{"id":2806,"date":"2012-06-18T00:30:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T05:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2806"},"modified":"2012-06-17T19:45:09","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T00:45:09","slug":"mitt-romney-hubris-exorcist-fighting-hubris-with-hubris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2806","title":{"rendered":"Mitt Romney, Exorcist (fighting hubris with hubris)"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Obama has had some bad breaks over the past two weeks, and allegedly some Democrats are starting to worry<\/a> about his prospects for re-election this November. There was the politically naive statement that “the private sector is doing just fine” following a series of discouraging economic reports, the refusal of prominent Democrats to support Obama’s vilification of Bain Capital, reports on strong GOP fundraising for the fall, polls showing Romney and Obama running neck and neck (not a good sign given that Obama is by now a well-known commodity, whereas Romney still has a chance to sell himself to the public), the resounding victory of Republican Scott Walker in the Wisconsin governor recall election, and the real possibility that the Supreme Court will soon vitiate the heart of Obama’s signature first-term achievement, i.e. the Health Care Reform Act. <\/p>\n

That doesn’t sound good. But as some pundits point out<\/a>, November is still months away and a lot can happen in the meantime. In fact, I read two things this past week that could tilt things back in Obama’s favor. They aren’t so much positive features of Obama so much as they are foibles of today’s Republican Party. First off, it turns out that the Libertarian Party has a candidate, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson<\/a>, who might actually get some attention by Election Day. Johnson hopes to attract the GOP faction that fell in love with Ron Paul and gave him almost 10% of the vote in the GOP primaries. So, if Mr. Johnson runs a good third party candidacy and picks off 1% of the vote, well you know that 1% was NOT going to otherwise go for Obama; quite the opposite. If the present polls are any indication, the upcoming election will be a very close one, and just a 1% tilt away from Romney could lock-in a second Obama term.<\/p>\n

The other shadow over Romney’s prospects regards his VP pick. At least one observer believes<\/a> that the VP horserace is coming down to Rob Portman and Paul Ryan. Portman would be a safe pick, but given all the conservative momentum in the GOP today, Romney might feel compelled to pick a guy who could energize the Tea Party types. Ryan would certainly get that crowd going. <\/p>\n

But in my opinion, Ryan would do for Romney what Sarah Palin did for McCain in 2008. Not because Ryan is pretty and stupid; just the opposite, the guy has both the body and the mind of a conservative wonk. (And not that Palin is all that pretty; she has a trailer-park kind of glamor, you might say.) But just as Palin did in 2008, Ryan will give a small but crucial segment of voters a reason to stay away from the GOP ballot line on the first Tuesday in November. That crucial component will be retirees in Florida and soon-to-be retirees in other economically challenged swing states like Ohio. Ryan has floated some bold plans to bring the national budget back into balance, and these plans focus a lot of the necessary cost savings on benefits to the elderly (mainly Social Security and Medicare). <\/p>\n

The Obama campaign will not hesitate to paint Ryan as Doctor Death to your upcoming retirement plans. This could be the one-percent effect needed by Obama in Ohio and Florida. If Romney loses either state, he will join former rivals Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain on the GOP \/ Fox News lecture and commentary circuit. Or go back to Wall Street to make some real money (and not lose a fortune like former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine did after his fall from political grace; Republicans are much better around big money).<\/p>\n

Ah, humanity. It’s always interesting when a situation comes up where ego and ideology causes a group to make a choice that anyone outside of the loop can clearly see to be a loser. Romney and Ryan — that would be a clear example of hubris. And ironically, it would allow Barack Obama to walk away despite all of his own hubris, e.g. the man who would turn “the rise of the oceans” and let “our planet [begin] to heal”. <\/p>\n

Oh well. Even if Romney blows it, Obama will take some well deserved shots to the gut in the upcoming campaign, and will have a fingernail-biting election night (and early morning, most likely). If nothing else, Mr. Romney will perform a much-needed hubris exorcism on Barack Obama. Perhaps Obama might yet become a problem-solving President, a guy who learns how to make things happen despite all of the political lunacy (in the Bill Clinton tradition).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama has had some bad breaks over the past two weeks, and allegedly some Democrats are starting to worry about his prospects for re-election this November. There was the politically naive statement that “the private sector is doing just fine” following a series of discouraging economic reports, the refusal of prominent Democrats to support […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2806"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2816,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions\/2816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}