Well, this was totally predictable
See update below.
Not that it takes any magical powers of divination to do so but, almost a year ago today, I predicted that if Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination for President, he should probably just skip Michigan:
It will be interesting to see if Romney dares to show his face in Michigan again after advocating for letting the Detroit auto companies die. If he does, I knew a few auto workers who will have a thing or two to say to him when he gets here.
Based on a poll released last night by the Detroit Free Press, I doubt we’ll see him back. The poll has President Obama opening a three-point lead in late August to a ten-point lead now.
In EPIC-MRA’s last statewide poll, an automated survey taken Aug. 28 before Ann Romney spoke at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, laying out a case for her husband Mitt to be elected, Obama held a slim 49%-46% lead over Romney. In the new poll, conducted from Saturday through Tuesday, Obama led Romney 47% -37%.EPIC-MRA surveyed 600 likely November voters for the poll which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Obama leads among the key bloc of independent voters 36% to 27%, with 37% undecided – perhaps giving Romney room to improve. But in past EPIC-MRA polls, Romney led among independents, suggesting they may be having second thoughts.
Obama also led among both men (42%-40%) and women (52%-36%) and there was also sharp break in voter motivation: While 76% of the president’s supporters said they were voting for him as opposed to 21% who said they were voting against Romney, only 54% of Romney’s supporters were voting specifically for him, while 43% who were voting against Obama.
Think about that for a minute. Michigan is where Mitt was born and raised. His father was the Governor of our state and ran an auto company here. And yet Mitt Romney can’t even win his home state. If the Romney campaign pulls out of Wisconsin at some point, Ryan’s home state, it will be game over for that campaign for sure. We can just skip the debates entirely (God forbid — I can not wait for the debates!)
Meanwhile, over at Politico, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough is eviscerating Romney.
How can it be that this man who turned around countless businesses, saved the 2002 Olympics and ran Democratic Massachusetts like a pro be the head of such a disastrous campaign?Who was responsible for burying his moving convention video behind the bumbling bluster of Clint Eastwood?
Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander in chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?
And who decided that Romney would use his general election campaign to stand for absolutely nothing? The Wall Street Journal described this ideological listlessness as a “pre-existing decision.” The question conservatives should be asking is whether that strategy was hatched by a misguided consultant or the candidate himself.
Whoever is responsible needs to know that replacing real conservative ideas with a flood of negative 30-second ads is a pathway to defeat.
The essay is pretty self-congratulatory with Scarborough getting in a lot of “I told you so” lines. It’s his contention that Mitt is losing because he hasn’t been ideologically and consistently conservative enough. What he fails to realize is that it’s conservatism that’s been repudiated around the country at this moment in time. People don’t want a government that turns its back on its most vulnerable citizens and gives tax breaks to the super-wealthy. They want a government that will give them a hand up when they are down and that gives all Americans a fair shot at success.
Scarborough completely jumps the shark with his characterization of President Obama at the Democratic National Convention:
He had somehow morphed from the political equivalent of a young Elvis rocking Mile High Stadium four years ago to becoming the fat, sweaty singer who haunted Vegas showrooms in the months before he before his most inglorious expiration in the summer of 1977.
Scarborough seems to suggest that nearly a decade of damage done by the Bush administration could somehow have been magically and completely fixed in just three and half years by President Obama and the fact that it’s not means the President has to change course.
I disagree with Joe Scarborough on nearly everything politically but it’s a joy seeing him tear into Mitt Romney.
The worst part about all of this is that it probably means we won’t see President Obama or the Romney campaign back in Michigan again. I was looking forward to that. Still, now it gives us time to focus on our real task at hand: reclaiming the state House for Democrats, electing three new Supreme Court judges, Bridget Mary McCormack, Judge Connie Marie Kelley, and Judge Shelia Johnson, repealing Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law, and passing the Protect Our Jobs, renewable energy standard, home health care worker ballot proposals. These are the areas where Michiganders should be spending all of their energies.
Running up the score against Mitt Romney will just be icing on a very delicious cake.
UPDATE: The same EPIC-MRA poll has Senator Debbie Stabenow widening her lead to 11 points over failed candidate Pete Hoekstra. And that, as they say, is a Good Thing.
[Obama photo credit: Anne C. Savage, used with permission]
