Obama

The Hunt for an October Surprise

Mark Noonan41 Comments

We’ve got two – count ’em, two! – potential October Surprises in the rumor mill:

1.  Obama inks a deal with Iran to give up the nuclear program.

2.  Bottom-feeding attorney Gloria Allred has some scandal to uncork on Romney (or Ryan) in the closing days of the campaign.

A deal with Iran is possible but highly unlikely – at best it would be some sort of nebulous agreement by Iran to say that they will consider the possibility of reviewing the option of negotiating a nuke deal with us at some future date.  Still, if anything is done then the MSM will go ape over it making it out as the most important foreign policy achievement since World War Two.  I don’t think, though, that it would affect the election – most people are not too concerned about Iran and, at any rate, those who are set to vote for Romney long ago tuned Obama and his Administration out – such a deal, if struck, would make a lot of MSM noise but essentially drop in to a bottomless pit of public indifference.

Something from Allred is also very much possible – remember, it was Allred who torpedoed Cain earlier this year, ruined Whitman’s campaign in California in 2010 and nearly destroyed Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial bid in 2002.  She does this by coming up with someone who claims to have been horribly treated by the Republican target and then counts on the compliant MSM to carry the ball.

Given the background we have on Romney and Ryan it does seem implausible that there is any sort of a sexual scandal – to be sure, either Ryan or Romney might have had indiscretions in the past (all of us are, after all, fallen human beings and prey to weakness and sin), but it seems unlikely.  It certainly seems to be highly unlikely that there is any such story of recent vintage to be told about the men.  I believe it would more likely be some woman who claimed discrimination by Romney in employment or, possibly, a story that at some point Romney (or Ryan) employed an illegal immigrant for some sort of domestic service.   Remember, there doesn’t have to be a shred of evidence in the accusation – all there has to be is some sort of connection with the accuser to Romney or Ryan.  As it will be set off late in the campaign, there will be extremely limited time (and absolutely no inclination on the part of the MSM) to check the veracity of the story.  Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit, in light of the Allred rumor, is advising that Romney inform the MSM outfits that – win or lose – any false accusation will result in a libel suit with all sorts of lengthy and embarrassing discovery launched against the MSMers who report a lie.  That is good advice – but while it might give some MSMers pause, it won’t actually defuse the hand grenade.

As the wheels are coming off the Obama cart, we must expect something to happen (as an aside, the fact that we’re getting these rumors indicates that people deep inside Team Obama know that doom impends – if they were really confident of victory, none of this sort of thing would be going on).  This will become even more true if polling by Wednesday doesn’t show any post-3rd-debate improvement for Obama (and it is highly unlikely that it will).  Obama is heading for a defeat and doesn’t want to be defeated – and his team is chock full of knee-to-groin Chicago political operatives.  Political operatives who not only want to win but are also likely worried about how a Romney Justice Department might view some of the actions taken since January 20th, 2009.

Will a scandal bomb work?  Would, say, the revelation that Romney employed an illegal or discriminated against women in employment throw the race to Obama?  Would, that is, such a late-in-the-game bit of scandal-mongering convince people that Romney is such a lousy person that its better to stick with Obama for four more years?  Highly unlikely.  It might shave a point off of Romney’s total, but as I expect he’ll get at least 53% of the vote, that won’t be enough.  But, on the other hand, it could work.  Time will tell if it is tried, if it is effective and whether or not Romney has prepared for this as he’s turned out prepared for every last thing which has come his way in 2012 – and my bet is that they do have a prepared response for anything Team Obama might throw at them.  But, we shall see – just get ready for anything to happen over the next 16 days.

 

Obama, Hillary, Benghazi and an Electoral Collapse?

Mark Noonan69 Comments

From Allahpundit discussing the rumor that Hillary is to be thrown underbus by Obama over at Hot Air:

My guess is no, they wouldn’t dare, but the Daily Caller and Tom Maguire make a fair point. In the span of about 18 hours, we’ve had Biden and Carney each insist that blame for Benghazi’s security failures lies outside the White House. It’s State that’s responsible for protecting U.S. diplomats in the field, which means if the buck doesn’t stop with Obama here, then it must stop with you-know-who. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, as cabinet members are expected to take the heat for the president when something goes badly wrong. But in this case you-know-who has her eye on running in 2016 — possibly against (heh) Biden himself — and surely doesn’t want Benghazi staining the foreign policy credentials she’s worked hard to build.

Throw Bill Clinton, official Obama campaign surrogate, into the mix and we’ve got the makings of a nuclear clusterfark of ego, ass-covering, presidential ambition, and Clintonian drama…

For us on the right this is a “pass the popcorn” moment – but we’ll likely not get it until after November 6th – if Obama loses then Obama-bots will try to lay some of the blame on Hillary (others will seek to blame Biden) while Team Clinton will be desperate to build an impervious narrative that Obama was a failure from start to finish while Hillary heroically tried to keep him up on the rails for four years.  And even if Obama wins, given that Hillary has said she won’t accept re-appointment as SecState, there will be an effort to blame all that is wrong foreign policy-wise on Hillary, with the Clintons of course trying to burnish Hillary’s record and denigrating Obama’s.

