MILWAUKEE – President Obama has opened the first significant lead of the 2012 campaign in the nation’s dozen top battleground states, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, boosted by a huge shift of women to his side…In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.
The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney’s support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.
Utterly predictable. Probably disastrous.
Big argument on the blogs over whether the War on Women, aka, The Contraception Controversy, is the reason for the sharp decline in the women-under-50 demo.
It’s been pointed out that polls show that women have long preferred “statist” solutions to just about any perceived social problem, so the shift away from Romney was bound to happen sooner or later. I can’t help thinking, however, that Sandra Fluke, the Catholic Church, conservative outrage at HHS, and, of course, Rick Santorum, all had some role in the suddenness of Romney’s loss of female support.
While I agree with David Frum that it’s overstating things to attribute it all to Santorum I think it undeniable that Santorum has a lot to do with it. I think Romney’s problem has been how far to the right he’s had to tilt along with his having to engage in lengthy attack politics. Add in that Obama is getting the benefit of the economy finally recovering and the polls make sense.
But let’s be honest. The big problem is that a lot of Evangelicals don’t want to vote for a Mormon and Romney’s not exactly a terribly good candidate to begin with. Romney has even less charisma than Bush and no one can really state good reasons to vote for him in a truly positive way. The best most can give is that he’s better than the alternatives.
Romney has the least GOP support than any GOP candidate I have seen, and it is because he is completely disconnected with base of the party, and has little appeal to independents. I have no doubt that if Romney loses, the establishment types will all say, “See, if you had just lined up behind our anointed candidate instead of supporting the others, all would have been well.” No, he still would have lost anyway. The real lesson is that the establishment should not anoint candidates.
@Clark
Yes, it was in Frum’s blog that I saw the data suggesting women are more likely than men to vote Democrat. Frum may try to use this to explain away the “Santorum effect,” but I’m not buying it. The turnaround of the under-50 women’s presidential preference took a month and roughly coincided with the HHS brouhaha, the main act for which Santorum was the warm up.
Ramesh Ponnuru at The Corner puts it more politely, but if you think Santorum’s brand of revanchist morality isn’t reason enough to disfavor him, try to think of something you like about him. His two-page answer, starting with an explanation of the Shia-Sunni schism, to the simple question “Will you go to war with Iran?” Or maybe his what-is-he-smoking idea that manufacturing will make a comeback in the U.S., if only we don’t tax manufacturers (which a lot of taxpayers would suddenly discover they are)
As for Romney’s Mormon problem, I don’t know that it’s confined to Evangelicals–though by reputation, anyway, they’re the ones who consider Mormonism a “cult.” (I’d agree, but not because that label distinguishes it from other faiths, Evangelicals included).
In the current issue of NR (sub req’d), Kevin Williamson has taken a perceptive look at Mormonism as a political liability, and wishes it weren’t so. I agree. I also think that complaining about Romney’s lack of charisma, his being an establishment candidate, his not appealing to the base, or anything else you can think of, fades into irrelevance. Better than the alternative? Not even close. Even Bradlaugh agrees.
John, the problem wasn’t an anointed candidate. The problem was that as bad as Romney was everyone else was a lot worse. I think the bigger issue is a general problem for elected office. Why aren’t talented people running? Well look at what we put them through. Is it any surprise that the people we’d probably like to run want nothing to do with it? The incentives are quite bad in that the public has a pretty negative view of politics in general – add in the ridiculous polarization and “gotcha” tabloid media landscape and it’s no surprise the type of people who are attracted to elected office.
Jeeves, I agree the Mormon issue isn’t confined to Evangelicals. I suspect once Romney has the nomination sewn up that Democratic attacks will be far worse than anything seen in the primaries. As for whether Romney is better than the alternatives I’m trying to think of which alternative would be better. All the ones I saw running except perhaps for Hunstman (who ran a horrible campaign) were just plain bad candidates.
John, the problem wasn’t an anointed candidate. The problem was that as bad as Romney was everyone else was a lot worse. I think the bigger issue is a general problem for elected office. Why aren’t talented people running? Well look at what we put them through. Is it any surprise that the people we’d probably like to run want nothing to do with it? The incentives are quite bad in that the public has a pretty negative view of politics in general – add in the ridiculous polarization and “gotcha” tabloid media landscape and it’s no surprise the type of people who are attracted to elected office.
Jeeves, I agree the Mormon issue isn’t confined to Evangelicals. I suspect once Romney has the nomination sewn up that Democratic attacks will be far worse than anything seen in the primaries. As for whether Romney is better than the alternatives I’m trying to think of which alternative would be better. All the ones I saw running except perhaps for Hunstman (who ran a horrible campaign) were just plain bad candidates.
Clark, I think there were some decent candidates in the 2012 field. Perry isn’t all that smart, but he has good political judgment, better than Romney’s. If he had more practice debating, he would have been a decent candidate. Bachmann needed to tone down her personal attacks, but she was a solid conservative. Santorum is also a pretty good fusionist conservative, and the bad ideas he has (like banning contraception) would never happen. Gingrich is a visionary and has the best record of actual conservative accomplishments of any American alive.
Jeeves, is Romney better than the alternative (Obama)? I’m really not sure. I think a good case can be made that conservatism would be better off had Dukakis won in 1988. Given the recession, he would have been a one-termer, and the Republican president (probably Dole) would have gotten credit for the 90s boom. With a GOP president and a GOP Congress, we might have made some real accomplishments. None of us would have heard of David Souter, and we might even have had a President Kemp in 2000. I greatly fear that even if Romney wins, he’ll do more harm than good.
Will I vote for Romney? Probably, unless I have something else to do that night. He isn’t getting any of my money, and no yard sign. I would have happily voted for any of the other candidates above, and I would have crawled over broken glass to vote for Gingrich. In a close election, I think intensity does matter.
I like Romney, he is a Dick Nixon, but not as liberal as Nixon was, and Nixon was more liberal. Romney is a candidate that appeals more to Orange County Ca, upper- middle class whites versus Orange County Tex, lower-middle class whites. Basically, I’m tried of the mormon thing since believe it or not Mormons as a whole are more conseravtive than evangelicals are. Any white person that would vote for Obama after the Martin versus Zimmerman case, well what can I say.
Jack Kemp was terrible. Romney not the best on immirgation but Jack Kemp believed in a more larger legalization of hispanics. Jack Kemp was only a tax cutter and didn’t care about changing demographics which have made Texas poorer.
Actually, manufactorers are not going as much overseas because its cheaper to use robots, and the biggest demand is for workers to know how to program them. Romney is a little more realistic on the tax cuts. High tax cuts don’t deal with the high costs, and Republicans which are more pro-defense don’t think that a lot of tax cuts could hurt defense.