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*How Obama Will Win The 2014 Election – With Help From Karl Rove*
* January 20, 2014By Don Feder*
Conservative iconoclast M. Stanton Evans once aptly remarked that in
America: "We have two parties... and only two. One is the evil party, and
the other is the stupid party." The evil party gave us ObamaCare, an
imperial judiciary and the public morality of a Babylonian brothel.
The stupid party gave us Karl Rove.
On January 15, *The Wall Street Journal* ran a Rove commentary, the
title of which proclaimed, "Independents Will Decide the 2014 Elections:
Debunking the myth that turning out the base alone is enough to win."
Republican consultants are the only group whose failures bring them
business and prestige. On Election Day 2012, Rove – the prognosticator of
prognosticators and seer of seers – predicted Romney would win with 285
electoral votes. He lost with 206, to Obama's 332.
Although they're not exactly in touch with reality, Rove and the
Chris Christie wing of the Republican Party are setting the stage for a
reprise of 2012.
When he ran for reelection, Obama should have been buried in a
landslide. His first term was marked by the highest sustained unemployment
in memory – on top of a mass exodus from the job market. The National Debt
increased by almost half. Two months before the balloting, there was the
humiliation of seeing American bodies dragged through the streets of
Benghazi.
The prospect of ObamaCare made Americans queasy. His administration
was wracked by scandals and the president seemed remote, detached and
inclined to lavish living in a time of mounting misery, an epicurean
socialist who'd managed to combine the ideologies of Saul Alinsky and Marie
Antoinette. His speeches put teleprompters to sleep.
Republicans nominated what the party elite, Rove among them, saw as
the perfect foil for the community-organizer-in-chief – a competent
administrator, proven job-creator, and a candidate who was elected governor
of a deep-blue state. Never mind that he changed his positions the way Zsa
Zsa Gabor changed husbands.
The Democrats took what should have been an advantage in a down
economy and turned it into a negative. Romney was one of those rich
Republicans (it's hard to be successful in business and not get rich) who
didn't care about the little guy, they told us. Instead of a venture
capitalist who had saved ailing businesses, he was a corporate corsair and
tax-cheat who cannibalized companies and slashed jobs.
The middle class never bought this; Obama's base did. The message
was aimed at mobilizing the ideological, the envious, public employees,
angry, single women and the mooch brigade – the Democrats' core
constituency.
Romney's answer was not marked by manly firmness, "The president is
a nice guy, but we just can't afford him for four more years," Mitt the
Mild peeped. Republicans accepted the media line that voters hate negative
campaigning and will punish the perps. Democrats didn't.
Rove isn't just wrong, he's wrong the way Napoleon was wrong when he
invaded Russia. Today, elections aren't won in the middle but on the
fringes. It's not about who can appeal to so-called independents (most are
aligned with one party or the other, but won't admit it) but who can best
identify and mobilize their base. At this, Democrats are particularly adept
and Republicans depressingly inept.
That's why Obama felt comfortable taking positions far to the left
of most Americans in the months leading up to the election: executive
amnesties, contraceptive mandates, gay marriage, his war on domestic energy
production, and telling successful businessmen "You didn't build that,"
leading some to wonder whether he was running for president or commissar.
Despite outward appearances, Obama wasn't campaigning for the votes
of independents. Politics may be the only place where he's not stupid. He
was playing to the Democratic base. That he carried every swing state –
Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida – shows
how well the strategy worked.
Romney shunned wedge issues. The Second Amendment, freedom of
religion, the right to life, and defense of marriage were barely mentioned.
Romney and his handlers took a page from Clinton's 1992 playbook – it's the
economy stupid – and held on for dear life.
On the campaign trail, it was all jobs, jobs, jobs and taxes, taxes,
taxes. As a result, Romney lost, lost, lost, notwithstanding that he took
the independent vote handily, 50% to 45%, nationally. Wait, I thought you
couldn't win without independents. Obama did.
While winning the hearts of independents, the governor failed to
motivate conservatives. Those who voted for him did so reluctantly. Many
found more pressing concerns than voting on Election Day.
As a candidate in Massachusetts, Romney was proudly pro-abortion.
His health care plan (which he absurdly maintained was nothing like
Obama's) provided abortions with a $50-co-pay. Along with an activist
judiciary, he was responsible for making Mass the first gay marriage state.
While he disavowed all of this on entering the national stage,
conservatives were, at the least, skeptical.
When the Republican Party stopped nominating Republicans, voter
participation fell – from 62.3% in 2004 to 57.5% in 2012.
According to pollster George Barna, evangelical and born-again
voters, who constitute 38% of the electorate – more than four times the
proportion of Hispanics – went for Romney by only 60%. Obama got 74% of the
Hispanic vote. If Romney had done as well with these committed Christians,
it would have been his hand on the Bible on January 21, 2013.