Have I mentioned to anyone here yet my view that if Obama does lose in 2012, he’ll try again in 2016?  If I haven’t, then there it is – my view is that Obama will be more infuriated than anything else by an electoral rejection and so will try a come back in 2016.  It has happened before – Grover Cleveland after being defeated for re-election came back four years later to win a second term.  And here’s another prediction:  if Obama were to seek a second term after being defeated in 2012, the Democrats will nominate him.  Why?  Because the party bosses dare not do otherwise – to choose someone else over Obama would be a catastrophic blow against large sections of the Democrat base and so they would simply not turn out for the general election.  But, we’ll see about all that.

Meanwhile:  as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton bears a great deal of responsibility for whatever failures happened in Benghazi.  Ultimately, of course, it is the President who bears final responsibility.  In their dream world, both Hillary and Obama want blame assigned somewhere else and that, in my view, is why both State and the White House so eagerly leaped on the twaddle about a video causing a spontaneous riot which got out of hand:  had that story been true, then it would have mostly excused the White House and State (not entirely, of course, given the pre-attack calls for greater security).  I don’t know if it was a lie created out of whole cloth by State and/or White House or if it was something that someone just happened to remember at an opportune moment, but where ever the nonsense came from, Obama and Hillary were pleased to peddle it – for the self-serving reason that it got them off the hook.

Coupled with Obama’s disastrous debate performance, I think that Benghazi is causing a severe meltdown in support for Obama (and perhaps down-ballot Democrats, as well).  Keeping in mind that I always saw this race as “advantage Romney” and that if Romney were to win it would be by a substantial margin, I still view these two events as a catalyst for an Obama collapse – not just Romney winning, but winning very big.  As things stand right now, only about 10 States can be considered locked down by Obama.   As they include California and New York (with a total of 84 electoral votes between them) this keeps Obama definitely in the hunt for 270 – but this is a gigantic shift from as little as two weeks ago.

There is still a lot of time to go.  Two more Presidential debates are on tap.  Obama and his Democrats have a bucket of money to spend.  But the race has clearly shifted – Obama is behind and has to do something to change the dynamic if he wants to win.

UPDATE:  I want to quote from Mark Steyn’s article about Benghazi because it perfectly captures just what a disastrous failure this was:

…the State Department outsourced security for the Benghazi consulate to Blue Mountain, a Welsh firm that hires ex-British and Commonwealth Special Forces, among the toughest hombres on the planet. The company’s very name comes from the poem “The Golden Journey To Samarkand,” whose words famously adorn the regimental headquarters of Britain’s Special Air Service in Hereford. Unfortunately, the one-year contract for consulate security was only $387,413 – or less than the cost of deploying a single U.S. soldier overseas. On that budget, you can’t really afford to fly in a lot of crack SAS killing machines, and have to make do with the neighborhood talent pool. So who’s available? Blue Mountain hired five members of the Benghazi branch of the February 17th Martyrs’ Brigade and equipped them with handcuffs and batons. A baton is very useful when someone is firing an RPG at you, at least if you play a little baseball. There were supposed to be four men heavily armed with handcuffs on duty that night, but, the date of Sept. 11 having no particular significance in the Muslim world, only two guards were actually on shift…

Will The REAL ‘post racial’ Barack Obama, Please Stand Up?

Leo Pusateri59 Comments

As the Daily Caller reports, a video of a 2007 speech from Barack Obama has surfaced.  An astonishing video, to be sure.

Gone is Obama’s measured midwestern, pedantic dialect.  Gone is Obama’s ‘post racial’ tone.  Gone is Obama’s supposed distance from Pastor Jeremiah Wright (you remember “G-d DAMN AMERICA!” Reverend Wright-you know, the guy that Obama sat in front of for over 20 years, that he supposedly never listened to).   In fact, in the video, Obama embraces Jeremiah Wright, naming him as his mentor and counselor.

Class warfare rhetoric is rampant in this video, as is his allusion to the principles inherent in liberation theology.

It is said that the true character of a person can be seen by how that individual acts when he or she feels that they’re not being watched.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Barack Obama,

unplugged and unhinged.

What? You Expect obAMATEUR to Obey the Law? Are You Kidding???????

tiredoflibbs30 Comments

The WARN Act – a FEDERAL law requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to notify workers at least 60 days in advance of a mass layoff or plant closing, due to cuts in their programs and contracts.   Huge cuts are coming to the defense department on Jan. 2nd.  This would require contractors to notify their affected employees that they will not have a job come Jan. 2nd, 60 days before.

This will mean that due to obAMATEUR’s cuts and by federal law, these people will get their notices just before the election.

