“Rick Perry’s fading, Herman Cain’s surging and what about Mitt Romney? He’s running in place,” as ABC News reports.
“The past and present Republican front-runner is back on top of a fresh ABC News-Washington Post poll out today, but he hasn’t moved an inch since last month. In September, Romney was the choice of 25 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in our poll, and one month later, he’s still the choice of 25 percent of them.
“Compare that steadiness to the volatility of former front-runner Rick Perry, whose support plummeted from 29 percent last month to 16 percent in October.
“And then there’s the 2012 race’s current ‘it’ candidate Herman Cain who quadrupled his support in the span of one month, blasting off from 4 percent in September to 16 percent in today’s poll.
“So where does Romney go from here? While Romney might not be lighting anyone on fire, one Romney aide told our John Berman, ‘It takes somebody to beat somebody.’ And lucky for the former Massachusetts governor, nobody yet seems to be the ‘somebody’ who is a breakout choice.
The rest of the article is here.
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Chris Christie is not running for president, according to media sources. A press conference is set for 10 a.m. This shouldn’t be a surprise; it was just “wishful thinking” from supporters. The GOP faces the same issue: Who will beat Obama.
Romney is using an unfortunate recent democratic party strategy of letting others prove their unworthiness of the office and winning by default. It is also the established pattern of media coverage of the candidates.
Here is how elections work in our corporate controlled media.
September 23 FB Post
They need a horse race, so watch for the media to focus on Rick Perry’s faults until Romney and others catch up. Why? I have heard figures into the high 80% of Presidential campaign funds goes into advertising a.k.a. corporate media coffers.
The media chooses for us who we are able to vote for in the general elections.
Poll after poll shows Ron Paul the winner or top finisher of these debates but he is never mentioned in the Corporate media. Why? Ron Paul has consistently criticized and taken on the bankers and military industrial complex. Possibly the two biggest funders of both major political parties.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/politics/jan-june07/mediaprimary_06-12.html
Ben,
Why do you think Romney’s strategy is unfortunate?I think It’s the smartest thing for him to do. Let the others weed themselves out of the race by their incompetent remarks. He knows he is the front runner why should he risk saying or doing something stupid until the primary? Obama is doing the same thing(for the most part) lying low until he knows who he is running against.
Pete
The media needs a horse race to ensure campaign dollars being spent on advertising
http://news.yahoo.com/tight-race-iowa-kicks-off-white-house-campaign-142554264.html
I think the real question is can the forces currently divided between Bachman, Gingrich, Santorum, Paul, Cain and Perry coalesce behind a single candidate to challenge Romney?
Fundraising number are due out in the next few days and it appears the only ones raising any real money are Perry, Romney and Paul, which could mean we see a few of the lower performing candidates dropping out.
If a ‘right’ candidate does emerge, and Perry is looking dead on his feet so it could be Paul, this is an interesting battle testing the power of the Tea Party faction, and potentially splitting the Rep party. If Romney emerges without a single strong Republican primary opponent because ‘it takes somebody to beat somebody’, which may be the smartest thing I have heard come out of the Romney camp yet, he could wrap it up quickly.
I am really hoping Perry can coalesce the right wing forces, because the nation needs this debate and the question at its core about the governing philosophy of the Republican party, answered once and for all.
Only by exposing the dominant Republican philosophy can President Obama hope to govern and accomplish anything if he gets a second term.
Steve,
I agree, the debate of what kind of nation we want to shape for the future needs to happen.
Pete,
What we have done is made the institution that affects our lives at every level into a game. What ever it takes to win. Stay silent instead of being steadfast on where you stand on issues. It is the absolutely failed political idea that the ends justify the means. I can’t tell you how many times I was pressured to join this club, organization, and always pressured towards a top two political party in the pursuit of “victory”. “Unless you’re in office you can’t create the change you want” was the mantra. Compromise your convictions and principles away to eek out a couple more votes. But when convictions and principles are compromised who did we actually elect? This is the exact opposite way that real change actually happens. Real change happens in our homes, communities, in the streets, and collective social mores that hit a threshold where those who control policy will respond.
It is unfortunate due to the fact we won’t really know where Romney really is on specific issues because he just needs to let the others destroy themselves. I think this is one of the reasons the Obama administration is so disappointing. He went out and made great speeches of where he was at on the issues and we bit it hook, line, and sinker. Don’t get me wrong I understand the President is actually pretty limited on reform and legislation.
Where President Obama has totally failed and has opened the door to a defeat in 2012 is he hasn’t stood for anything but compromise. I have said this here before, the moderates or middle of the roaders liked the end policies that were passed back when we had two distinct political parties 1) for the people, poor, social programs, workers rights 2) big business, deregulation, tax cuts, and very little if no social programs.
These two distinct ideologies would demand their ultimate goal and compromise to the middle. The democratic party has tried to look and sound like republicans in pursuit of corporate money for funding their political party since Clinton due to the union funding drying up, 25% to 6% union workforce since 1980. Or the democratic party remains silent allowing America to fail to show how poor the republican party is at governing. This has led us to the compromises of the center right democratic party demands and the far right republican demands to a securely conservative compromise.
http://www.benemery.org/1/post/2010/4/letting-america-fail-to-win-an-election.html
One of my favorite quotes
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi
I agree that the debate about what kind of a nation we want to be needs to happen, but at the same time I’m concerned that such a debate may be preemptively circumscribed to exclude some issues that are popular among a majority of citizens, but not among a majority of politicians.
For instance, at this moment in history, a strong New Deal type jobs program, funded by the federal government, is probably beyond the scope of debate, and would not be seriously considered by either party.
Standing firm against cuts in Social Security and Medicare, although popular, is more difficult now because our Democratic president keeps urging that such cuts be “on the table.” (or, was that last week?)
Prosecuting the financial perps responsible for the meltdown is widely popular, but — given Obama’s coziness with the financial sector, and his effort to thwart Eric Schneiderman — is unlikely to be debated.
Increased regulation of the financial sector is popular, but unlikely to be considered or debated.
Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is widely supported, but not likely to be seriously debated.
Are we as a nation going to continue to drift toward more and more extreme plutocracy? Will we acknowledge this drift, much less debate it?
In other words, can we even have the kind of debate that we really need?
Don,
You concern is exactly what my long comment was about. Neither big two leadership want to have the debate. The both are so beholden on big special interest money they cannot rock the status quo boat to much because in their flawed strategy means they would not be able to compete and claim “victory”. The people are begging for one of the big two to take their side. Until one of the big two stand for the people we will continue our downward spiral because the powers that be don’t consider the US economy the future and have abandoned us for the emerging Asian market. The best way of changing our government is by electing those who overtly want to reform money/ campaigns and who refuse to participate in this destructive paradigm. I am not talking about myself but only endorsing and volunteering for candidates that take these stands. As I said to Pete meaningful change only happens when a threshold is hit and only then will the policy makers respond. Lets hit that threshold.
Where we who don’t take the team sport mentality (R) v (D) meet in the road.
The Lesser of Two Bad’s is Not Good Enough for the American People, We Need The Best.