Paul Ryan’s Tour De Force

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Jay Reding

Paul Ryan gets it. Last night’s convention speech was a tour de force, clearly and forcefully arguing not only why the Obama Administration has failed, but what the Republican Party stands for in opposition to the last four years. There were many notable lines—but the most powerful part of the speech was this:

Paul Ryan speaks at the 2012 Republican National Convention

President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this too, if you’re feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you.

That is one of the most damning indictments of the Obama Administration possible. Because it cuts to the quick of why Obama has failed. He came into office promising to be a different kind of politician—someone who would transcend the petty divisions of everyday politics and get America back on track. As our future Vice President eloquently stated, his lack of leadership has failed us.

Lying Liars and the Lying Lies They Lie About

And the real sign of how successful Ryan’s speech has been the cacophony of idiocy that has been unleashed by the left. The official meme is that Paul Ryan’s speech was filled with “lies”—the definition of “lie” being “things that Democrats disagree with or make Democrats look bad.

Take the most commonly-cited example of one of Ryan’s so-called “lies:”

President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.

Immediately after the speech, Chris Matthews entered into a foaming-at-the-mouth rage proclaiming that this section of the speech was a “lie.” The left went into their usual paroxysms of rage over the supposed “lie,” claiming that the Janesville plant was shut down in mid-2008 rather than the Obama years.

But, as typical, the self-appointed “fact checkers” got it utterly wrong—the Janesville plant closed its doors for good in May 2009, even though as Ryan said, the plant had been slated to close since 2008.

This is another example of the tactics of the left—they seize upon irrelevant minutiae and try to explode it into an issue, amplifying their silliness through the left-wing echo chamber of liberal blogs, MSNBC, and the Obama Administration itself. The problem for them is that those tactics are becoming less and less effective as more and more Americans are becoming wise to them.

Why Ryan Rose Above

But enough about the left. What matters is whether Ryan connected with the average voter and demonstrated that he could take the job of Vice President. On that account, he hit a home run. Ryan was initially a little nervous—understandable for such a momentous speech in his political career. But as he went on, he hit his stride and spoke with both fluency and authority. Ryan needed to do well last night, and he did. He connected with the audience, both on the convention floor and on television.

One of the jobs of a VP nominee in a campaign is to be the attack dog, and Ryan delivered a blistering speech about Obama. But the way he did it was crucial to his success. This wasn’t a speech about blasting Obama with both barrels, this was a speech that struck a tone of disappointment. Americans don’t like Obama’s record, but they still look at him far more kindly than he deserves. What Ryan did was acknowledge that, but speak directly to the sense of palpable disappointment that many voters feel. As he put it:

It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that’s left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.

President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, “I haven’t communicated enough.” He said his job is to “tell a story to the American people” – as if that’s the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?

Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What’s missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago – isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility?

Again, damning stuff, but not a full-barreled attack. Ryan didn’t need to call the President names. He didn’t need to insult his honor, he didn’t need to accuse him of wanting to harm seniors or call him a “sociopath” or go down the low road so well-trodden by the left. Ryan simply told it like it is. He hit Obama right where it hurts, and right where Obama is weakest. This is the message that the GOP needs to take to all those voters not already in Obama’s camp. This is the message that says “we get why you chose Obama in 2008, but things are different now.”

Now, Romney needs to close the deal. And I have a feeling that if he matches the rhetorical prowess that Paul Ryan displayed last night, he’ll be doing very well this fall.

A Word on Condi

But one quick post-script. I’ve been a fan of Dr. Condoleezza Rice for some time. I think she was a highly-effective Secretary of State in a tough time. But last night Dr. Rice demonstrated that she is one of the brightest stars in the GOP firmament. Her speech was powerful, direct, eloquent, and emotional at times. She displayed a passion for education reform, a deep understanding of foreign policy, and a real sense of what it is to be a conservative.

I suspect she’s far too smart to ever really consider running for President. But that’s a great loss to this country, because she would be a wonderful President.

Oh, and that supposed “war on women” that the GOP has been fighting. Judging from Dr. Rice, Ann Romney, Nikki Haley, Susannah Martinez, and the rest, that talking point is not only stale and odious. And who will the Democrats feature? Sandra Fluke, a woman whose claim to fame is a demand that government give her free birth control. Compare her to Dr. Rice, a woman who went from the Jim Crow-era South to being a concert pianist, an expert on Russian affairs, Secretary of State, and now teaches at Stanford—the contrast in what party values women as individuals of accomplishment and which party just panders to women could not be more clear.

The State Of The Race – Pre-GOP Convention Edition

When Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, things were not looking up for the Romney campaign. Several polls (with highly skewed sample) showing Romney down big against Obama. The swing-state polls were not looking good for Team Romney either. And there were worries that Romney was not hitting back hard enough against a barrage of negative attacks from the Obama Campaign.

Now, just before next week’s Republican National Convention, Team Romney has reason to be happy. The polls are showing a major tightening in the race, and several polls are showing a narrow Romney lead. The Ryan pick has energized the Republican base. And Team Obama is looking increasingly desperate, and are about to make a major mistake that could cost them the election.

But first, let’s take a closer look at the polls. Fox News shows Romney with a narrow lead, while CNN shows an Obama lead of 2% – well within the poll’s 3.5% margin of error. Meanwhile, both the Rassmussen and the Gallup daily tracking polls show Romney and the President neck-and-neck. The national polls show an incredibly tight race.

The stage for the 2012 Republican National Convention

The swing-state polls are more troublesome for Romney. Ohio is a virtual must-win state for Romney, but he’s lagging in the polls there. While the new bipartisan pollster Purple Strategies shows Romney with a narrow lead in the Buckeye State, a more recent poll from CNN/NYT/Quinnipiac shows Obama with a formidable 6-point lead in Ohio. Under all but a few highly unlikely scenarios, the path to the Presidency runs through Ohio, and Romney is going to have to improve his numbers there if he wants to win the White House. Look for Ohio to be the biggest of the battleground states once more in 2012 as it was in 2008 and 2004.

What makes the 2012 race especially interesting is that the number of swing states is increasing. At the beginning of this race, Wisconsin was not considered a serious swing state. In 2008, Barack Obama swept the Badger State in a 14-point blowout. But now, Wisconsin is very much in play. Democratic pollster PPP shows Romney with a narrow lead, a finding that’s supported by GOP-leaning pollster Rassmussen. Even the CNN/NYT/Quinnipiac poll shows only a slim 2-point lead for Obama in Wisconsin. Wisconsin appears to be shifting from a reliably Democratic state to a true swing state – Kerry only narrowly won Wisconsin in 2004, and Obama’s huge win there appears to have only been an interruption of the pro-GOP trend there. With Paul Ryan hailing from the Milwaukee suburbs, it’s possible that Romney could win Wisconsin, which would help pad out his Electoral College position in a tight race.

