Pulpit collapse!
Everybody likes to talk about the presidents "bully pulpit" which is a reference to something that Theodore Roosevelt said over a century ago in reference to the presidents ability to, at times, influence the policy and the direction that the nation takes and follows. What is less known is the fact that presidential challengers also have a pulpit that they use to espouse their views and delineate their differences with the person in charge of the nation whom they are opposing.
But, you can do things to lose that pulpit! And, that is what Mitt Romney has done over the last two weeks. If his comments over the president's policy on Libya made just as news came out about the death of ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were considered by many to be very intemperate, the comments that came out this week about Romney's feelings about those among the forty seven percent who do not pay income tax were very devastating to his campaign. We are a couple of days out from the release of those comments now and the results and the fallout from them are now beginning to roll and cascade in.
To help Romney's cause, and, in the aftermath of comments that president Obama made on the David Letterman show that one has to be president of all of the people, Romney came out yesterday in an interview with Telemundo down in Florida when he told Latino audiences that he was going to be president of one hundred percent of the people. Romney stated that politics had divided the nation and that it was time now to draw back together. This morning on CNN, Anna Navarro, a Republican political operative and sometimes surrogate for the Romney campaign, when asked about the Romney appearance, stated that he needed to appear before Latinos every day of the remaining election cycle if he were to do any good in reviving his support among this crucial group. She also stated that she was going to vote for Romney no matter what. The question is the "what"!
Romney looked tired and forced and phony on that Telemundo interview and it is apparent that he has lost his credibility factor among so many in this very fractured electorate. The critical middle may no longer be listening to him any longer except to nod and say "right" and move on to other things. A poll taken in the last 24 hours stated that around 20% will be more likely to vote for Romney because of what he said while 35% are less likely to vote for him. Among independents it is 14% in Favor and 29% against.
We still have the debates coming up and they could revive the Romney campaign if president Obama were to happen to make some sort of major gaffe. However, people like Obama far more than they like Mitt Romney and are far more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt if he were to do so. Romney has no margin of error at all and the extreme amount of practice that he has been doing for these debates emphasizes just how important that his campaign feels that they are. The problem with the debates is whether anyone will really believe anything that
Romney is saying and whether Romney himself even believes what is coming forth from his mouth.
When we think about that bully pulpit we think about how George W. Bush lost it by staring out of air force one's window at hurting people down on the gulf coast three days after the hurricane Katrina event on his way back to Washington D.C.. Many do not remember that Bush returned to the Gulf Coast at least ten times after that event because all that they can remember is that photograph of Bush looking out the window of that plane so detached from the suffering that was going on down below. It may be the same with Romney if all they can remember is a man standing up before a group of fat cats down in Boca Raton Florida calmly dismissing half of the electorate as victims who think that they are entitled to help from a government all too willing to provide it for them.
So! Mitt Romney can go through the motions of a campaign for the next forty some odd days but the people that he most needs to reach may have already made up their minds and would probably tell us that they simply wish that he would simply go away! Humpty has fallen from the wall and all the kings horses and all the kings men and all the kingmakers money can not put Humpty back together again! When people come to the conclusion that you don’t care that gives them every right not to care for you either. It takes a lot to pee off the American people and Mitt Romney has worked very hard and overtime to reach the position that, as we look back, that he so richly deserves. There are those close to Romney that will tell you that he is nothing like what we are seeing in public and that, in reality, tells the whole story in a nutshell. He is a man who lives in a divided world of “us” and “them” and he is very kind to “us” and is merely very patronizing to “them”. So much of America saw the real Mitt Romney down in Boca
Raton and so many simply have had enough and didn’t much care for what they saw. There are forty seven days left until the election. Forty seven days left to remember the forty seven percent that Mitt Romney despises so much.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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