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Salena Zito reports on a Romney rally in the Pittsburgh area last Friday.
… This was not a stacked rally, to which the usual GOP suspects bring a friend, or a ticketed event, for which you go to a local elected official to pick up a pass reserved for people who clap on cue.
This was the real deal — and the crowd, with as many Democrats as Republicans, let Romney know they loved him and his message.
Bill Brasco of nearby Jeannette isn’t just a Democrat. He is an elected Democrat, the local school board president for more than 42 years, the second-longest-serving board president in state history.
“Been a Democrat since I turned 21 and proud of it,” he said, adding that he will not vote for Obama in November.
“I just do not like the direction this country is going under the president.”
Brasco, 75, was one of many Democrats giving Romney more than a dozen standing ovations.
“I could not have been more impressed,” he said. “I particularly liked when he talked about his five-point plan to get the economy roaring.”
Brasco, who spent most of his working career in sales, listed Romney’s points as if he himself had authored them: “Energy, trade, balanced budget, better education through training and skills, and economic freedom. … No, he was impressive, that was an amazing event.” …
Mark Steyn says Obama builds roadblocks, not roads.
… So here’s a breaking-news alert for President Nuance: We small-government guys are in favor of roads. Hard as it may be to credit, roads predated Big Government. Which came first, the chicken crossing the road or the Egg Regulatory Agency? That’s an easy one: Halfway through the first millennium B.C., the nomadic Yuezhi of Central Asia had well-traveled trading routes for getting nephrite jade from the Tarim Basin to their customers at the Chinese court, more than 2,500 miles away. On the other hand, the Yuezhi did not have a federal contraceptive mandate or a Bloombergian enforcement regime for carbonated beverages at concession stands at the rest area two days out of Khotan, so that probably explains why they’re not in the G7 today.
In Obama’s world, businessmen build nothing, whereas government are the hardest hard-hats on the planet. So, in his “You didn’t build that” speech, he invoked, yet again, the Hoover Dam and the Golden GateBridge. “When we invested in the Hoover Dam or the Golden GateBridge, or the Internet, sending a man to the moon – all those things benefited everybody. And so that’s the vision that I want to carry forward.”
He certainly carries it forward from one dam speech to another. He was doing his Hoover Dam shtick only last month, and I pointed out that there seemed to be a certain inconsistency between his enthusiasm for federal dam-building and the definitive administration pronouncement on the subject, by Deanna Archuleta, his Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior, in a speech to Democratic environmentalists in Nevada:
“You will never see another federal dam.” …
David Harsanyi tries to lay down some covering fire for John Sununu.
It seems that one of Mitt Romney’s top surrogates, John Sununu, recently gave us a guided tour of the life cycle of a political gaffe.
First, he wished that President Barack Obama “would learn how to be an American,” and then he amended the comment with a “what-I-really-meant-was” clarification, and finally, he surrendered, as they almost always do, by saying, “I made a mistake.”
But did he? You don’t have to be a birth certificate conspiracy kook to ponder the question. After all, we’re no longer debating whether government should just be huge or whether it should be ginormous anymore. We’re not really wrangling over what levels of debt or spending are acceptable. The president’s central case rests on the idea that individuals should view government as society’s moral center, the engine of prosperity and the arbiter of fairness. Traditionally speaking, that’s not a very American notion. …
Seth Mandel in Contentions says Obama’s mis-step has allowed the Scott Brown campaign to recycle Elizabeth Warren’s “you didn’t build it” rant.
Politico’s James Hohmann points readers of his “Morning Score” to a two-and-a-half minute web ad the Scott Brown campaign will deploy against Elizabeth Warren. It capitalizes on President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” line by tying it to Warren, who made similar comments earlier in the campaign. It’s a powerful ad, using audio and video of Democratic presidents–Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton–as well as a few Republicans to drive home the extent to which the current Democratic Party has veered leftward, away from historically bipartisan agreement on the virtue of private industry.
The video then shows Obama delivering his infamous line, and closes with Warren’s–a much harsher version. Warren is frowning, raising her voice, and pointing fingers; as a demagogue, she puts Obama to shame (and that’s saying something). The contention that the Democratic Party has moved left is rather obvious; no one believes that Harry Truman, with his overt religiosity and lack of a college education, could earn the modern Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Equally out of place would be John Kennedy, simultaneously cutting taxes across the board–including for the rich–while promising that we would “pay any price, bear any burden” for the cause of liberty and to ensure the survival of “those human rights to which this nation has always been committed.” …
David Harsanyi says the economy is catching up to the president.
Remember, if these polls are correct, Mitt Romney was making headway just as the Bain Capital attacks were being ratcheted up and the media was focusing on an array of faux controversies. The environment can change as quickly as it takes to make a gaffe, of course, but the fact is, if you look at the internals of these polls, it looks like the Obama economy is finally catching up to the president.
Let’s start with Virginia. If Obama wins Virginia, Republicans can forget about the presidency. And in March, President Obama held a 50-42 percent lead over Romney in a QuinnipiacUniversity poll. By June, Romney had whittled down that lead to 47-42 percent. Today, a new poll has the candidates deadlocked at 44-44 percent.
What should disturb the president’s supporters are some of the internal numbers. Though Romney and Obama are tied,Virginia voters disapprove of Obama job performance by a 51-45 percent margin and 50-47 percent said he doesn’t deserves a second term in office. It is unlikely, at this point, that economic numbers will be improving much before Nov. Clearly, many voters have not warmed to Romney, and perhaps they never will, but there are plenty of votes out there be had.
In the new national CBS/New York Times poll (entire poll here), the candidates are also statistically tied at 47-46. Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 44 percent, with only 39 percent saying he’s doing a good job on the economy — down five points since April.
Whereas once, Obama could blame George W. Bush for all the troubles of the world, 34 percent of those polled believe Obama now takes “significant” responsibility for the economy and 52 percent of independents say that Obama will “never improve” the economy.
A new NPR poll also finds Romney and Obama tied in battleground states, 46-46.
Andrew Malcolm has late night humor.
Leno: Obama says his campaign is still about hope. So we’ve gone from ‘Hope & Change’ to ‘No Change, Just Keep Hoping.’
Letterman: Have you seen the new U.S. Olympic team uniforms? To me, nothing says America like a beret.
Fallon: Obama says the 1992 Dream Team was better than this year’s Olympic basketball team. Which is interesting, since a lot of people think 1992’s president was also better than this year’s.