Romney’s Missouri Problem

But Romney has a big problem in Missouri, and its name is Todd Akin. Akin’s moronic comments about women being able to “shut down” a pregnancy caused by a “legitimate rape” was absolutely inexcusable, and led to massive condemnation by nearly every member of the GOP. Akin, whose campaign is being run by his family (a major mistake for any political candidate), insists that he can still win. The chances of that are slim to zero. And what’s worse is that Akin’s idiocy could impact Romney’s chances in Missouri as well as keeping the Senate in Democratic hands. Losing Missouri would significantly impair Romney’s chances of winning in this highly-competitive race.

This is the second election cycle in a row where the Tea Party has blown a Senate race. In 2010 Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle took winnable races for the GOP and blew them to hell. While there is plenty about the Tea Party that I like, they have not gotten it through their collective heads that picking a hardcore conservative who says incredibly stupid things on national TV is A Very Bad Idea Indeed™. It’s not about picking the most conservative candidate. It’s about picking the most conservative candidate that can win. If Harry Reid remains Majority Leader, it will be in large part due to the Tea Party, a fact that has to be taken into account when assessing the pros and cons of the Tea Party movement.

Obama’s Impending Blunder

But, there is a silver lining to the dark cloud that is Todd Akin. And that’s that President Obama is about to completely overplay his hand on social issues. The Democratic National Convention is looking increasingly like it will be a celebration of abortion. Sandra Fluke, the abortion-rights activist will be a headline speaker along with representatives of Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion extremist movement. While Todd Akin represents one extreme of the abortion question, the Democrats are going to embrace the other extreme. This is a mistake for two reasons:

First, the American people care about jobs and the economy, not abortion and contraception. People are wondering whether they’ll have a paycheck next year and are trying to make the paychecks they do have stretch to pay for higher gas and food costs. The more the Democrats talk about divisive social issues, the more they carry themselves away from the mainstream of American politics today.

Secondly, for the voters that do care about social issues, they tend to be more socially conservative voters. Evangelicals may not be crazy about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, but when contrasted with the Democrats celebrating the idea of taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, that’s only going to get the more enthused about voting against the Democrats.

Obama and the Politics of Division

But all of this plays into Obama’s strategy for 2012. Obama knows he can’t run on his record. Even Democratic strategists like James Carville realized early on that running on an “economic recovery” theme was not working with voters. So what can Obama do? He can try to make Romney toxic. He can’t run on himself, so he has to bring Romney down.

And that’s why you’ve seen a barrage of attacks against Romney on Bain, on Medicare, on his tax returns, etc. It’s a scorched-earth campaign designed to keep Romney’s poll numbers down far enough for Obama to maintain a narrow win. And while it’s been partially successful, it’s beginning to backfire on the President.

Obama’s appeal with independent voters was that he was a post-partisan, post-racial President. He’s no longer even trying to make that case anymore. Instead, he’s playing it like a typical Chicago politician. That does not make him very attractive in the eyes of voters, and that’s why he’s locked in such a tight race with Romney—while voters are not sure about Romney, they are equally if not more skeptical about President Hope-and-Change becoming just another political hack.

What to Watch for at the Republican National Convention

With that background on the state of the race, the question is what the RNC must do. And first and foremost, it’s got to introduce Mitt Romney to the American people. It seems odd to suggest that someone that’s run for President twice now is not well-known to the American public, but Romney has been largely unwilling to tell his own personal story. That needs to change at the RNC. Romney needs to embrace his personal narrative and give the American electorate a look at why they should vote for him over Obama.

And that’s why the Romney campaign needs to reject the media narrative on this race. The media says that Romney dare not run on his record at Bain—that’s a load of crap. Romney should not run from what he did, but should highlight the businesses that Bain saved from Sports Authority to Staples. The media says that Romney can’t run on his record at the Olympics—again, the media is acting as a wing of the Obama campaign. Romney can and should run on his record.

The American people don’t know Mitt Romney well yet, especially in contrast to a President who wrote two autobiographies before he even accomplished anything. (Even if those autobiographies were carefully-manipulated fictions.) Romney doesn’t need to spend that much time attacking Obama—Obama’s dismal economic record speaks for itself. What Romney must do is introduce himself to the American people and paint his vision of an American Comeback.

If he can do that successfully, watch the polls. Right now Romney’s numbers are moving the right way. If he does what he needs to do at the RNC, the poll numbers are going to start to diverge into Romney’s favor. The fundamentals on the ground favor Romney, and now that the election season is beginning in earnest, the Romney campaign has the opportunity to seize on those natural advantages and build them into a political wave. Romney definitely can win, and he’s in a position to do so as he heads into the week of the Republican National Convention.

Romney Picks Paul Ryan As VP

It’s official – Mitt Romney has announced Wisconsin Congressman and budgetary guru Paul Ryan as his running mate, announcing the pick via push notification through a specialized app. I’ll be liveblogging the official announcement as it unfolds.

9:08 am The more childish the MSNBC set gets, the more you know that your arguments are right.

9:07 am Looking at the instant reactions from the left on Twitter, it shows that picking Ryan was the right choice.

9:00 am Based on the MSNBC reaction, it looks like the left is worried.

8:59 am The Obama campaign wants this to be a values election – but the Romney campaign wants that too.

8:57 am Now the talking head at MSNBC is saying that Ryan undercuts Romney’s message on the economy. Again, really?

8:56 am Watching MSNBC is like looking through the window into the alternate universe from Fringe…

8:55 am Yup, MSNBC is talking about foreign policy. Talk about grasping at straws here.

8:54 am And Rachel Maddow is attacking Paul Ryan for not having served in the military. Really?

8:53 am Switching to MSNBC to see how the far left is reacting.

8:53 am In four years it’s gone from hope and change to fear and defending the broken status quo.

8:52 am Obama has to go on the attack to win – but doing that destroys his 2008 mystique.

8:51 am Obama won in 2008 because he said he would be better than a typical politician. Now he’s just another political hack.

8:51 am Romney and Ryan are offering substantive critiques of this administration. Obama is making wild accusations.

8:50 am It shows just how childish they are in this campaign.

8:49 am I love how the left is making fun of Romney for introducing Paul Ryan as President instead of VP.

8:47 am The electoral math would have favored Portman or Rubio. But Romney made the right choice with Ryan.

8:47 am Ryan’s speech shows why he’s a rising star with the GOP.

8:45 am What the GOP needs badly is new blood and someone who can bring conservative principles to the undecided. Ryan does both.

8:44 am Ryan is hitting all the points he needs to hit. Smart and substantive.

