By Selwyn Duke
According to the script, Barack Obama’s campaign should be leaking some serious oil. The economy is listing badly, with an anemic growth rate and a record 88 million Americans no longer in the labor force. The Middle East is spinning out of control, with anti-American riots and Islamists gaining power. Obama has exacerbated the racial divide at home with irresponsible rhetoric and policies, and diminished the United States abroad with apology tours and bows before potentates. His administration is ridden with scandal, from Fast and Furious to Solyndra to the rape of GM bondholders to Benghazi. He has stifled domestic job creation by opposing the Keystone Pipeline and prohibiting Gulf drilling while shipping jobs overseas by financing oil exploration in Brazil. He has increasingly acted undemocratically in ruling by executive decree and has trampled our long-held understanding of religious freedom with his contraception mandate. And this is a mere sampling of the transgressions of the most incompetent and corrupt presidency in American history.
So Republicans are befuddled when they see Obama leading among voters. One common explanation is that the polls are rigged. And while they’re no doubt flawed and the race likely closer than they indicate, it’s unreasonable to think Obama isn’t at least slightly ahead of Mitt Romney; moreover, if Romney’s internal polls told a different story, he’d certainly trumpet them.
The other common explanation is that Romney is a poor candidate, too ideologically weak, too stiff, too blue-blooded, and too hard to connect with. But to whom are we comparing him?
Read the rest here.
