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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (58142)	11/1/2012 12:51:31 AM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Sifting the Numbers for a Winner A crucial element: the mix of Democrats and Republicans who show up this election. By KARL ROVE October 31, 2012, 7:17 p.m. ET. It comes down to numbers. And in the final days of this presidential race, from polling data to early voting, they favor Mitt Romney. He maintains a small but persistent polling edge. As of yesterday afternoon, there had been 31 national surveys in the previous seven days. Mr. Romney led in 19, President Obama in seven, and five were tied. Mr. Romney averaged 48.4%; Mr. Obama, 47.2%. The GOP challenger was at or above 50% in 10 polls, Mr. Obama in none. The number that may matter the most is Mr. Obama's 47.2% share. As the incumbent, he's likely to find that number going into Election Day is a percentage point or so below what he gets. For example, in 2004 President George W. Bush had 49% in the final Gallup likely-voter track; he received 50.7% on Election Day. In 1996, President Clinton was at 48% in the last Gallup; he got 49.2% at the polls. And in 1992, President George H.W. Bush was at 37% in the closing Gallup; he collected 37.5% in the balloting. One potentially dispositive question is what mix of Republicans and Democrats will show up this election. On Friday last week, Gallup hinted at the partisan makeup of the 2012 electorate with a small chart buried at the end of its daily tracking report. Based on all its October polling, Gallup suggested that this year's turnout might be 36% Republican to 35% Democratic, compared with 39% Democratic and 29% Republican in 2008, and 39% Republican and 37% Democratic in 2004. If accurate, this would be real trouble for Mr. Obama, since Mr. Romney has consistently led among independents in most October surveys. Gallup delivered some additional bad news to Mr. Obama on early voting. Through Sunday, 15% of those surveyed said they had already cast a ballot either in person or absentee. They broke for Mr. Romney, 52% to 46%. The 63% who said they planned to vote on Election Day similarly supported Mr. Romney, 51% to 45%. Furthermore, in battleground states, the edge in early and absentee vote turnout that propelled Democrats to victory in 2008 has clearly been eroded, cut in half according to a Republican National Committee summary. But doesn't it all come down to the all-important Buckeye State? Here, too, the early voting news isn't encouraging for the president. Adrian Gray, who oversaw the Bush 2004 voter-contact operation and is now a policy analyst for a New York investment firm, makes the point that as of Tuesday, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot. That's down 181,275 from four years ago. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, up 75,858 from the last presidential election. That 257,133-vote swing almost wipes out Mr. Obama's 2008 Ohio victory margin of 262,224. Since most observers expect Republicans to win Election Day turnout, these early vote numbers point toward a Romney victory in Ohio. They are also evidence that Scott Jennings, my former White House colleague and now Romney Ohio campaign director, was accurate when he told me that the Buckeye GOP effort is larger than the massive Bush 2004 get-out-the-vote operation. Democrats explain away those numbers by saying that they are turning out new young Ohio voters. But I asked Kelly Nallen, the America Crossroads data maven, about this. She points out that there are 12,612 GOP "millennials" (voters aged 18-29) who've voted early compared with 9,501 Democratic millennials. Are Democrats bringing out episodic voters who might not otherwise turn out? Not according to Ms. Nallen. She says that about 90% of each party's early voters so far had also voted in three of the past four Ohio elections. Democrats also suggest they are bringing Obama-leaning independents to polls. But since Mr. Romney has led among independents in nine of the 13 Ohio polls conducted since the first debate, the likelihood is that the GOP is doing as good a job in turning out their independent supporters as Democrats are in turning out theirs. Desperate Democrats are now hanging their hopes on a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll showing the president with a five-point Ohio lead. But that survey gives Democrats a +8 advantage in turnout, the same advantage Democrats had in 2008. That assumption is, to put it gently, absurd. In addition to the data, the anecdotal and intangible evidence—from crowd sizes to each side's closing arguments—give the sense that the odds favor Mr. Romney. They do. My prediction: Sometime after the cock crows on the morning of Nov. 7, Mitt Romney will be declared America's 45th president. Let's call it 51%-48%, with Mr. Romney carrying at least 279 Electoral College votes, probably more. Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, helped organize the political action committee American Crossroads. online.wsj.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (58142)	11/2/2012 9:26:53 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

The Romney Turnaround The Republican has adapted as a candidate to offer genuine change that meets the political moment.. November 1, 2012, 7:25 p.m. ET Mitt Romney's political ascension in 2012 is in many ways as remarkable as Barack Obama's in 2008, though with a crucial difference. Four years ago the rookie Illinois Senator managed to overthrow the Clinton machine because he better read his party's mood—namely, toward resurgent liberalism. Mr. Romney by contrast may become the 45th President despite often seeming out of sync with a new generation of center-right reformers. Yet Mr. Romney's specialty during his business career was the turnaround, and gradually he applied this art to his campaign. Over two years, and this autumn especially, he ultimately came to an agenda and governing vision equal to the political moment. * The Romney saga began in 2008, when the Republican Party was at its lowest political and intellectual ebb since the Watergate era and faced a reckoning. One option was to accommodate the liberal hour that Mr. Obama's election seemed to connote. Instead, the GOP started to articulate a more principled reform approach than the exhaustion of the George W. Bush years. Mr. Romney was largely absent from this intramural scrum, as he contemplated another run