8:43 am Our rights come from nature and God, not government. – Exactly right, and why America is exceptional.

8:42 am Ryan draws an optimistic contrast to the record of the last four years. That is what Romney must do to win.

8:40 am It is clear that Romney is not going to run away from his Bain record. And he shouldn’t. He saved thousands of jobs.

8:40 am So far Ryan is very impressive. But the real test will be when he goes one-to-one against Biden.

8:38 am Ryan is going against the new normal – this is a powerful line against the way the last four years have unfolded.

8:37 am But Ryan’s critique of Obama is smart and substantive. That’s what voters need to hear in this race.

8:37 am Whatever the excuses, this is a record of failure. Ryan’s playing the traditional attack-dog role.

8:36 am Debt, doubt, and despair – how Ryan characterizes Obama’s first term in office. Quite accurate.

8:35 am The CW was that Romney would not pick someone who could outshine him. The CW was wrong.

8:34 am And already the Obama campaign is taking their potshots at Paul Ryan: http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/08/obama-camp-takes-first-shot-at-ryan-131750.html

8:33 am One thing for sure: Paul Ryan will not be thrown off his game in interviews like Sarah Palin was.

8:33 am Will this put Wisconsin in play? I would be skeptical, but Ryan represents a swing district.

8:31 am Ryan is a great public speaker. He has a natural sense of cadence, a key skill for a politician.

8:30 am Romney had announced that Ryan would be President rather than Vice President. I’d be OK with that… in 2020.

8:30 am “Every now and then I’m known to make a mistake” – nice moment for Romney.

8:28 am A note on optics: having a candidate descend stairs to get to the lectern is inviting disaster…

8:28 am Ryan is now taking the lectern. Air Force One is playing in the background again. Still love that music…

8:27 am Lots of talk about the middle class in Romney’s speech – contrasting against Obama’s narrative that Romney doesn’t care about the middle class.

8:26 am Getting America back to work is going to be a frequent theme for the Romney/Ryan campaign in this cycle.

8:23 am “He doesn’t demonize his opponents.” – In contrast to our current President, who does.

8:23 am Romney is talking about Ryan’s personal narrative – which is something Romney needs to do more for himself.

8:22 am Mitt Romney resembles the Platonic form of an American politician. Which in some ways works against him.

8:20 am The music announcing Romney is the theme to Air Force One. Absolutely inspired choice.

8:20 am McDonnell’s speech is very spirited, but going on a bit too long. He is announcing Romney now.

8:19 am So, how long before @BarackObama and his campaign accuses Paul Ryan of giving someone cancer? I say no more than a week.

8:12 am Even though the Ryan pick is based on the economy, holding the event there reminds voters of American strength.

8:11 am The optics of holding the announcement on the USS Wisconsin are very interesting.

8:10 am Bob McDonnell is introducing the candidates. McDonnell is the governor of Virginia and a rising GOP star.

8:03 am It is interesting that Romney didn’t go with Rob Portman, who would have helped Romney in the key swing state of Ohio.

8:01 am It will be very interesting to see the polls on how @PaulRyanVP effects the race. Ryan is not well known now.

7:58 am It is interesting that the Ryan pick was more about reinforcing Romney on the economy than filling in foreign policy chops.

7:53 am Fox News is replaying Rep. Ryan at the ObamaCare meetings. It shows how good he can be challenging the President.

7:51 am George Allen is speaking at the event – he’s locked in a close race for the Senate in Virginia.

7:49 am As a policy nerd, picking @PaulRyanVP seems like a very smart move.

7:48 am Obama’s most effective attack lines were that Romney had no plan, and that he was just repeating Bush. That attack is much harder to make with Ryan as #VP.

7:44 am The pick of Paul Ryan could not be more different than the pick of Sarah Palin in 2008, but the effect on the base will likely be the same.

7:44 am Romney and Ryan seem very well matched, which is crucial for having a coherent campaign team.

7:43 am Excerpts of Ryan’s speech can be found here – http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/excerpts-ryans-speech_649757.html

7:42 am Paul Ryan will speak shortly – excerpts are already appearing online.

7:39 am Despite the claims that Paul Ryan’s budget plan is radioactive, a Greenburg/Carville poll showed it polling at 52% in swing districts.

7:36 am @PaulRyanVP already has 7,000 followers, and the announcement was made in the early morning on a weekend…

7:35 am Already, Paul Ryan has an official Twitter account for his VP position – @PaulRyanVP

7:32 am The official announcement is taking place at the USS Wisconsin, docked in the key swing state of Virginia.

Scott Walker, Wisconsin, And Union Desperation

After spending tens of millions in what is now the most expensive political campaign in Wisconsin history, the union-led crusade against Gov. Scott Walker is now headed towards the finish line in what is looking to be a likely victory for Gov. Walker, who leads in the RealClearPolitics average by over 6%. Gov. Walker is running against Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee and the man that Walker beat in the 2010 governor’s race. Now, it looks like history will repeat itself.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)

Walker pushed through a controversial package of reforms designed to limit the power of Wisconsin’s public sector unions, by limiting their collective bargaining powers and ensuring that union dues were not automatically deducted from employee paychecks. The reaction from the left in Wisconsin was instant and vitriolic. By the tone of the anti-Walker protests one would think that he’d rounded up all public employees and had them drawn and quartered on the Capitol lawn. But despite months of protests organized by the unions and left-wing special interests, it looks like by Wednesday morning Scott Walker will remain Governor of Wisconsin and his efforts to limit the power of union special interests will remain. But how did this firestorm of political protest end up backfiring so decisively on the unions and the Wisconsin left?

The unions turned the battle against Walker into a full-on political crusade, first attacking Justice David Prosser of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and forcing a recall election against him. They lost decisively.

Then the union-led forces continued their attack, forcing recalls on 8 Republican state Senators. Republicans pushed back in recalls against 8 Senate Democrats. In the end, the attempt to shift the balance of power to the Democrats failed—while two vulnerable Republicans were recalled from office, the Senate majority did not shift to the Democrats.

Now, the left and the unions are hoping that the third time will be the charm, a wish that is looking to be yet another sure-fire loser for the Democrats. And the fact that they’re facing a losing battle has engendered a level of political desperation that would be almost comical if it weren’t so dangerous.

For instance, the union-led thugs have reached into the classical bag of dirty tricks and accused Scott Walker of fathering a child out of wedlock—an accusation that a reporter quickly and utterly debunked.

But what is happening in Wisconsin goes beyond mere dirty tricks and directly to voter intimidation. Ann Althouse details an incredibly creepy mailed being sent to Wisconsin residents that shows the voting histories of the recipient and 12 of their neighbors. While the information on the mailer is public record, the intent of the mailer is clearly intimidation—not only does the mailer reveal whether someone voted in the past, but it says that whether someone votes tomorrow will also be part of the public record. Althouse gives the right response:

This is an effort to shame and pressure people about voting, and it is truly despicable. Your vote is private, you have a right not to vote, and anyone who tries to shame and an harass you about it is violating your privacy, and the assumption that I will become active in shaming and pressuring my neighbors is repugnant.