The obAMATEUR administration has told the government contractors to HOLD OFF on the layoff notices.  AND THE GOVERNMENT SAID IT WOULD COVER LEGAL COSTS IF CONTRACTORS ARE FORCED TO SLASH THEIR PAYROLLS BECAUSE OF THE CUTS AND THE REQUIREMENTS BY THE WARN ACT!!!

So again, obAMATEUR has no respect for the law when it gets in HIS way.  His way being the poor timing just before the election.  Hundreds of thousands are expected to be affected by the cuts.  BUT HEY, IT IS AN ELECTION YEAR!  His reelection is more important than those of hundreds of thousands of Americans.  I thought he represents all the people – only those that serve his interests and these don’t.

This attempt bot “pay” these companies’ costs is nothing more than a tax payer funded BRIBE to ignore the WARN Act and help HIM achieve his desire to remain pResident.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/28/news/economy/spending-cuts-fiscal-cliff/index.html

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/industry/259517-graham-says-hell-block-reimbursements-in-layoff-notice-fight

Obama Lies And Liberals Are Stupid

Cluster82 Comments

This is a continuation of the “Why Romeny Will Win Thread” and I admittedly am violating my new rule of only speaking positively of Romeny and trying to stay away from posting Obama bashing threads, but as I previously mentioned, there is a lot of material to bash Obama over, so once again I succumb to the target rich environment.

Obama is not even trying to conceal his lies anymore as he continue to get away with it, so like any criminal, he is becoming more brazen. Add to that, his minions don’t seem to care, or worse, don’t know the difference, and of course, most of the Obama loving media will gloss right over it. Let’s start with his most recent lie on the embassy attacks in Benghazi, of which for days, his regime continued to define the attacks as “spontaneous”, and continued to blame the attacks on the Internet video, of which everyone knew from the onset that neither of those statements were true. Yet he even continues to parrot that line at his most recent UN speech just the other day, and again, not much mention in the media, or from his completely stupid base. Let’s continue with his lie about Romney’s taxes, of which he is still lying about Romney’s tax rate being lower than the middle class, which in reality, it is not. The net effective tax rate for those making $50,000 to $75,000 is approximately 7% -8%, and those making $75,000 – $100,000, pay approximately 10%- 12% effective rate. Romney paid approximately 14%, which was his effective  cap rate tax, and is obviously higher than the other effective tax rates, so once again, Obama lies and his base is stupid.

Now let’s move on to the Affordable Care Act, which contained the personal mandate that was questionably constitutional, and was sold to the American people as a mandate and not a tax. This also dovetails into Obama’s pledge not to raise any taxes on those making $250,000 or less. Enter the Supreme Court, which passed the mandate by turning it into a “tax”, following the arguments put forth by the Obama regime. So, Obama lied twice on this issue – once by selling it as a mandate, not a tax, and secondly, by breaking his promise not to raise taxes on those making $250,000 or less. Finally, let’s revisit Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to cut the deficit in half, of which he hasn’t even tried, by submitting budgets that contain $1 trillion plus deficits, and raising the debt by more than $5 trillion dollars in one four year term. So once again, Obama lied and his base is stupid.

These are just four blatant examples of Obama’s dishonesty, and his loyal bases ignorance. I invite everyone to add more. Have fun.

Excellent Polling Analysis

Mark Noonan53 Comments

Geraghty quoting GOP pollster McLaughlin over at NRO:

…How campaigns try to sway polling results: “In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign’s lobbying the networks’ exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout.” (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) “In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis.”

On what a realistic partisan breakdown would look like: “The 2004 national exit polls showed an even partisan turnout and Bush won 51–48. Had it been the +4 Democratic edge of 2000, John Kerry would have been president. 2008 was a Democratic wave that gave them a +7 partisan advantage. 2010 was a Republican edge. There’s no wave right now. There are about a dozen swing states where in total millions of voters who voted in 2008 for Obama are gone or have not voted since. There are also hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and others who voted from rural, exurban or suburban areas in 2004 for Bush who did not vote in 2008, because they were not excited by McCain or thought he would lose. They are currently planning to vote mainly as a vote against President Obama.”

What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models…

Given that our venal MSM is entirely in the tank for Obama it wouldn’t take much lobbying or pressure to get an MSM poll – or a poll done independently for an MSM outfit – to skew their polling to advantage Obama.  Good to remind everyone at this time that back before the primaries were even over I was saying that the polling will show Obama in good shape right through election day no matter who we nominated.  First off this is because polling – for a variety of reasons – almost invariably over-states Democrat strength.  Secondly because the MSM believes it is their moral duty to have our first African-American President re-elected.  Their whole worldview is at stake here – if Obama loses, then they will feel it as a bitter, personal loss.  They also must know, by now, that they are destroying their credibility with all non-liberal Americans and they clearly don’t care…saving Obama trumps all for 90% of the MSMers (which includes, by the way, a very large number – perhaps a majority – of those who work at Fox News; maybe not the on-camera talent, but the people who select and write the stories).

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