A great man- actually Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes" once said:
http://assets.amuniversal.com/...
"When in doubt, deny all terms and definitions."
That's the advice that Mitt Romney has taken in his campaign. He speaks derisively of "fact-checkers," as though those venerable, non-partisan organizations were in the tank for Obama. He scoffs at the media narrative, because they're playing gotcha games with his campaign while letting Obama slide, supposedly.
Now, the talk is that the polls are wrong. I don't have it in front of me, but 7 in 10 Republicans now are saying the polls are biased towards Obama. Well, that hardly matters, does it? They're in for a rude awakening come election day.
Except that this talk is the innoculation against that hard reality. Paul Krugman spoke the other day about whether lawmakers would "honor" this election, and accept it as proof that voters wanted a more progressive agenda.
But the 7/10 number shows that the Republicans are already getting themselves ready so that they don't have to come to the table ready to cooperate. Everybody knows that birtherism has become synonymous with crazy, and everybody knows that if that narrative was going to gain traction, it would have by now.
The "polls are wrong" narrative is the beginnings of Birtherism Part II.
See, birtherism, and all that Kenyan/Secret Muslim/Socialist/America Hater crap was really all about the same thing: illegitimizing the Obama Administration. If Romney loses, it'll show that that didn't work, but all Republicans know how to do when they're out of power is to adopt this sort of seige mentality, acting like there's a pretender on the throne.
After all, if Obama is a rightfully-elected President of the United States, then Congress is thwarting the will of the people if they don't at least TRY, out of respect for the office, to get some fucking work done.
But if Obama is a fraud- if he's constitutionally incapable of holding the job, then Congress gets to say they respect the office TOO MUCH to go along with some charlatan at the desk.
The birtherism stuff didn't work. So for Obama's second term, they're taking a page from the Democrat's book, circa 2000: accuse Obama of stealing the office. The difference, of course, is that Bush really DID steal the office, but if I go too far into that topic I'll have to breathe into a bag for awhile.
If the polls are fake, and the results end up, as they should, matching the polls, well then... in a Republican syllogism, that therefore means that the results were ALSO fake!
Pointing out later that the results of this election came out exactly how the polls indicated they would will, in their tinfoil-hat minds, PROVE that Obama orchestrated a massive amount of voter fraud (ACORN, they'll say, ACORN) and jury-rigged the polls to support his eventual fraud.
That's why we have to act NOW. When the polls get derided, we have to defend them. Even Rasmussen shows Obama ahead, we'll say. Most polls skew Republican because they leave out voters without landlines, we'll say. We won't sway a lot of people, it's true, but we have to make sure that there isn't just one narrative out there. Because if there's enough people out there who believe that Obama walked away with this thing crooked, then he'll get five minutes into his next term before people start talking impeachment.
Romney probably already lost this election, but that doesn't mean he can't poison the well before he leaves.