Not only is it repugnant, it’s counterproductive as well. Someone who receives that mailer, which was apparently sent by an anti-Walker group, is not going to be more inclined to vote against Walker when they receive something like that. Such a ham-handed attempt at voter intimidation is not going to play well in Wisconsin.

To demonstrate just how badly things are going for the left in Wisconsin, President Obama has failed to offer any more than token support for the recall. He flew from Minnesota to Illinois last weekend, skipping any appearance with Barrett or on behalf of Barrett. The Democrats have been trying to pretend like the Wisconsin recalls don’t really matter—which would certainly not be the case were Barrett cruising towards victory this week. Watch the campaign spin on Wednesday try to downplay the importance of this race. But the truth is far more complicated than the inevitable political spin, and what is going on in Wisconsin signals a potential shift in the political winds of great consequence to Democrats everywhere.

The Unions’ Last Stand

Why have the unions spent tens of millions of dollars (taking money away from the 2012 Presidential contest) to recall Scott Walker? Walker’s bill that limits (but does not remove) collective bargaining for public sector unions does something even more harmful to unions: it cuts off their money. Under the bill, union dues are no longer automatically removed from a public employee’s paycheck. If the public worker wants to be in the union, they have to affirmatively choose to do so. And what the unions have found is that if it’s a choice, public workers would rather keep the money. The Wall Street Journal notes that internal figures show that membership in the Wisconsin branch of AFSCME has declined precipitously:

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—the state’s second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers—fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme’s figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.

Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.

Union money is crucial to the Democrats, and without the massive amount of cash from public employee unions, the Democrats are at a decided disadvantage. That’s why the unions went after David Prosser, why they spent tens of millions to try and wrest control of the Wisconsin Senate, and why they’re trying again to unseat Scott Walker—because Walker has gone after their gravy train. The real reason for these recalls has little to do with the rights of public employees and everything to do with making sure that money flows into the Democratic Party.

And that’s why tomorrow’s likely defeat of the hapless Democratic Mayor of Milwaukee is such a major blow to the unions—not only did Scott Walker win, but it’s exposed a harsh reality for unions: their source of money and power is in jeopardy.

Is Wisconsin In Play?

The next question is whether this means that Wisconsin is in play in 2012 for the Presidential race. In 2004, Kerry only barely won Wisconsin, slipping past Bush by a fraction of a percent. In 2012, however, Barack Obama crushed John McCain in a 14-point blowout in the Badger State. The 2012 polls have been all over the place, but some have shown Romney closing in on Obama. But even polls showing Walker comfortably ahead also show Obama with a strong lead.

But here’s where the Democrats made a mistake: the Republicans have been out organizing in three recall elections. They’ve developed a much better ground game then before. The electorate in Wisconsin have had to put up with three Democratically-led recalls and are getting sick and tired of all the constant political ads. The Democrats and the unions have put their best game on, but have fallen short. Instead of defeating Scott Walker, they’ve raised his national standing, and concomitantly his ability to raise money for Romney. All these factors redound to the benefit of the Republicans in a state that is seemingly in play.

It’s still unlikely that Romney can win Wisconsin, although it’s within the realm of possibility. But what Romney can do is force Obama to defend it. Not only that, but Romney can use the main media markets in Wisconsin to reach into parts of Minnesota and Michigan, also putting Obama on the defensive there as well. Romney doesn’t have to win Wisconsin to win the election, but if Romney could pull away Wisconsin and Iowa, he could lose Ohio and still win. Even though that’s a highly unlikely scenario, it shows just how in flux the 2012 race could be.

The Lessons Of The Walker Recall

What is most troubling about this recall election is how dirty it is. The unions, the “progressive” left, and the Democrats have demonized Scott Walker. They’ve invented a narrative in which the Koch Brothers have engineered a takeover of Wisconsin. The rhetoric against Walker is ridiculously over-the-top, and has demonstrated just how obsessed the left has become in trying to crush their opposition. The mailer that Althouse posted is just the tip of the iceberg—there’s a very good chance there will be attempts at direct voter intimidation tomorrow. The left has put all of their chips down on a quest to defeat the object of their hate and derision: what will happen when they lose a third time, and on their biggest target?

The Democrats have tried to turn this race into an attack against Scott Walker, but after pouring millions of dollars into the race and filling the airwaves with attack ads, they’ve failed. Now they’re resorting to desperate allegations of a love child to try and sway the electorate away from Walker. Yet nothing has worked.

And herein lies a lesson for other Republican candidates, especially Mitt Romney. Gov. Walker did not run away from his principles. He did not bow to Democratic attacks, he did not campaign while on the defensive, and he kept his message clear: his reforms led to lower taxes and more private-sector growth for Wisconsin. He kept on message, stayed on message, and did not give an inch against relentless Democratic attack. And he’s likely to win tomorrow because of it.

The Democrats ran a classic attempt at an Alinskyite campaign, and it failed. That is exactly the strategy that the Democrats have used and will use against Mitt Romney in the fall. The GOP has got to be ready for such tactics, and as Scott Walker has ably demonstrated if the Republicans can stand firm on principles, elucidate a clear message focused on jobs and the economy, and recognize the campaign landscape, they can win.

Why Obama’s Attacks On Bain Capital Will Backfire

President Obama has unveiled his latest attack against Mitt Romney, focusing on Romney’s days with the private equity firm Bain Capital. But just as the Obama campaign was getting ready to launch their attacks, a curious thing happened: Mayor Corey Booker, the Democratic mayor of Trenton, New Jersey and a rising star in the Democratic Party threw a monkey wrench into the President’s attack plans on Bain Capital. Booker said on Meet The Press that:

I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America. . . Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people invest in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And [Obama’s attacks on Bain], to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.

Needless to say, the Obama campaign was furious with Booker, and he was later forced to recant his heresy, in a video that disturbingly resembles a hostage tape. But the damage had already been done, and Obama’s anti-Bain narrative appeared to be stillborn.

Despite this, the President has doubled down, saying that Bain Capital is “what this campaign will be about.”

Now, even former Obama supporter David Brooks is noticing just how poor a strategy the Bain attacks are for the Obama campaign. Brooks observes that Obama’s populism is painting him into a corner:

While American companies operate in radically different ways than they did 40 years ago, the sheltered, government-dominated sectors of the economy — especially education, health care and the welfare state — operate in astonishingly similar ways.

The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government.