following his failed 2008 Republican bid. The Bain Capital CEO and moderate Massachusetts Governor is by nature a technocrat, less comfortable with debates over ideas than he is with a room full of high IQs parsing spread sheets. Befitting a former management consultant, he tends to be analytical, driven by data and experts. Nobody is opposed to data or expertise, as if they're even avoidable, but Mr. Romney the politician gave the impression he thought he could coast to the GOP nomination and White House largely on his admirable biography: an intelligent man, experienced executive, terrific family, not a hint of scandal, saved the Olympics. The problem is that voters also and rightly appraise potential Presidents by what they want to do and how they would do it. Thus Mr. Romney's timid early period and his policy proposals seemed off kilter, both as an answer to our grave economic troubles and considering the mood of GOP voters. He began his campaign in May 2011 with a categorical defense of his 2006 Massachusetts health-care plan that inspired the Affordable Care Act, calling the prototype a success and the reprise a disaster he would repeal. He was half-right. That September Mr. Romney rolled out an economic agenda that included 59 micro-proposals—56 too many, someone quipped—but only the most cursory discussion of spending and the tax code. But under the pressure of the primaries, Mr. Romney's ambition and confidence grew. In November 2011 he dared to propose modernizing Medicare along the lines of the Paul Ryan model, when his Republican rivals wanted little to do with "right-wing social engineering," to recall Newt Gingrich's back-stab. Then in February 2012 Mr. Romney came out for a 20% tax cut that would lower rates across all brackets as a trade for fewer loopholes and subsidies that most benefit the powerful. This would reduce the tax code's dead weight on investment and job creation. Liberals dismissed this progress as a bow to the fanatics he supposedly needed to sew up the nomination. It wasn't. On taxes, Mr. Romney was persuaded by the evidence on the tens of thousands of "pass through" businesses that are taxed at individual rates. His fiscal plan was the result of tutorials by Mr. Ryan and others on the scale of our spending and tax problems and the retirement-security programs that as a matter of brutal arithmetic can't survive in their current form. Mr. Romney's good judgment in choosing Mr. Ryan as his running mate reflected this pragmatic, even-keeled impulse; the Wisconsinite is not the ideologue of Washington lore. The pick came against the counsel of Mr. Romney's campaign advisers, and it has been accompanied by constructive proposals on energy, education, regulation and more. But this policy entrepreneurship was always vying with another inclination. Mr. Romney's tactical calculation was that he could defeat Mr. Obama simply by running as the safe, competent alternative who didn't need to explain. He could merely say the economy is lousy and he'd create jobs because he "understands business"—Oprah for the economy. Policy was an afterthought in Mr. Romney's convention speech, a major missed opportunity, and his desire to avoid specifics led him into cul de sacs of generality that let Democrats define him as a plutocrat for the 1%. A month ago, something shifted—the precise date being Mr. Romney's first debate with Mr. Obama. All of a sudden he tapped into the public's appetite for leadership and a better alternative to Obamanomics. He finally invested this historic election with the consequential themes it deserves. For the most part he has since kept up a fluent, principled case for his proposals, though he needs to close with the same sharp contrasts. * If a Romney Presidency follows through on the reforms he has been promoting, they would go far to address the major need of the moment, which is to liberate the economy from the government pall of the Obama years. Faster growth to raise incomes must be the highest priority. Tax reform of some kind is virtually inevitable, if only because the fiscal cliff Mr. Obama created is so destructive. Our hope is for a larger deal, much like the one Reagan struck in 1986 and Mr. Obama's own deficit commission proposed. Mr. Romney says the details are open to negotiation, as they must be up to a point, and the complexity of the tax system lends itself to his technocratic skills. The other first-term goal would be rationalizing the federal fisc so the government is affordable. Repealing ObamaCare or at least changing it to be unrecognizable is a good place to start. In the short term, much of the deficit can be reduced with revenues from faster growth and reasonable spending restraint. Outlays only need to return to where they were prior to Mr. Obama—about 19% or 20% of the economy. Entitlement reform will be a bigger challenge, but Mr. Romney seems to appreciate that it must be done sooner or later. Why else select Mr. Ryan? This does not mean shrinking Medicare and most other social programs, but reshaping them to fit a different age. What is radical is the current budget that is sprinting toward a debt crisis. Mr. Romney has promised a new era of partisan comity, which may be his most unrealistic promise. Most Democrats are in denial and honestly believe that the government status quo can continue simply by raising taxes on "the rich." Perhaps Mr. Romney's slide decks and persuasion can disabuse them of this illusion; he should try and no doubt he will. But one challenge of his Presidency would be judging when his attempts at compromise go too far and undermine the ability of his reforms to succeed. On that note, our major question concerns Mr. Romney's political character. His history of ideological reinvention and Bay State governance suggests he might bend or concede too much. Our hope for a President Romney would be that he has come to recognize how profound our troubles are and what it will take to solve them. *** Perhaps Mr. Romney's most appealing trait is his optimism: We have problems, a whole lot of them, but they are solvable. Americans have always believed that. Yet the sentiment seems unusual given the current President who won with large Democratic majorities but has spent four years blaming his predecessors for every ill as if they are intractable. Mr. Romney has treated voters like adults and offered them a true choice about the future. He is promising change, and for once that abused term doesn't mean for the worse. online.wsj.com