Past presidential nominees have seen their support among registered voters increase five points on average after their party's nominating convention, according to Gallup's review of the history of convention bounces going back to 1964.
Romney becomes one of three recent nominees -- and the first Republican -- who did not receive a convention bounce, joining George McGovern in 1972 and John Kerry in 2004.
It is unlikely that Romney would have picked up all Paulians but he might have picked up some, along with more Tea Party people, if he didn't completely do everything possible to ignore both groups during the RNC.
Ignore? That's an interesting way of putting it!
ReplyDeleteGlad I took the time to read Walter Karp's *Indispensable Enemies*. The republican party bosses are intent on pitting a weak challenger against a weak incumbent. A pox on both their houses, which is really the same house.
ReplyDeleteNot that I would do anything so uncivilized like vote, but I am trying to decide who to root for.
ReplyDeleteThe election of Romney might actually be a good thing, since it could turn out to be the full blown destruction of the GOP, of which I would cheer on mightily. Furthermore his war might well accelerate the bankruptcy of the Federal Government, and the end of the influence of the Israeli lobby. It would also reset the anti-war left, and provide resistance to any plans to bring back a draft.
Obama could actually be more dangerous though, since no one is sure how long he can hold out on the plans of the War party. The anti-war left will continue to be muted, and perhaps even co-opted, and he would have an easier time bringing back the draft, under the guise of "National Service".
Furthermore, I could see him taking some kind of action to seize 401Ks, pension plans, and the like, as done in Argentina, in order to prop up the government for a few more years, once government credit dries up.
Both of them are rudderless creeps, that have only gotten as far as they have by family, and political connections.
Obama, is as Vox Day says, innately lazy, so he won't be working day and night, whereas the automaton that is Willard will be, and for all the wrong reasons of course. (and certainly not for any kind of Liberty)
Even for an anti-statist such as myself. It is hard to believe that these two clowns are the best the system can come up with. It is hard to imagine them actually leading a country, much less the one, that is so called leader of the free world. Both of these two flamers seem more suited to being Towelboys at some tawdry public bathhouse on Castro Street.
Just wow, the audacity to call this choice. Aint democracy grand?
They are not really leaders, but more of a middleman( referring to the office of the president) who weighs the interests and favors owed to the many constituents such as the CIA, the banksters, big business, the pentagon, etc. and then acts.
DeleteIt will be ironic as hell if either:
ReplyDelete1) Romney loses a state where Ron Paul did very well like Iowa or NH by just a few thousand or hundred votes
2) Entire precincts simply "vanish" Iowa caucus style after the vote counting is done to the GOP like they did to Paul in Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Idaho, etc.
For some reason, I think the neo-con talk radio types and foxnews fascists will have a slightly different reaction than when it happened against Ron Paul.
It looks like Romney just lost Virginia. Ha ha!
Deletehttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/4/goode-approved-va-presidential-ballot/
In all honesty, even if they rolled out the red carpet for all the Paul delegates and seated each and every one that should have been there, I still wouldn't vote for the guy.
ReplyDeleteI say the same thing... But if Paul has been allowed a fair shake, or had been picked/nominated for VP...?
DeletePerhaps.
I'm glad, though, that it didn't come to that. A man should rejoice when he realizes the price required to trade his loyalty for his convictions has not been met.
Probably it will be better to have a Repub win. At least then the media will cover what's going on.
ReplyDeleteTrue words.
DeleteSsshhhhh!!
ReplyDeleteDo you hear that crumbling sound?
It's the support crumbling from the Republican's base.
The Tea Partiers are only, what, 40-45% of the party? Far from a majority! And the libertarian Republicans are, say, 10-15%?
Now they will have to shut up and like whatever they are given! Their road would never have led to REAL power! And who cares about all their 'single issues'?
The faithful can reap unlimited rewards, as only a bigger, more powerful, more intrusive government can provide.
Besides, who else will they vote for?
And let's face it. The grass-roots voting doesn't really mean much. They often don't vote, and they prickly about requiring politicians to actually do the things they promise during elections!
Besides, it is the Elephants' funding that really wins elections! So long as the Republicans have that, they will have the best election results that money can buy.
So why not give the big F-U to the concerns of the biggest single block in your base?
They'll come around when they toss 'em a few bones, make noises about abortion, pray on tv and the like!
Won't they?
Won't they?
Or, they may decide not to vote.
Or to vote for the other idiot, in order to speed the collapse to completion.
Or they may decide that the elections and those who hold them are illegitimate. And then they may decide to quietly ignore the government whenever no jack-booted thug is close enough to FORCE them to comply.
That sound is the sound of millions of voters realizing that neither party gives a crap about them, or their issues.
That sound is the sound of in-taken breath, multiplied by millions who are only now realizing that all the words about restoring limited government, taxing less, shrinking intrusiveness were as empty and hollow as the men that pronounced them.
That sound is the sound of the Republican Party rejecting the concerns of middle and lower class republicans, of middle and young republicans, in favor of old rich republicans who are on the dole in one or more ways.
Those old, rich republicans will be all but gone in the next 10-15 years, and so will the party that tossed its future overboard to serve them.
RIP GOP!
To me a basic difference is that the Democrats can (mostly) give their base what they (ie more government spending). They have the added advantage of being able to blame the effect,inflation, on greedy businesses. The GOP never delivers on its promise of smaller government. Over time the GOP base should grow discouraged and smaller than the Democratic base. Add to the mix the fact that the Democrats are increasingly belligerent and war mongers can feel at home in either party.
DeleteSometimes I feel as if all we have left is the 2nd Amendment.
ReplyDelete[Anonymous September 4, 5:35PM] may be on to something. Romney is plainly a fake liberal running under conservative guise. His dissing of the libertarian and Tea Party grass roots has a real Walter Karp quality to it. Walter Karp was a kind of modern "left Jeffersonian" in his political views and saw American politics as a "partyarchy" where powerful elites within the twin party machines traded favors to various corporate interests. Unlike marxists he didn't see the partyarchs as subservient to the corporate powers but, at least equal, if not more powerful. Unlike marxists, Karp saw the monopolisation and corporatisation of the economy as a product of the political bargaining process managed by the partyarchs, not as an inherent trend within markets. His view here is closer to the Austrians. Karp saw the political game as a duopoly where the elite partyarchs had 'more in common with each other' than with the grass roots within each party. Under these conditions it could make perfect sense for one team of partyarchs to "throw" an election rather than suffer the indignity of losing power within their party machine to the grassroots. Karp argued this "throwing of the election" , along with the starting of a war for diversionary purposes, met the agenda of the partyarchs.
ReplyDeleteThe great libertarian historian / scholar Joseph Stromberg is a fan of Walter Karp's analysis (see here and here. I'd recommend Karp's "The Politics Of War" as an excellent introduction to Karp's analysis.
To bring matter back to [Anonymous September 4, 5:35PM]'s point. There do seem to be some Karpian shenanigans afoot within the GOP. But to make things even more complicated, there also seem to have been Karpian shenanigans in the behavior of the Obama administration. See this piece by Richard Anderson-Connolly in 'Counterpunch' (see here.)
My guess Karp would explain the situation thus. In the wake of the Crash a massive broad based wave of popular dissent hit America. The election of Obama, the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street and the Ron Paul movement are all just parts of the same wave of dissent. The partyarchs and associated corporate clients needed to defuse dissent from both left and right, but it is actually from 'below'. Essentially both incumbent and challenger are both "duds" in the Karpian sense so the prospect of any serious reform whether of a left wing or right wing nature is about zero.