The Obama campaign seems to be drifting willy-nilly into the opposite camp, arguing that the pressures brought to bear by the capital markets over the past few decades were not a good thing, offering no comparably sized agenda to reform the public sector.

In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation. For a candidate like Obama, who successfully ran an unconventional campaign that embodied and promised change, I have no idea why he would want to run a campaign this time that regurgitates the exact same ads and repeats the exact same arguments as so many Democratic campaigns from the ancient past.

Brooks makes a very important point here: the Obama campaign is running a highly traditional Democratic campaign. They are using the politics of division to attract traditional Democratic constituencies: women (and by that mean single women), African-Americans, students, environmentalists, and the tony class of well-healed limousine liberals. The arguments that the Obama campaign have been making have all been targeted with a laser-like focus on bringing those elements of the Democratic base together in support of his campaign. Everything from the “war on women” to Obama’s pivot on gay marriage have been focused on that end.

But that’s a problem for Obama. Even he has privately admitted that he’s running against the Obama of 2008—but the Obama of 2008 managed to beat the tar out of John McCain and took a majority of the electorate in a decisive victory. He did it by convincing independents and even some squishy conservatives (like David Brooks!) that he was a moderate, post-partisan, post-racial, transformative figure who would get things done for the betterment of the country.

If Obama could rekindle that magic in 2012, he’d be doing very well for himself. But he can’t—because the 2008 magic was built on an image of Obama that has been dashed apart on the rocky shoals of his record. He can’t campaign as a post-partisan figure when he’s constantly blaming the “Republican Congress” as being a bunch of “obstructionists”—an argument that’s rather silly considering that the Republicans won because Obama pushed through an expensive and unpopular health care bill. He can’t run as a transformative figure when his signature “achievements”—ObamaCare and the stimulus—are not popular with the American electorate. Obama has a record now, and while he’s done his best to try to change the subject to something else, that record will be the issue in this campaign.

What Romney Can Do

But Obama still is running neck-and-neck with Romney. Romney still can lose, and he can lose big if he fails to adapt to the changing condition of the campaign. All one has to do is look back at 2008 to see how this can happen: after picking Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign was riding high in the polls, even beating Obama in most polls. But then the wheels came off of the McCain campaign: the media savaged Palin and the campaign failed to use Palin’s natural political talent in an effective way. When Lehman collapsed, McCain first said that we was canceling a debate and running to Washington to play the elder statesman—which he did, but only half-heartedly. McCain failed to come up with an adequate response to the crisis, and never recovered. He went from running ahead of Obama to being shellacked by him. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what must Romney do? He has got to start shaping his message now: and while he’s done part of that with his ads focusing on the state of the economy. But it’s not enough to merely suggest that the economy is a bad state— Romney has to make an at least plausible plan for what to do about it.

Here’s why I ultimately think Romney’s Bain experience is relevant to this campaign: Romney needs to make a connection in the voters minds between what Bain did—taking dying companies and fixing them—and what needs to be done for the economy in general and government in particular. Right now the Romney campaign is doing a great job of reacting to the President, but sooner or later (when the voters start paying attention to the race), Romney will have to define himself.

And here’s why the President’s Bain attacks play right into that: they’re opening the door for Romney to make this argument. For every ad that the President cuts showing someone who allegedly lost their job, Romney should have ads prepared showing the people whose jobs were saved by Bain Capital. Romney has to know that Bain would be a major issue in this campaign—as it was in Romney’s prior campaigns. If the Romney campaign doesn’t have a response ready to go by now, they’re in trouble. They may not need to run those ads yet (better to keep their powder dry for when it’s needed), but they had better have them ready for deployment.

And those ads should support the larger narrative: this country needs a turnaround artist. This country needs someone who will make government more responsive, more efficient, and simply better. And yes, that means cutting a lot of dead weight from government, including making sure that workers who don’t pull their weight can be fired. Romney has to make the case that old way that government does things is not working. Indeed, that the government has become just like one of those failing companies that Bain used to deal with: it’s losing money hand-over-foot, it has a dysfunctional management structure, there’s a lack of leadership at the top, and its customers (the citizens) are not happy with what it’s doing. Romney has taken those kind of dysfunctional organizations and turned them around before: and that’s just what this country needs.

The President can talk until he’s blue in the face about “vampire capitalism:” in fact, the more the President goes on the attack the further away from the post-partisan ultra-cool figure of 2008 he gets. Romney can use that to his advantage if he’s smart enough and nimble enough.

The President is unwittingly providing the Romney campaign with a winning strategy for 2012, as David Brooks points out. Even some of the President’s backers, like Mayor Booker have figured this out. Luckily enough for Romney, the President doesn’t understand how he can be outflanked. The real question is whether the Romney campaign can be deft enough to take advantage of the opening that he’s been given. If he can, he can put the President in a defensive posture—exacerbating Obama’s tendency to become whiny and petulant. John McCain’s campaign failed to do this—if Romney wants to win, he’s going to have to learn from that failure.

Whether Obama realizes or not, his attacks are opening a door for Romney. The question is whether Romney will seize the opportunity to use that opening to craft a winning message for his campaign.

Can Romney Win? Yes, He Can!

The New Yorker warms the hearts of Republicans everywhere by asking a question no true-blue liberal Democrat wants to even contemplate: can Mitt Romney really beat Obama?

In my neck of artisanal, hormone-free Brooklyn, the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, which shows Mitt Scissorhands leading “The First Gay President” by three points, landed with a nasty thud. “I can’t believe he might lose,” my wife said when she spotted the offending numbers on the Web. “People are really willing to vote for Mitt Romney? They hate Obama so much they’d vote for Romney?”

Evidently so—not that you’d know it from a casual read of the print edition of today’s Times. The editors buried the lead in the fifteenth paragraph of a down-page story on A17. (I’ve got a helpful suggestion: if Romney’s ahead in next month’s poll, maybe it could go in the Metro section—the one that no longer exists.) Not surprisingly, conservative news sites made rather more of the story. Under the headline “Kaboom: Romney Leads Obama by 3 in New CBS/NYT Poll,” Guy Benson, the political editor of Townhall.com, pointed out several other noteworthy findings [i]n the survey, including the facts that Romney leads Obama by two points among women (so much for the gender gap) and seven points among independents. Two thirds of the survey’s respondents said the economy was in “very bad” or “fairly bad” shape, and Obama’s favorability rating is still stuck in the mid-forties—at forty-five per cent, to be exact.

Now, the piece does explain why Romney still has a long way to go to win, but the fact that The New Yorker is running a piece worrying about Obama’s electoral chances is in itself telling.

