Election 2012: The Great Divider

After scoring an impressive debate victory over a president who ascended to the nation’s highest office through his gift of gab, Mitt Romney’s campaign has made its first significant forward progress in the general election campaign.

And his timing could not have been better with early voting already taking place in some states.

Though the “who won the debate” insta-polls swung heavily in Romney’s favor, it took several days for the national and battleground state polls to digest Romney’s triumph.

What was once a column of solid blue (the president’s leads in various surveys) on Real Clear Politics’ poll page now has splotches of red.  Rasmussen, considered to have its sample calibrated to reflect the expected 2012 voter turnout, has Romney at 49% (+2) in the national poll. 

Public Policy Polling, which has been affiliated with the Daily Kos, has Romney at 47% (-2) in Wisconsin.  On the day of the debate, a Marquette University poll had Obama with an 11-point lead in the home of the GOP’s candidate for vice-president.

Another benefit from the Denver debate registered practically overnight: money.

CNN reported that money was pouring into the coffers of Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney Super PAC, within 24 hours after the debate and its founder estimated that it would be one of the most successful fundraising days for the political committee.

Smarting from the humbling at Romney’s hands, President Barack Obama has gone on the offensive, showing more cheek before friendly audiences than he did when sharing the stage with his Republican challenger.

And with Obama’s poll numbers tumbling and Romney’s fundraising numbers on the rise, America will see presidential rhetoric burrow to a new low. 

The president and his allies have already hurled everything and the kitchen sink at Romney since it’s easier to destroy his opponent than to defend his record.

Women are told that Romney will outlaw abortion and have their birth control pills ripped from their hands. 

The Democrats even have a line for those women who are pro-life or don’t think the taxpayers should be footing the bill for their birth control as they claim that Romney opposes “equal pay for equal work”.

Blacks were informed by Vice-President Joseph Biden that a Romney Administration would “put y’all back in chains”.

And when not being threatened with being thrown in manacles, black voters along with Latinos have been alerted that the GOP is trying to disenfranchise them by requiring the presentation of photo identification at polling stations. 

Young voters are warned that Congressman Paul Ryan wants to double college student loan interest and to older voters that the Romney-Ryan ticket seeks to sacrifice their Medicare and Social Security to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, specifically Donald Trump.

The only time President Obama paints his message with a broad brush is when he engages in his now standard class warfare rants, trying to turn renters against owners, employees against bosses and the “have not as much” against the “have a bit more”.

Gender, class and race baiting is all the Democrats have left to offer the country aside from doubling down on reckless spending that has added over $5,000,000,000,000.00 to our national debt since Obama took the oath of office in January 2009.

President Obama has shown a willingness to be as fiscally vulgar as he has been rhetorically and a desperate last-minute taxpayer funded “giveaway” should be expected if things look bleak in late October.

My money is on a “blanket” student loan forgiveness that turns out to be the size of a “dishrag” once the details are revealed. 

In Obama 2.0, hope has been replaced with fear, citizenship swapped with victimization and the promise that “things will get better” substituted with a warning “things could get worse”. 

If voters cannot be “inspired” then they can be stampeded with scare tactics.

Or rented via government programs. 

And as unseemly (at best) and pathetic (at worst) this unprecedented presidential demagoguery sounds to the objective observer, Obama & Co.’s divisive fear-mongering has registered with the populace, especially in the environment the current administration’s policies have created. 

President Obama has no business enjoying even a slight lead aside from the states that have immersed their heads in the blueberry Kool-Aid trough considering the number of Americans who are out of work, the spike in the price of gasoline under his watch and the administration’s sizable contribution to the national debt.

Romney and the Republicans cannot dismiss the Democrats’ “sum of our parts” strategy but must directly address the incendiary charges made against them from president’s mouth and the pro-Obama Super PACs’ direct-mail houses.

The two demographics that will decide the election are women and young people. 

Romney will carry neither group but he must close the gap significantly with the former and marginally with the latter to win in November.