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In the 12 quarters of the Reagan recovery the economy grew 18.5%. Obama’s anemic total is 6.7%. James Pethokoukis has the story.
The U.S. economy is not doing fine.
Earlier this year, the Obama White House predicted the economy would grow 3% in 2012. Today’s GDP report shows that ain’t going to happen. The Commerce Department said the economy grew at an anemic 1.5% annual rate from April through June, after a revised 2.0% in the first quarter. It now seems likely the economy will be lucky to grow at 2% for the entire year. And that’s after growing just 1.8% last year.
Indeed, research from the Federal Reserve finds that since 1947, when year-over-year real GDP growth falls below 2%, recession follows within a year 70% of the time. The U.S. economy remains in the Recession Red Zone. …
Charles Krauthammer says the Romney itinerary has followed Barack’s failures.
A generation ago, it was the three I’s. A presidential challenger’s obligatory foreign trip meant Ireland, Italy and Israel. Mitt Romney’s itinerary is slightly different: Britain, Poland and Israel.
Not quite the naked ethnic appeal of yore. Each destination suggests a somewhat more subtle affinity: Britain, playing to our cultural connectedness with the Downton Abbey folks who’ve been at our side in practically every fight for the last hundred years; Poland, representing the “new Europe,” the Central Europeans so unashamedly pro-American; Israel, appealing to most American Jews but also to an infinitely greater number of passionately sympathetic evangelical Christians.
Unlike Barack Obama, Romney abroad will not be admonishing his country, criticizing his president or declaring himself a citizen of the world. Indeed, Romney should say nothing of substance, just offer effusive expressions of affection for his hosts — and avoid needless contretemps, like his inexplicably dumb and gratuitous critique of Britain’s handling of the Olympic Games. The whole point is to show appreciation for close allies, something the current president has conspicuously failed to do.
On the contrary. Obama started his presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office. Then came the State Department official who denied the very existence of a U.S.-British special relationship, saying: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world.” …
National Journal says Romney scores perfect 10 in the gaffe Olympics.
Mitt Romney spent Thursday trying to recover from a comment earlier this week that suggested that London was not ready for its Olympics. But it wasn’t proving to be an easy fix.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said he had faith in the host city’s Games work as he emerged from a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron and other officials. Speaking from his experience running the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, Romney said a few things will always go wrong. …
Sean Trende thinks the Romney campaign needs to develop a more positive message.
… In this situation, the Republicans are doing the exact wrong thing by making 90 percent of their ads attacks on Obama. Although voters always say this but rarely mean it, they really do want Romney to go positive. They are interested in learning about his accomplishments (or lack thereof), especially during his term as governor.
While the Obama camp has been trying to give voters what they want, albeit from a negative perspective (and perhaps part of why Obama hasn’t moved the polls with his blitz is that those voters who are interested in Bain and Romney’s taxes are waiting to hear Romney’s side of the story), the Romney camp and his super PAC supporters have been banging their collective heads against a wall essentially trying to re-convince voters that the president is not doing a good job. Simply put, this won’t do it.
It is a real question whether the Romney campaign gets this. Throughout the primary process, it focused relentlessly on tearing down its opponents. Thus far, it has done the same in the general election. Maybe Romney doesn’t have that much of a record of accomplishment as governor, outside of the radioactive health care law. Or maybe the campaign simply isn’t capable of telling a compelling, positive story about the nominee.
Regardless, these are parts of his biography that simply must be filled in if Romney wants to win, along with his activities turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics. (Does anyone outside of the political world even know about that?) If Romney can do this, he’ll have an excellent shot at winning this race. It might not even be close. But if he can’t, he will probably become the first presidential challenger in modern history to pass Step 1 of the referendum model, but fail Step 2.
Andrew Malcolm wonders if Obama is weaker than what shows in the polls.
… conventional wisdom holds, the real political battle these next 102 days is for a slim middle of self-defined, so-called independents, presumably susceptible to argument and evidence. A fair number of these folks are really faux independents who prefer the perceived openness of that label, although in truth their voting patterns are likely as predictable as their parents.
But is this perhaps a false deadlock? There’s a growing suspicion among conservatives — and a latent fear among Obamaphiles — that another significant bloc of voters is hidden like double agents within the Democrat’s camp.
These are voters who still say they support Obama with apparent conviction, much like those Wisconsin voters last month who so badly skewed the recall’s exit poll results by saying, you betcha, they voted the union way against Gov. Scott Walker. But, in truth and in secret, they did not.
Like the Democratic primary voters in Kentucky, Arkansas and West Virginia who, when given a chance this spring, voted more than 40% for A.B.O. (Anyone But Obama).
The remaining loyal Obama supporters are so invested in their guy they’re reluctant to turn on him publicly, to admit they were wrong or naively misled by a Chicago machine pol. But they are genuinely, if clandestinely, disappointed in his lack of performance and leadership, his stunningly harsh rhetoric for a professed uniter, and are susceptible to changing their secret vote. Or maybe simply staying home on Nov. 6. …
Jennifer Rubin says the Dems political problem is the president.
The party line from Democrats this year has been to deny that President Obama is in any trouble of losing Jewish support to Mitt Romney in November. But the announcement that a group of Jewish liberals are seeking to form a group to counter the Republican Jewish Coalition’s campaign against Obama is proof the president is in trouble.
But these Jewish liberal donors who wish to offset the efforts of Romney donors such as Sheldon Adelson are making a mistake if they think all that is needed is to throw some money at the Jewish market. If the RJC’s “buyer’s remorse” ad campaign has traction it is because Jewish voters know that President Obama is, as veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller wrote yesterday, “not in love with the idea of Israel.” This is not, as one Democrat told Politico, a case of Obama being “swift-boated.” The GOP isn’t making up novel criticisms of the president so much as it is simply highlighting what everyone already knows. …
William Jacobson says it turns out Elizabeth Warren is not so much interested in diversity.
Obama came under criticism and mockery from the left and right when a photo of his Chicago campaign operation staff had barely a non-white face among them. All the talk about diversity was not practiced at his HQ.
Elizabeth Warren has a similar problem, and has come under criticism from a liberal supporter when she posted a photo on her Facebook page of her campaign volunteers and interns during a visit by Debbie Wasserman Schultz today: …