But there’s even more interesting data. Wisconsin was a state that Obama won handily in 2008 and Kerry very narrowly won in 2004. Wisconsin hasn’t really been on the radar as a swing state – but a poll commissioned by the ultra-liberal ghouls at the Daily Kos finds that Obama is leading Romney by only a single point in the Badger State. That result is somewhat shocking, but perhaps less so when you consider that the unions have spent tens of millions to recall Gov. Scott Walker and that same poll shows Walker beating his Democratic opponent by a 4%. Wisconsin is a state where Romney might have a chance, especially given massive voter fatigue on the left.

And there’s gay marriage. While it wasn’t clear whether the gay marriage issue would hurt or help Obama, the polls show that it’s hurting him. As The New Yorker piece mentions, a supermajority of voters think that Obama’s sudden “evolution” on gay marriage was little more than a political stunt. More people dislike Obama’s newfound old position on gay marriage than like it. And North Carolina, the site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention and a potential swing state, is starting to look redder and redder. None of this news is fatal to Obama’s reelection chances, but the slow drip of bad news for his campaign, combined with the Obama campaign’s relatively ham-fisted attempts to shape the narrative suggest that 2012 will not look much like 2008.

Behold, A God Who Bleeds!

This is all starting to remind me of a classic Star Trek episode (as many things often do). In that episode, Captain Kirk’s memory is wiped and he ends up being treated as a god by the local Native American stereotype aliens. One jealous alien manages to cut his hand, and exclaims, “Behold, a god who bleeds!” The same thing is happening here: during 2008 Obama was the epitome of cool, a demi-god in American politics with a following that bordered on a cult of personality.

Today is much different. Obama is just another politician. The American people don’t buy his gay marriage conversion. Obama has a record now, and cannot be what he was in 2008: a blank slate upon which voters could project their hopes and dreams. Instead, Obama has to run on what he’s actually done: and Americans are not feeling the “hope and change” any longer.

That’s the problem with being a cool cipher – the minute you start losing your mystique, the game is over. The same quasi-messianic messaging that worked so well for Obama in 2008 will not work for him in 2012—now it just comes off as creepy. The American people are seeing an increasingly whiny President who is running a tight race against someone who is ostensibly a weak candidate and saying “Behold, a god who bleeds!”

But Romney Has To Define Himself

But don’t count Obama out or Romney in. The American people have soured on President Obama to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that Romney is in the clear. He still has to define himself, and Romney has thus far failed to do so. Voters know that they don’t like Obama, but just that is not necessarily going to be enough for Romney to pull ahead. Voters need to have a clear answer to the question “who is Mitt Romney?”

This is Romney’s Achilles heel—he does not have the “common touch” of someone like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. He’s hard to relate to on a human level because he doesn’t open himself up in the way that other politicians do. But to win national election, Romney has to define himself as a person. He doesn’t have to be the guy you have beers with, but he has to be someone who voters can trust and relate to. Ann Romney has helped humanize her husband, but Gov. Romney can’t rely on surrogates to make that connection.

The Obama campaign is already running ads trying to define Romney to voters—if Romney can’t define himself first, he’s going to have a lot of trouble winning in the key states he needs to win.

One thing is certain, however: if the Democrats are thinking this will be another 2008, they’re wrong. The political environment has changed, and it has not changed in a way that benefits President Obama.

The State Of The Race 2012 – Part I

The dust has settled from the contentious GOP primary battle, and it looks like Mitt Romney will be the GOP’s 2012 nominee. It’s now on to the general election, where the future of Barack Obama’s Presidency will be tested.

Even though polling this far out is of limited usefulness, it does give us some idea of how the race could turn out in seven months. There are certain factors and historical data that can give us some idea of where this race will go. But elections are shaped by current events rather than past history—in September 2008, John McCain was briefly ahead of Obama until Sarah Palin flamed out and McCain’s bizarre campaign suspension eliminated his momentum through the end of the race. In 2000, George W. Bush was looking to beat Al Gore by a substantial margin—until DWI allegations put him on the defensive and cost him votes, resulting in one of the closest races in American history and a popular vote loss. We have no idea what may happen in 2012 that could have a profound impact on the race.

But, with those caveats in mind, we can start to see the shape of the race as it stands now, and what it means for President Obama and Governor Romney:

This Race Will Be A Referendum

First, this is a race between an incumbent President and a challenger – which means that the 2012 election will largely be a referendum on Barack Obama. (Joe Klein’s arguments notwithstanding.) In general, an incumbent President either stands or falls based on his performance in office. If the American electorate is generally happy with the performance of a President, he’ll be reelected. If they are not, and the other side puts up a credible challenger, that President will lose.

That dynamic appears most clearly in the President’s approval ratings on a state-by-state basis. An incumbent President’s approval ratings are a good predictor of whether they will be reelected or not. As it stands right now, President Obama’s approval rating is at 47% in the RealClearPolitics polling composite. He’s slightly underwater with his disapproval rating at 48%. For an incumbent, that’s a danger zone—not fatal, but not where an incumbent President wants to be. As a point of comparison, President Bush was at 52% approval in mid-April 2004.

As we dig down to the state level, this becomes more important. Traditionally, an incumbent with approval rating over 50% is regarded as “safe” and one with an approval rating under 50% is regarded as “in trouble.” Political prognosticator Ronald Brownstein, writing in the National Journal, argues that 47% is the real “tipping point”, and if a President’s approval rating is below 47%, then he’s in real trouble.

So, we can assume that if President Obama is over 50% approval in a state, he’s likely to win that state’s electoral votes. On the other hand, if he’s at 45% or below, he’s not going to win that state unless his approval rating changes dramatically. If he’s at 47% or less, that state would lean towards the Romney, and if Obama’s approval rating is over 47%, the state would lean towards Obama.

Obama’s Electoral Battlefield

Gallup performed state by state polling in 2011 that gives some contours to where Obama stands in each state. It isn’t pretty for Obama. He is above 50% in only a few states. If we use the 47% approval rating as a guidepost, Obama is cruising towards a huge loss in the Electoral College. He would lose 215 to 323, an electoral blowout. Crucially, he’d lose the key states that he needs to hold to win: namely Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, and Iowa. He’d also lose Oregon, a state that has tended to be Democratic, but only by a close margin.

Obviously, Obama losing Oregon seems like a rather distant proposition, and Gallup’s numbers are fairly old, and were taken before the GOP race had settled. But, what this does show is that the race is far from over: Obama’s approval rating on a national and a state-by-state basis indicates a much tighter race than 2008.

It’s The Economy, Stupid

The biggest factor in this race will be the economy. Unemployment is trending downward, but the results are mixed at best. But, it’s hard to judge just what effect the unemployment rate really has an election—electoral data doesn’t give us much to go on in predicting how unemployment will effect the race. It’s true that no President since FDR has won reelection with more than 7.2% unemployment, but that by itself does’t give us much to go on. The sample set is simply too small.