Romney's refusal to discuss the core issues religious conservatives
care deeply about (other than as throwaway lines) – life, marriage, family,
freedom of religion – guaranteed that many would stay home.
Once again this year, instead of mobilizing their base, Republicans
like Rove will strive to alienate it, in a desperate bid for votes they'll
never get.
Supposedly, Romney lost Latinos with his silly self-deportation
plan. But in 2008, Juan McCain, Senor Amnesty, got 31% of the Hispanic
vote, compared to 28% for Mitt in 2012. If Romney had done as well – or as
poorly – as McCain, he would have gotten four percentage points more (of 9%
of the electorate) and the outcome, you do the math, would have been
exactly the same.
This year, Wall Street Republicans are advising the party to get
immigration off the table, to avoid further offending Hispanics.
If Republicans rabbits like Speaker John Boehner help the president
to pass another amnesty, two things will happen: Hispanics will still vote
overwhelming Democratic, based on their perceived economic interests.
Hispanic households are twice as likely to benefit from a major welfare
program as white families (40% versus 20%).
At the same time, Main Street voters – who care deeply about
fairness (for taxpayers, workers and legal immigrants), loss of national
identity, national security and the economic consequences of illegal
immigration – will walk away from the GOP in disgust.
Like 2012, this year, the stars should be perfectly aligned for a
GOP blowout.
• In the Senate, Democrats are defending 21 seats. Republicans have
only 14 up. Most of the latter are in red territory. Many Democratic seats
are in states where the government is controlled by Republicans or which
the GOP nominee carried in the last two presidential elections.
• Three-fourths of those polled think our nation is headed in the
wrong direction. In a late December Gallup poll, 72% said "big government"
is the gravest threat to America, the highest percentage since Gallup began
asking this question in 1965. In a Rasmussen poll last week, 46%, a
plurality, said long-term benefits increase unemployment and 53% thought
economic growth was more important than "fairness."
• In the same Rasmussen poll, 51% said they disapprove of the
president's performance, 48% approve. More revealing is how strongly each
sides feels. While 25% strongly approve of Obama, 40% strongly disapprove.
• The December jobs report shows Obamanomics to be the equivalent
of phrenology or flat-earth theory. Economists were expecting 193,000 new
jobs to be created last month. Instead, we got 74,000. Of those, 40,000 are
temporary. The unemployment rate fell from 7% to 6.7% only because another
347,000 workers left the labor force. There are now 92 million outside the
work force – giving us the lowest participation rate in 36 years. If the
Americans who retired early or gave up on ever finding a job were counted,
the unemployment rate would be 10.2%.
• But that's not enough for our income-leveling president, who
wants to throw millions more out of work by raising the minimum wage and
encouraging illegal immigration. Again, he thumbs his nose at ordinary
Americans and ignores economic reality to stoke a fire under his base.
• The Benghazi and IRS scandals continue to percolate. Last week,
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before a congressional committee
that while the attack was going on, the president was told it was
terrorism. Not only did Obama fail to save the lives of four Americans, he
and his lackeys spent weeks lying about the nature of the atrocity,
maintaining it was a spontaneous protest rather than an act of terrorism.
• The Department of Justice announced that no criminal charges
would come out of the IRS's systematic targeting of Tea Party and
conservative groups leading up to the 2012 election. Then came the news
that the DOJ lawyer in charge of the investigation is a long-time Obama
donor.
The foregoing should lead to a wipeout for Democratic congressional
candidates. But RINOS are riding to the rescue of the president and his
party.
Recall Boehner's senseless attack on the Tea Parties (which made him
Speaker) this fall. In a just-published interview in the News Republic,
Senator Juan slammed the Tea Parties and called Fox News "schizophrenic."
Coming from a man who's famous for his borderline psychotic temper, this
must hurt.
A story in *The Wall Street Journal*, in late December, disclosed
that major GOP donors, including the Chamber of Commerce and American
Crossroads (Rove's super PAC), "are preparing an aggressive effort to groom
and support more centrist Republican candidates *(read RINOs)* for Congress
in 2014's midterm elections." In last week's commentary, Rove repeated the
rationale for this losing strategy.
If Rove and Co. succeed, the Party will end up with a lot of Jon
Huntsmans running this year. These more-centrists will avoid social issues,
punt on immigration, come out for "sensible gun control," and scurry to
what the media tells them is the middle.
The evil party can always count on the support of the stupid party.
*Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a
political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website,
DonFeder.com.*
*The following story can be found on the GrassTopsUSA website at
http://www.grasstopsusa.com/df012014.html
<http://grasstopsusa.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=aca8d391b7110c56628ee19de&id=14bb668003&e=c506d16e1c>.
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