4 years ago Obama runs against an ancient relic with a bland personality and a running mate who's too dumb to know when to shut up so that she doesn't overexpose her singular lack of intelligence.
Now, he runs against an "anamatronic" candidate, who would look perfect in a Disney World exhibit, except that the Disney robots usually have more charisma than Mitt Romney.
Either Obama is the luckiest fool on earth, or the whole GOP is a party of fools.
Obama has managed to maintain a high likeability rating and close to a 50% job approval rating, even among people who do not agree with his policies and/or think that the country is on the wrong track. Far too often, people assume that believing that the country is on the wrong track
only reflects on the President. But they tend to forget (or gloss over) the fact that Congress has near record lows when it comes to voter approval. So in that sense, I would say that Obama is both lucky and I guess somewhat skilled in making himself likeable to a majority of those... outside of the hardcore radical right-wingers.
And yeah, the GOP has been like the gift that just keeps on giving, when it comes to the Presidential elections the past two cycles. Just being a Republican, when it was Bush who was tagged with plunging us into a near depression, it was going to be hard for McCain no matter what. But his admission that he really didn't know that much about economics, picking the moron, Phil Gramm, as his chief economic adviser (and him calling the American people "whiners" and claiming that we weren't in a recession, when clearly we were), suspending his campaign and also picking that poorly educated, unhinged, chattering moonbat, Palin, as his running mate, just made his fight fairly unwinnable. Of the choices they had this time, I think the GOP saw Romney as their best chance to beat Obama - who is/was VERY beatable. I have been surprised by Romney's almost total incompetence in this campaign. And I suspect the Republicans are too... it certainly seems that they are. He can't seem to develop a coherent message and even if he could, it doesn't seem that he's capable of communicating it.
What's funny and odd to me is that the GOP still sings the praises of Ronald Reagan, as if he's some sort of deity. But this iteration of the GOP has become so ideologically extreme that Reagan would no longer be welcome in his own party and he'd likely be chased out by being called a RINO. Remember the
Reagan Democrats? Can you possibly imagine there being any great number of Romney Democrats? But it's not just Romney. He's just a puppet, playing a role dictated by the rad right wingers so he could get the nomination. The problem is the ideological bubble that the GOP seems determined to live within. Americans don't tend to go with a herd mentality. And if Romney loses, maybe the GOP will finally learn that lesson. But like I've said before, I'm hoping that a Romney loss will convince more of the intelligent folks, who had been loyal to the GOP, to strike out on their own and give those of us who want better choices someone to vote for in 2016 and beyond. IMO, the time has come.