But subjective feelings will matter. If in the fall of 2012 people really do feel that the economy is getting better, they’ll be more inclined to reelect the President. If they feel that they are no better off than they were in 2008, they’ll be more inclined to get rid of him. The data on Obama’s economic record spells trouble for Obama—high gas prices are hurting his rating on economic issues, and the electorate doesn’t really seem to think that the economy is truly turning a corner.

That’s why the data points will only tell you so much. In the 1992 election the economy was recovering, but George H.W. Bush still lost to Bill Clinton (thanks in large part to Ross Perot). People don’t respond to economic data, they respond to their subjective feelings. Unfortunately, that’s hard to measure and doesn’t follow the raw data—it could well be that unemployment drifts down by November 2012, but that doesn’t mean that President Obama is a lock for re-election.

The Hope And Change Is Gone

There is one more subjective factor worthy of mention: this isn’t 2008. In 2008, Obama could run as a cypher, a blank slate upon which voters could project their hopes and dreams. His campaign of “hope” and “change” and his ability to position himself as a post-partisan, post-racial figure helped him appeal to independents and even some Republicans. He ran less on his record (scant as it was), and more on a set of vague promises. But four years later, that is no longer an option for the President. He has to run on his record now, and his policies from from bailouts to Obamacare have been more divisive than uniting. The 2010 election could also be considered a referendum on his performance, and that should give the Obama team pause.

Obama simply doesn’t have the option of running as the Obama of 2008—but that doesn’t mean that he can’t reinvent himself into a form that’s palatable to enough independents to get reelected. But that also means that the unprecedented wave of support that lifted him up in 2008 may not materialize this time: in 2008 Barack Obama was the Next Big Thing, the great figure that would bring the country together and wipe away the supposed sins of the Bush years. Now, he’s just another politician. The Democrats may have a deep reserve of support to draw upon, but they’ve always had that. At this time, it doesn’t seem like Obama can rekindle the magic of 2008. It’s safe to assume that even if Obama is re-elected, it won’t be by the same margins he got four years ago.

Where Do We Go From Here?

So, with all those factors in play, what can we say about the current state of the race? The honest answer is that it’s looking close, but we don’t know much more than that. It’s too early to say that Obama is a shoe-in for re-election or Romney should start thinking about Cabinet appointments. This is anyone’s game, and with such partisan polarization, it’s very likely that it will stay a tight race for most (if not all) of the race.

That being said, the structural factors give a slight edge to Romney. Obama has a weak approval rating for an incumbent President. The economy may recover, but it’s questionable whether it would be enough. Obama’s state-by-state approval ratings show weakness in key swing states. But that slight edge is very slight indeed, and could disappear if trends change.

As the race continues other factors will start emerging—the most important of which may be the discipline and effectiveness of Romney’s campaign. The McCain campaign was horrendously mismanaged, botching McCain’s “suspension” of his campaign, mishandling Sarah Palin, and was generally weak and ineffective. So far Romney has shown great discipline and messaging—but also a tendency to put his foot in his mouth. If you want to know how the dynamics of the race may play out, watch how well organized the Romney camp is over the next few months. Because when it gets down to the post-Labor Day crunch time, campaign discipline can make or break a political campaign.

The Inevitable Mr. Romney

Nate Silver, the political oracle behind Five Thirty-Eight argues that Mitt Romney is becoming close to the inevitable GOP nominee in 2012—and while Silver notes that Romney certainly can lose, there’s no one else in the field that has the staying power to take him down. Even though the GOP isn’t in love with the idea of a Romney candidacy, no one has been able to mount a serious, long-term challenge to Romney.

The past few months of the 2012 campaign has seen a dynamic between Romney running slow but steady, with a series of putative challengers rising and falling. At first, Michele Bachmann was looking like the anti-Romney, until the GOP electorate realized that she was great as an ideological happy warrior, but has no appeal outside her base. Congresswoman Bachmann is a solid and principled conservative, but she is no the sort of person who can win in a national election. So she peaked early and has not regained momentum since.

Then the GOP electorate moved on to Rick Perry—until Governor Perry opened his mouth and made a fool of himself. One bad debate performance is not necessarily enough to doom a candidacy, but a series of them made it clear that Perry was not remotely ready for prime-time. If Perry can’t win over a friendly audience, he would have zero chance against Obama. What momentum Perry had after announcing was quickly diminished as Perry proved himself unprepared and prone to embarrassing verbal gaffes.

Then came Herman Cain, the next flavor of the week. Cain made some bold policy moves with his “9-9-9? plan. But his bold policies had no chance of working in the real world. Then Cain, like Perry, demonstrated that he was criminally unprepared for the task of running for President. (Yes, Mr. Cain, you should know something about those countries with “-stan” at the end if you want to be taken seriously as a candidate.) Then a drip of scandal turned into a torrent, as numerous women accused Cain of having affairs with them—and while a few anonymous allegations don’t count for much, a flood of them with details do. In the end, Cain was forced to leave the race in relative disgrace.

The last flavor of the week has been Newt Gingrich—who unlike Cain and Perry is an intellectual force to be reckoned with. But as brilliant as Newt may be, he is equally undisciplined. His attack on the judiciary was intended to be red meat for the conservative base, but it was deeply irresponsible and not at all in line with constitutional conservatism. Newt has taken many of the same positions that Romney has, and to call him the conservative alternative to Romney is a joke. Newt may be a great thinker who does well in debates, but he would likely implode long before mounting a challenge to Obama.

The rest of the field also underwhelms. Santorum’s last electoral experience was a double-digit blowout loss, and he has little appeal outside hardcore social conservatives. Jon Huntsman is running in the wrong party’s primary. Ron Paul is, to put it charitably, an isolationist conspiracy-mongering nutball.

By nothing more than default, Mitt Romney is the only candidate left on the field that is not damaged goods in some form or fashion. But the question then becomes, is Romney an acceptable candidate for the GOP nomination in 2012?

The Case For Romney

John Hinderaker at Power Line makes the case for Romney as the 2012 GOP nominee:

In electing a president, we are choosing someone to run the Executive Branch. A leader, to be sure, but not a speechmaker, a bomb-thrower, a quipster, a television personality or an exemplar of ideological purity. At this point in our history, the United States desperately needs a leader who understands the economy, the world of business, and, more generally, how the world works. We have had more than enough of a leader who was good at giving speeches and was ideologically pure, but who had no clue how the economy works or how the federal government can be administered without resort to graft and corruption. It is time for a president who knows what he is doing.

Hinderaker gives four arguments why Romney is the strongest candidate in the race, and the candidate most likely to beat President Obama, including the fact that in a time when the United States is badly in need on a turnaround, who better suited to fix our national problems than someone who has years of experience turning around failing companies?

