Elli Ganchrow writes:
The news on Friday that the unemployment rate is still above 8% allowed political commentators to state the obvious: this is Romney's race to lose. Its been decades since an incumbent won re-election with an unemployment rate this high and it shouldn't be difficult to convince Americans that we are on the wrong track. Yet, as I noted in my previous posts there are some real issues that Republicans need to deal with. The first is Obama's personal popularity which remains high. The second is Romney's awkwardness as a candidate. The third is that the Romney campaign trying to imitate the Dole campaign (and I don't mean that as a compliment. The Dole campaign was inept and lacking in focus and ended up losing to a weak (but personally popular) incumbent by 8 points. The Romney are refusing to play to win but rather they are playing not to lose. Instead of talking about the issues they are making the argument that Obama shouldn't be President. Its a risky strategy that doesn't seem to be working. The fourth is that Romney still has not sealed the deal with conservatives that he can be trusted- the New York Times had an article on Saturday that stated that certain Iowa Republicans are making it known that they may not vote since they don't believe that Romney is conservative enough. It is disconcerting to open up Saturday's WSJ with its rundown of the latest poll information from 12 swing states and observe that Romney trails in every one of them except for North Carolina. As Yogi Berra says, its getting late, early.
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It has been interesting to note the left's lack of respect for the First Amendment. It appears that the left believes that that the bill of rights protects only that speech to which the government agrees with. All other speech should be regulated or banned. Take the reaction of the left to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. In that case, the Court held that held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations. It seems logical that corporations would enjoy these freedoms. Yet the left reacted as if the Republic was about to be destroyed. Yet if you ask a Democrat why they don't oppose some corporations (like the New York Times or MSNBC or Newsweek etc, etc.) from being involved in unregulated political speech, they have no answer. Yet its clear what the left's theory is: we are in favor of corporate speech that we agree with ( the left wing media) but we oppose corporations that will give donations to our political opponents. That brings us to last week. The left went crazy when the head of Chick-Fil-A pronounced that he believes in the traditional form of marriage (i.e., man and woman). This is a position held by a clear majority of Americans (gay marriage is regularly defeated when placed on the ballot no matter the state, even in California). Yet Democrats acted as if Chick-Fil-A had pronounced some nutty position. That in of itself would have been fine. Some, including a candidate for Mayor of NYC, wanted the government to punish Chick-Fil-A for its speech. It doesn't take a constitutional expert to figure out that such pronouncements by government officials are outrageous and should be condemned by all members of society (left and right) who believe in the freedoms that are guaranteed by the Constitution. This was partly what led to the huge crowds at the chain's restaurants last week as many wanted to show their support for the First Amendment. It was ironic that as the commotion was continuing over Chick-Fil-A, the head of Amazon gave a sizable donation toward a gay marriage initiative in Washington state. There was no protest from the right as a result of this political speech. We need to stress to our elected officials that the First Amendment is too important to be ignored.
