TOLEDO, Ohio — The line to get into Mitt Romney’s “victory
rally” here Wednesday stretched up Jefferson Avenue to Huron Street
and around the corner nearly to Monroe Avenue. People stood in a
drizzling rain to get into the event and, by the time Romney took
the stage at the SeaGate Convention Center, more than four thousand
were packed into the arena.
Romney’s voice was slightly hoarse as he hammered President
Obama’s policies, especially the deficit spending that has brought
the national debt to $16 trillion. “If President Obama were to get
re-elected,” the Republican challenger said, “we’d have a $20
trillion debt by the time he left office. But he’s not going to get
re-elected…” The crowd went wild.
The size and the enthusiasm of the audiences that have attended
the GOP ticket’s rallies during this three-day tour of Ohio have
gotten less press coverage than the polls which show Romney and his
running mate Paul Ryan trailing the Democrats by a wide margin. It
is hard to reconcile the strong turnout for Romney and Ryan with
the impression conveyed in most of the media that the Republicans
are doomed to defeat on November 6.
Yesterday, Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard asked,
“Are
the Polls Tilted Toward Obama?” Also, while we’re asking
questions: Is water wet?
In all seriousness, however, conservatives need to ponder this
disturbing hypothetical: What if the polls are right?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Obama really is sailing
on his way to a landslide victory of such historic proportions that
he defeats Romney by 10 points in Ohio. What if, despite all the
bizarre poll skews that have become an almost constant subject of
complaint on the Right in recent days, there actually has been a
decisive shift in the electorate? When we think of what this would
mean — an emphatic endorsement of all that Obama has done in the
first four years of his presidency and a powerful mandate to
continue doing it for another four years — we are confronted with
an event of genuinely profound consequences.
It is easy for cynical pundits and dyspeptic critics to minimize
what this election means. Whatever the results on November 6, the
TV talking heads will still have their network sinecures on
November 7. David Brooks won’t forfeit any book contracts and Peggy
Noonan won’t lose any lecture fees, just because Obama wins the
election. Such members of the GOP’s professional intelligentsia
have never cast their lot with the Tea Party, nor have they shown
any empathy for the grassroots activists who are manning phone
banks and distributing yard signs, the volunteers motivated by a
sincere belief that defeating Obama is essential to the
preservation of the American Republic.
Remarkable irony: Many of those conservative now working hardest
to elect Mitt Romney are conservatives who spent the primary
campaign supporting other candidates in an effort to prevent
Romney’s nomination as the “It’s His Turn” choice of the party
establishment. Meanwhile, the elite pundits who spent the primary
season nitpicking every fault of Romney’s rivals are now the first
to raise the white flag of surrender, abandoning hope in the
candidate that they insisted was the only one in the GOP field with
any realistic chance to win in November.
At this apparent low ebb of the Romney-Ryan ticket’s fortunes,
with less than six weeks to go until Election Day, the crisis
moment of the campaign poses existential questions for the
Republican Party. What if, ignoring every warning from
conservatives, Americans are indifferent to Obama’s failures and
heedless of the threat to liberty posed by four more years of his
policies? What if a majority of Americans have lost faith in the
world-changing beliefs proclaimed by the Founders at Philadelphia
in 1776? What if our nation’s people have contemptuously abandoned
the principles of limited constitutional government established by
the Framers in 1787?
Perish the thought. This cannot happen. The Republican Party
cannot allow it to happen. There is too much at stake, and there is
still enough room for hope and it is too early to quit now.
Romney’s proven ability to mount turnarounds cannot be discounted
by fainthearts and naysayers. The candidate himself was full of
confidence Wednesday, and the crowd of Ohio Republicans cheered as
he reached the peroration of his speech to the rally at the SeaGate
Center, invoking his favorite theme, American exceptionalism.
“This is who were are,” Romney said. “The world needs the
example of America. It needs a strong America.… The world needs
America to lead. Our future needs America to lead.”
Romney began a sentence, “If I am the next president,” then
stopped and corrected himself: “When I am the next
president of the United States.” A cheer rose from the crowd, and
he continued as the cheers grew louder: “I will do everything in my
power to keep America strong — strong in our homes, strong in our
economy, strong in our military. We will lead! We will lead again!…
I love this country!”
Can the polls be right? Is there no hope left for American
leadership? Are we doomed? Perish the thought.
