All is not lost for the GOP—if it has the courage to rally its white base.
With less than seven weeks to go, President Obama still seems to be holding a small but decisive lead in the presidential race—some 2.7% according to Real Clear Politics’ average of the polls on the morning of September 19. And, even more alarming for the GOP: Obama’s near-landslide lead in the Electoral College map, which Real Clear Politics puts at 332-206 for Obama.
It is now clear that the Romney-Ryan strategy of ignoring social issues and campaigning solely on the bad economy is a failure. One recent poll even put the hapless Republican ticket at zero percent among blacks.
The Obama economic record is indeed poor and the bad news keeps coming: unemployment over 8 percent for 43 straight months, the deficit has reached over 16 trillion, labor force participation is at a 30-year low and $4 gas is here yet again. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s September 13 announcement of a massive new money-printing program (“QE 3”), obviously risking inflation, is an outright admission of failure (which Romney, curiously, has failed to exploit).
So why aren’t independents, working class voters (the old Reagan Democrats from battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan) and others flocking to the Republicans? Perhaps it is because elections are not decided solely on tax and budget issues.
According to a recent Zogby poll, Romney leads Obama among whites by a 52-38 percent margin. But he is actually losing self-identified NASCAR fans (mostly working class whites) by 1 percentage point (44-43 percent). “That’s a number you would never expect to see,” commented pollster John Zogby. [Zogby: Romney Running Worse Than McCain in ‘08, By David A. Patten, Newsmax.com, September 17, 2012]
Because he is not getting the support of these Reagan Democrats, Romney is actually doing worse among whites than John McCain in 2008!
But all is not lost for the GOP—if it has the courage to rally its white base.