With less than 100 days until the election, Governor Mitt Romney
is in the launch position for a vigorous fall campaign with the
stars aligning for success in November. Okay, okay. The London trip
did start out a little rough, but consider the following:
Gallup tracking poll shows the
Governor in a dead heat with President Obama, tied 46 percent even
among registered voters. And this is after a negative TV blitz of
immense proportions unleashed by the Obama campaign against
Romney.
However, Rasmussen’s tracking poll of “likely voters”
reveals Romney beating Obama 49-44 percent with only 4 percent
undecided. “The numbers are similar to the 49% to 43% advantage
Romney enjoys on the question of who is trusted more to handle the
economy.”
Rasmussen puts a lot of emphasis on the declining economy as
impacting the President’s reelection prospects. While Obama’s
numbers are very much like President George W. Bush’s in 2004 at
this juncture in the campaign, “the underlying trends were moving
in his direction” — President Bush’s that is.
On Friday the New York Times
reported that “The United States economy grew by a tepid 1.5
percent annual rate in the second quarter, losing the momentum it
had appeared to be gaining earlier this year” according to
government figures. The previous quarter saw the economy grow by a
2 percent annual rate. This economy is going nowhere, fast; and the
President seems to have run out of cartridges in terms of any new
economic ideas. Of course, the jobs picture is still dismal.
Interestingly, Rasmussen observes that 21 percent of likely
voters favor an increase in government spending, but “three times
as many (64%) think the government should cut spending to spur
economic growth,” a policy preference that breaks in favor of
Governor Romney and the GOP.
Still, President Obama averages a 1.2 percent lead for all
polling to date as calculated by
RealClearPolitics. He also holds an inside-the-margin-of-error lead
in most, but not all, of the battleground states. So the Governor
and the Republicans will have to maintain a full-court press
through the beginning of November.
But another troubling sign for President Obama, and a
corresponding boost for Governor Romney, is the “enthusiasm gap”
documented by the Gallup organization for USA Today.
Democrats, it seems, are “significantly less likely now (39%) than
they were in the summers of 2004 and 2008 to say they are ‘more
enthusiastic about voting than usual’ in the coming presidential
election.” Republicans, on the other hand, are more enthusiastic
now than in 2008, and the same as in 2004 at 51 percent.
Enthusiasm tends to pick up in the post-primary season and is,
no doubt, subject to fluctuations and the tempo of the respective
campaigns. But given the intensity and acrimony of the Republican
primary, this high level of enthusiasm, pre-convention, is a very
good sign for Governor Romney.
TAS readers may recall that I am fond of
quoting former Governor John Engler (R-MI) that Catholics are
the “jump ball” of American politics, at least since Ronald
Reagan.
This is not a universally accepted view as demonstrated by a
recent piece by Michael O’Brien on the websites of NBC and
MSNBC. Basically, he challenges the “myth of the ‘Catholic vote.’”
He cites a recent Gallup poll indicating that Catholics are evenly
split between Obama and Romney, 46-46 percent.
President Obama leads among Hispanic Catholics, 70-20 percent.
Governor Romney leads among Non-Hispanic white Catholics 55-38
percent.
O’Brien notes that President George W. Bush won the Catholic
vote 52 to 47 percent in 2004, and President Obama won it 54-45
percent in 2008 against Senator John McCain. Yet, he argues that
Catholicism is not “pure bellwether” of how a Catholic votes, which
sounds like a truism. There are, of course, those who self-identify
as Catholics even though it is just a matter of cultural affinity
rather than religious practice. And economic interests can also
override religiosity in many cases. Gallup’s poll indicates that
ethnicity and class enter into voters’ calculations, too.
Setting aside the question as to what religious motivation might
move a registered voter to become a likely voter, O’Brien does
recognize that Catholic voters do matter “at the margins, or in
very specific locations or instances” —like Florida, Ohio,
Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. He quotes various Catholic
observers who put this marginal group at roughly 10 percent of the
Catholic vote, “a big enough group in important states like
Pennsylvania and Ohio,” the latter a “must win” for Romney or any
GOP presidential candidate.
Honestly, O’Brien sounds like he is whistling past a graveyard.
Both the Bush 2004 and the Obama 2008 campaigns made huge
investments in garnering Catholic votes. Perversely, President
Obama seems to be doing everything possible to alienate Catholic
voters, notwithstanding the usual suspects of Catholic dissidents
who would never vote for Romney, or any other Republican, under any
circumstances.
If nothing else, Catholics should vote against Obama for his
political ineptitude if not his militant secular humanism. He has
even managed to bring the presidents of evangelical Wheaton College
and Catholic University together to
denounce his recent HHS mandates as a violation of religious
liberty.
The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at
Georgetown University
reports that there are an estimated 55.6 million Catholics of
voting age, nearly 8 in 10 reside in the 16 states with 306
electoral votes. The big states like California, New York, and
Texas are clearly not in play. But in Florida, where the Hispanic
vote is also Cuban and Republican, Catholics made up 28 percent of
the vote in 2008. In Ohio it was 23 percent, 26 percent in Michigan
(which also has an active pro-life movement), and 33 percent in
Wisconsin, which now looks in reach given the outcome of the recent
gubernatorial recall election. To pretend that the Catholic voter,
presently being mobilized by his or her bishop to resist the Obama
administration on an existential question of church freedom, is
nothing of consequence, is a very bad joke.
Governor Romney is fortunate that his opponent is doing
everything in his power to alienate Catholics in these and other
swing states. They are still the “jump ball” in this political
game.
