TAMPA — Of course it’s how voters are inclined in October
that’s important, not who they say they fancy now. But
conservatives are entitled to a little funk over a
new Quinnipiac University Poll showing Barack Hussein Obama,
our first openly anti-American president, leading the top two
contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in the three
swing states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
The poll, released yesterday, shows Obama leading Mitt Romney 49
to 42 in Florida, 47 to 41 in Ohio, and 45 to 42 in Pennsylvania.
Our apologizer-in-chief leads Rick Santorum by slightly wider
margins in each of these states.
The pollsters speculate that an improving (sort of) economy is
the likely reason for the improving prospects of the father of
Obamacare. A full 90 percent of those polled said they consider the
economy “extremely” important” or “very important,” well ahead of
issues such as immigration, gas prices, the deficit, women’s
health, foreign policy, abortion, gay marriage, the designated
hitter, etc. Sixty percent of those polled say they see the economy
improving. And for reasons the pollsters did not plumb, though
clarity begs for it, they give Obama some credit for this. The
relative perkiness of the economy is the only significant change
from two months ago, when the same pollsters found Obama and Romney
in a statistical tie.
Floridians may not much fancy Obama and his works. By 49 to 47
percent in this poll they say they disapprove of the job he’s doing
as president. But the same crowd says by 50 to 47 percent that he
deserves to be re-elected. The approval/disapproval numbers are
similar in all three states. Only in Pennsylvania do voters say, by
50 to 46 percent, that he doesn’t deserve to be re-elected (though
they pick him over real Republican candidates).
Women have largely plighted their troth to the little hustler
from Chicago. In this poll they choose him over Romney or Santorum
in the three states by margins of between six and 19 percent. (But
will he respect them in the morning?) Perhaps it is
important after all that a flat broke country provide free birth
control pills, condoms, sterilization procedures, sex-change
operations, and subscriptions to the Playboy Channel to middle
class law school students. (Just so long as we don’t buy them
smokes for afterward.)
Apparently O’Barnum’s energy policy of wringing our hands about
the Middle East and checking under the bed every night for oil
speculators, while at the same time regulating all aspects of
domestic fossil fuel industries to within an inch of their lives,
is gaining traction. According to this poll, 32 percent of voters
in these swing states say oil companies are most to blame for high
gas prices. Another 23 percent say other oil producing countries
are to blame, while only 16 percent have tumbled to a connection
between supply and demand (which law O’Barnum’s Department of
Energy, with an assist from his EPA, has repealed). About 60
percent of those polled saw some connection between regulations and
high oil prices, though many obviously didn’t connect the final dot
back to O’Barnum on regulation.
On the local level, the poll finds that conservative Florida
Governor Rick Scott remains marginally more popular than gum
disease. By 52 to 36, those polled say they disapprove of the job
Scott is doing as governor. In Ohio it’s a wash, where 42 percent
say they approve of the job Republican Governor John Kasich is
doing, and another 42 percent don’t.
So after three years of a president who has swamped the country
in more debt than the entire planet could probably pay off, who has
super-sized every aspect of the federal government save the
military, which he’s gone about shrinking while using what remains
of it for left social engineering, who has truckled to foreign
leaders and apologized for America at every opportunity, we still
find, at least in this poll, that a majority of voters in
center-right Florida believe we should sign up for four more years
of this kind of hope and change.
Conservatives have a right to ask themselves, “What will it
take?” Has Florida changed so much that socialism and Big Brother
at home, along with weakness abroad, are the preferred approaches
in the land of sunshine and mildew? (It’s NOT a dry heat
here.)
It’s more than seven months until Election Day. That’s at least
a hundred lifetimes in politics. Much can and will change between
now and then. But even so, conservatives have every right to be
glum about the little billet-doux we received yesterday from the
folks at Quinnipiac. Those paying the least attention know that
without Florida’s 29 electoral votes there’s no way the
conservative side wins the presidency. The road to the White House
goes right down Interstate-4 from Daytona to St.
Petersburg.
Larry Thornberry is a writer in
Tampa.
Larry Thornberry
ltberrywriter@earthlink.net