On the other side, John Hawkins provides 7 reasons why he believes that Romney’s “electability” is a myth.

Hinderaker seems to have the better of the arguments here. What we do know of Romney’s general-election prospects come from early polling—and of the early general-election polls, Romney runs ahead of the rest of the Republican field in key states like Ohio. What candidate has a chance of doing better than Mitt Romney at this point? Gingrich? Paul? Perry? Santorum? Does anyone believe that anyone else in this field has a credible shot at taking on Obama and winning?

Romney’s conservative bona fides are constantly questioned, but Gingrich is no less an “establishment” figure and has departed from conservative orthodoxy just as much as Romney. Romney may not be every conservative’s ideal candidate, but he’s the most conservative candidate with a realistic prayer of winning.

A President Romney is not going to veto a conservative Congress’ budget cuts. A President Romney would not dramatically increase the size and scope of the federal government—certainly not when paired with a conservative Congress. A President Romney is a step forward for the nation—four more years of President Obama would be a disaster at a time when fiscal discipline is no longer optional.

Mitt Romney has a compelling narrative going into 2012: the turnaround artist for a country that faces bankruptcy. While the Republican Party should listen to Hawkin’s arguments against Romney’s electability and start working on contingencies to address them, the fact remains that Romney has the best chance to beat President Obama in 2012. He’s the only candidate that has a realistic chance to beat the President this year and restore some semblance of fiscal sanity to the Executive Branch.

And that is ultimately why I believe than Romney will be the 2012 nominee for the Republican Party. At the end of the day, the one thing that Establishment Republicans and conservative activists all want is to unseat President Obama. Romney is the one that is most likely to do it, and the GOP electorate has run through all the alternatives in the hopes of finding a more conservative challenger. At the end of the day, Romney has survived while others have faltered, and he is the candidate best positioned to take on the President and beat him.

Finally, the next four years will be crucial for the future of this country. While every election is tagged as the “most important” election ever, the stakes continue to get higher and higher for this country. Say what you want about Romney, he has years of experience in the private sector taking failing organizations and turning them into profitable and efficient ones. Taking on the U.S. government will be orders of magnitude more difficult than that, but Romney’s experience is relevant to the challenges ahead. We may not be getting our dream candidate, but we never were going to get that. Romney is conservative enough to be acceptable, is effective enough to run a disciplined campaign, and is smart and tough enough to lead this country. In the end, that is what matters.

Stimulus II: High-Speed Rail Bugaloo

As the old saying goes, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By that definition, President Barack Obama is frigging bugnuts.

This evening, President Obama called on Congress to pass the “American Jobs Act,” which is little more than another round of the same failed stimulus that was passed back in 2009. Since then, unemployment has hovered near double-digit levels, the economy has been limping, and our national debt has skyrocketed.

Instead of admitting what the majority of Americans can see with their own eyes, President Obama decided to double-down with more of the same. It was the same plans for “shovel-ready jobs” and high-speed rail, all to be paid with tax increases on the “rich,” of course.

Take the bizarre fascination with “high-speed rail.” It has been tried over and over again and it has never worked. It has always cost more than planned, required massive subsidies to work, and ended up being little more than a massive white elephant. emulating China’s failures is not the way to the future. Yet politicians keep pretending like the way to improve American infrastructure is to create a bunch of expensive high-speed rail lines. And even if China’s high-speed rail network makes sense for China, it doesn’t make sense in the slightest for the United States.

And then there’s the usual blather about “shovel ready jobs” and how if we just build a bunch of roads and bridges we can employ the millions of Americans who are just sitting idle. Now, I know that the President and most of the political elites know virtually nothing about manual labor, but if one is going to propose a jobs plan, it might be a good idea to learn about jobs.

President Obama needs to learn that not all “construction workers” are monolithic drones who can do anything that remotely resembles putting things together. You can’t take an unemployed sheet rocker or house framer and tell them to grab a shovel and build a bridge. Even in construction, the basic concept of division of labor still applies. There’s something vaguely condescending about the idea that all manual labor is basically interchangeable.

And finally, there’s the idea that taxing the “rich” will magically pay for all of this. Someone needs to inform the President (provided he would listen) about the concept of deadweight loss. It works like this:

Let’s say you take a million dollars from Warren Buffet. Had you not done that, Warren Buffet would have invested that million dollars in the hope of earning a nice return on his money. That million dollars would go to different companies, where it would pay for capital improvements, wages, new factories and offices, etc.

But that didn’t happen. The government took that million dollars. But that million dollars doesn’t get pumped directly into the economy. Instead part of it pays the salary of the government apparatchiks that process all the paperwork necessary to take the money, distribute it to the right agencies, and so on. Now, some will say that those salaries help the economy, and they do, but only to a point. Those bureaucrats don’t actually produce anything—they just push paper. That’s in contrast to someone who could take that money and invest it in something that would add value along the way. And it’s not just one layer of bureaucracy that the money has to get filtered through, it’s dozens or even hundreds. And each time, some of that million dollars gets lost.

And not only that, but the government does not spend money on what the best investment is. The government allocates money based on what the most politically well-connected want. When then happens is that money gets shoveled into politically-connected firms that quickly go best when the government turns the money spigots off. The failure of President Obama’s pet “green jobs” generator Solyndra is just one example of how government allocation of assets is not the way to build an economy.

So, by taking more money from Warren Buffet, the money has gone to government bureaucrats and the politically well-connected, but hasn’t produced any additional value. Had the government not taken the money from Warren Buffet, that money would have been invested prudently, and everyone would have been better off.

That’s why the idea of a Keynesian multiplier is a myth—government spending $1.00 does not magically produce $2.00 of value. But investing $1.00 in Apple in 1997 would produce way more than $2.00 today. The question is not whether the Keynesian multiplier exceeds 1, it’s whether it exceeds zero.

It may well be that building roads and bridges is a good idea—there are certainly valuable and needed infrastructure projects that constitute real public goods. (For example, the Stillwater Lift Bridge here in Minnesota is near collapse and serves thousands of motorists each day.) But why does it make sense to tax someone in California, send the money through Washington D.C. and then distribute it to local governments in Minnesota? That’s the problem of deadweight loss—government is not free, and while there are some projects that make sense to be done by government, those are few and far between.

President Obama’s speech tonight laid out yet another tired argument for “stimulus” spending that will fare no better than the already-tired arguments that he trotted out in 2009. Since then, the economy has suffered, leaving millions of Americans without the hope they were promised in 2008.

We need to change directions, and instead of empowering Washington D.C., we need to empower the American entrepreneur. We need to unleash America’s creative impulses and make it easier for Americans to start their own business and live their dreams. More of the same will not produce any different results. It is time for the President to end the madness and change direction.