Obama's lucky GOP picked Romney as opponent
Mitt Romney pays for a sandwich as he visits a WaWa gas station in Quakertown, Pa., June 16, 2012. / AFP/Getty Images
(The New Republic) The new Bloomberg poll showing Barack Obama up 13 points over Mitt Romney is an obvious outlier. But it is prodding me again to a question that has been nagging at me the past few weeks: how is that Obama is not in truly serious trouble? All the talk recently has been of Obama's prospects slipping, with him now only a couple points ahead of Romney, at best, in most polls. But he should be slipping! The economy, after showing signs of a solid recovery just a few months ago, is gasping for air again, and there may be worse on the way. This should be disastrous for the incumbent. Yet he's very much in this thing. Part of this surely has to do with the dynamic that Team Obama is dearly banking on: many voters still blame Obama's predecessor for the hard times. Part of it also has to do with Obama's personal likability (which defies the deathless Beltway caricature of him as distant and aloof.)
But there's no getting around it: a huge part of it must have to do with his lackluster opposition. Ask yourself: if the other side had settled on a truly generic Republican -- that is, a moderately conservative fellow, a senator or governor or former governor who came without the trappings of Bain Capital and car elevators and dressage tax deductions and Romneycare and the serial flip-flopping and "America the Beautiful," how would that candidate be faring right now? I say, purely on gut instinct, that he'd be up two, three, four points. Who do I have in mind? Gosh, just about anybody: John Thune, Mitch Daniels, heck, even poor Tim Pawlenty. Instead, we have this:
At the breakfast, Mr. Romney introduced two of his sons, Matt and Craig, in a slightly unusual fashion. "I love them," Mr. Romney said. "I love them like they're my own. And they are! Craig!"With that, Craig Romney rescued the microphone from his father.
And this:
At a Wawa, one in a convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic, Mr. Romney was dazzled by the touch-screen computers from which he ordered his meatball hoagie on Saturday in Quakertown, Pa. Later in the day, he tried to engage the crowd in Cornwall, Pa., by asking it about its favorite local sandwich shop."By the way, where do you get your hoagies here?" he asked. "Do you get them at Wawas? Is that where you get them? No? Do you get them at Sheetz? Where do you get them?"
As the crowd began to boo, shouting out names of neighborhood joints, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania tried to help out: "Delis!" he called out. "The delis!"
But after bungling the name of the Wawa several times -- calling the store "Wawas" -- Mr. Romney forged ahead.
"Ah, you get them at the delis, is that what you're saying?" he asked. "Well, I went to a place today called Wawas. You ever been to Wawas? Anybody been there?" As the crowd continued to jeer, he added, "I'm sorry, I know there's a very big state divide."
And this:
The next day, Mr. Romney appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation," where he briefly talked about the expensive dressage horses his wife, Ann, owns and rides -- a subject that clashes with his attempt to present himself as an average guy who understands the concerns of middle-class Americans."I joke that I'm going to send her to Betty Ford for addiction to horses," he told Bob Schieffer, the show's host.
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I'm not getting into the whole question of what Romney did or didn't say about the sandwich-ordering gizmo at the Wawa. I agree that we have better things to be writing about. I'm just making the obvious, but oddly overlooked point, that Republicans would be in a far stronger position right now -- a possibly dominant, breezing-to-victory one -- if they had managed to get a few other guys to step forward, guys who would not be, as Romney is in the Bloomberg cross-tabs, branded as far more out of touch than the half-Kenyan elitist intellectual he is running against. It will remain forever a mystery to me why Republicans did not manage to get those other guys.
Alec MacGillis is a senior editor at The New Republic. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
LOL! Fact is, mannequin mitt will never be able to connect with the average middle class American, and the more people learn about him and his lifestyle, the more they are turned off and disgusted!
That is patently ridiculous. The Liberal elite wanted someone like Huntsman because he is one of them.
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That is patently ridiculous.
Liberals are Independents or Dems, not repubs.
The GOP offers nothing for one with a liberal mindset.
A majority of likely voters, 55 percent, view him as more out of touch with average Americans compared with 36 percent who say the president is more out of touch."
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by bileven: "actually that belief is not found in the Book of Mormons".
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Mormon leaders have taught that men become Gods in the same manner as previous Mormon Gods have. Joseph Smith stated the following:
"Here, then, is eternal life -- to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you,... To inherit the same power, the same glory and the same exaltation, until you arrive at the station of a God.... " (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 346, 347)
Mormons believe they originally were transported from Kolob to Earth.
"And thus there shall be the reckoning of the time of one planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which Kolob is after the reckoning of the Lord's time; which Kolob is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest." (Book of Abraham Translation by Prophet Joseph Smith)