Tuesday, October 2, 2012

It's the Party That's Skewed, Not the Polls!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The swing state polls have begun swinging decidedly in the President's direction over the past few weeks.  In fact, they are swinging so much in favor of the President that the GOP and it publicity department - Fox News - have begun attacking the polls themselves as being partisan, dishonest, and "skewed."

(That's a sweet irony coming from Fox, because even their own polling shows Obama pulling away from Romney in the swing states.)

Yet the noise from the right-wing fringe continues unabated.  Even Rush Limbaugh is saying that the polls are rigged to show President Obama with so much strength in those "must win" states that they have the intended consequence of disheartening the Republican base.

He wishes.

Polls aren't historically 100% accurate, but neither are they ever drastically inaccurate en masse.  One poll might be off due to a sampling error or another statistical anomaly,  but they are never all off.  (Come on now, Fox, even your own polling is favorable to the President.)  There are many polls at play in the current race, and they are sponsored by a wide variety of interests, including most national news organizations, several special interest groups, and the two major political parties.  These organizations have different reasons for polling and represent diverse interests, but when they all start showing the President pulling into a significant lead, clearly they are representative of what is actually happening - and all of the teeth-gnashing and Bill O'Bullying in the world isn't going to change that hard political reality.

Public sentiment is going toward Obama - at least in the swing states.

The  GOP made its bed with the extremist influences of people like Santorum, Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, Cain, Ryan, and even Palin - and now they have Romney lying in it.   They have him tied securely to their extreme bedpost positions and he has almost no room in which to maneuver in his fight to win the White House.  Unfortunately for the party and their nominee, they will be sharing that bed for a few more weeks, a fact that nobody seems to be happy about - except maybe the other team.

Yes, it is conceivably possible that Mitt Romney could throw a couple of "hail Marys" in the debates (or catch a couple of "hail Marys", or slam down a couple of "hail Marys") and win the election, but don't bet the farm on it.

When the election is over and President Obama is safely re-elected, the landscape will be awash in Republican acrimony and blood.  The fringe will blame Romney for wrecking their party and keeping America under the firm control of a Kenyan Muslim, and Romney and the few remaining Republican moderates will blame the nutbag fringe for making the party look insane to most of the electorate.

It won't be pretty.

And it probably won't be fatal.  The Republicans have the potential for one more good race.  If they can regain control of their party from the Talibangelicals, racists, homophobes, misogynists, greed heads, and morons, they will be on the road to recovery as a viable political institution.  If they can't, 2016 should and probably will be their last hurrah.

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