One mantra of politics is never to get in the way of your opponent self-destructing. The GOP is doing a bang up job of tearing each other apart and Mr. Obama is surely watching with glee while being smart enough to stay out of the fray. Why say anything at all when your likely opponent’s nomination competitor is writing your campaign ads?
Clearly Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich don’t care much for each other; as they hurl spears at each other they’re bringing to light their shortcomings and there’s plenty to go around. Just a month ago it looked like Obama would loose to an asparagus; both Mitt and Newt were beating Obama in most polls, but now after battering each other relentlessly Obama beats Mitt by eight points and Newt by 14. Obama’s argument that he’s better than the alternative may be starting to gain some traction.
With a pathetic economy, the real unemployment rate (when you take into consideration people that have dropped out of the job market) well over 10 percent, defeat for the incumbent should be a forgone conclusion. The man that had taken a bad economy with ever growing debt and made it much worse now leads the top GOP contenders.
There is a distinct possibility that the two camps have taken a tone so negative that there will be no way to bring the two groups together after the convention. Should the warfare result in a large percent of GOP voters staying home in the fall Mr. Obama will be re-elected in a landslide. The ugly words being exchanged may be creating divides that cannot be bridged.
Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich should be spending most of their time promoting their vision for the future; let the left-wing and right-wing media outlets fight the battle of personal history. Rather than taking sides GOP leaders should be sitting down with both campaigns and reminding them who the real enemy is.
Romney set the tone in Iowa with millions in anti-Gingrich ads. Gingrich got his head handed to him by failing to respond to the negative ads. Newt learned a good lesson that translated into bad deeds. Now we see millions or dollars being spent not to address Mr. Obama’s failings or the candidates solution to the nation’s problems.
We get it, Romney was a moderate while running for Senate and as Governor of Massachusetts. Gingrich was a bull-in-a-china-shop while Speaker of the House. Both had successful careers making big money outside of government. Who cares. Other than how they feel about each other, what do we know about their plans for fixing the debt, dealing with unemployment and securing the nation? That’s the problem – the battle of past performance has overtaken any dialog of fixing the mess Obama has created.
Enough already – let’s have a battle of ideas for tomorrow not a history lesson on the distant past. Even presidents can’t undo the mistakes of their past. While past actions give us an insight into the person, leave that narrative to the media and stay on message about the future, otherwise we’re looking at four more disastrous years.