the GOP - if they turn out to the polls. Democrats only claim 32.7% possible straight ticket voters - but the real prize is 32% of American voters who are unaffiliated.

How is Romney going to capture those unaffiliated voters if his platform is much the same as Obama's? (FYI, the Boston Herald claims they are both against gay marriage... who knew?)

The incumbent is going to always be in trouble in a rough economy - but Mitt Romney isn't speaking the language of the middle class in that unaffiliated group. His tax policy is interesting reading, until you realize that he is all for cutting taxes on capital gains and dividend income - not salary and wages. Plus, no one gives a damn about simplifying the tax code, especially since 2/3rd of Americans take the standard deduction every year and 40% file the 1040 EZ income tax return. (Never mind that TurboTax and the like make difficult tax filings easy.) While his energy jobs policy is superior to Obama's - all those great ideas like mining shale for energy depend on a high oil price, one that will hurt more people before it helps a few. Unless the economy turns into a "through the bums out" scenario, I don't think Romney can beat Obama.

If not Romney, there is Gingrich - who brags about balancing the budget but not raising taxes to do it, Rick Santorum - who doesn't even have the organization to get signatures in Virginia, and of course Ron Paul - who is surging with great ideas but is managing to unite the entire GOP establishment against him.

There is no Jeb Bush in this discussion, no Robert Gates, no Colin Powell, no Republicans or conservatives with the base uniting platform and star power to take on President Barack Obama. If there is any kind of upswing in the economy this fall, Obama's victory is assured.

Given Obama's policies and how they match up with mainstream Republicans, I think they are ok with that.