http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/5tnd2b).<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0If the president\u2019s approval rating were a stock, no one would claim we are coming out of the recession. \u00a0Rather, Obama, Inc. fell from amazing heights right after its 2008 IPO to depressed levels within a year, established a trading range and has stayed within that range ever since. \u00a0The top of the range is about 50 percent, the bottom about forty. The stock has become a little more volatile over the last seven months. \u00a0It has moved from the top to the bottom to the top. \u00a0Not much time has been spent in the middle. But it has never escaped the range.<\/p>\nWe have all heard about the Rasmussen polls of the last week showing both Mitt Romney and Ron Paul beating the president and Rick Santorum only a few points behind. \u00a0In truth, all three spreads are within the margin of error. But after all the beatings they have given one another, for the three major GOP contenders to be tied with the president at this stage of the game suggests deep, underlying strength.<\/p>\n
Here is one arresting statistic. \u00a0It comes from political commentator Michael Barone. \u00a0He may have written about it, probably has, but I heard him say it at a dinner last night, so I can\u2019t give you the link. \u00a0Take the last five elections. Compare the popular vote in each to the popular vote by party for the House of Representatives in the prior mid-term election. \u00a0In each case, Barone said, the Democrat v. Republican presidential outcome is within one percentage point of the national Democrat v. Republican midterm vote.<\/p>\n
As I say, evidence is accumulating that the race is the GOP\u2019s to lose. \u00a0But can it win?<\/p>\n
Yesterday House whip Kevin McCarthy addressed the annual Washington meeting of the Hoover Institution. \u00a0McCarthy was in charge of the GOP 2010 effort to take back the House. \u00a0He talked in part about the statistical analysis he and his staff had performed to establish goals for the race and about the kinds of candidates he had recruited. \u00a0One was Stephen Fincher, now a first-term congressman. \u00a0When McCarthy met him, Fincher was, as\u00a0The Almanac of American Politics<\/em>\u00a0describes him, \u201ca gospel-singing farmer\u201d who \u201cgrew up in Frog Jump, Tennessee.\u201d What did McCarthy like about Mr. Fincher? \u00a0He had never run for public office. \u00a0Running would be a financial hardship. \u00a0But he was determined to do it, because he was so alarmed at the direction the country was taking.<\/p>\nMcCarthy\u2019s point was that the Republicans won\u2019t win on any level unless candidates show the same kind of commitment and passion Fincher showed, not for polls and consultants, but for rescuing the nation. \u00a0We will win on what we stand for, he said. \u00a0We have got to tell people how we will cut spending, balance the budget, bring down the debt, and revive economic growth.<\/p>\n
Alarm about the financial future of the nation permeates all serious quarters in Washington these days \u2013 a qualification that apparently leaves out the White House. \u00a0But does it also leave out the GOP contenders?<\/p>\n
Over the past week, I have spoken with a number of political insiders you would assume are friends and supporters of Senator Santorum\u2019s candidacy. \u00a0All\u2026 all\u2026 have expressed dismay about the\u00a0cul d\u2019sac<\/em>\u00a0into which he has driven his candidacy — references to the president\u2019s \u201ctheology\u201d and other such remarks. \u00a0\u201cYou would never advise him [Santorum] to use that word,\u201d one sighed. \u00a0That\u2019s all the press will talk about now, he added, continuing, we\u2019ve got off the major issues.<\/p>\nIn a recent gathering of policy experts, one particularly shrewd observer from overseas echoed this concern about the nation\u2019s focus. \u00a0America\u2019s debt, he said, is a threat to global security. \u00a0His point was that the United States is the anchor of global peace and freedom. \u00a0If we spend ourselves into the status of Greece, the entire world will suffer, catastrophically.<\/p>\n
As we enter our fourth year of trillion dollar deficits with the administration promising only more of the same, GOP voters should insist that the candidates for the nomination start to talk about what must be done to rescue the nation and the world? Against the billions that the president and his George Soros-type friends will pour into the coming race, we can\u2019t win unless we do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As two more states hold Republican primaries today, the message out of national data is that the election is the GOP\u2019s to lose \u2013 and the party may prove fully up to the task. Yes, I have heard talk about the president\u2019s approval ratings surging. \u00a0But look at the Rasmussen tracking graph (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/5tnd2b).\u00a0\u00a0If the president\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicalcommentary-campaign-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1397,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions\/1397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}