If I didn't think it before, these last few days have made me absolutely positive. Obama is gonna win this election.
It shows in Chris Christie's glowing remarks about the President. Obama has done a great job coordinating and facilitating FEMA's response (not to mention that he realized that it wasn't just a meaningless department to gift to some donor or friend, unlike some Presidents we know). He gets all the benefits of the office. And should some efforts fail and relief does not get to a lot of people, he will bear the brunt of that as well.
However, I think that for all the good Obama is doing, it does not amount to a hill of beans in this election. It is Romney's response that will be his undoing.
Holding a 'relief event' here in Ohio complete with campaign video and a plea for us to make him President? Done. Collecting canned goods that the Red Cross cannot accept because it takes resources away from actually helping people so you get a good photo op? Check. And one thing that I keep hearing that really burns my butter - only calling Republican governors to offer support???!!! Isn't he the "I care about 100% of the people" guy? Yes, most states affected are blue states. But guess what? A lot of people living in those states vote Republican. And because of their governor and/or the fact that more Democrats live there, you're going to write them off? It's this private response that shows yet again, that Romney will only help those he believes it is his job to worry about. The rest of us are just grasping peasants to be shoved aside.
Then back comes the footage of the Primary debates. Romney proudly opining that it is immoral to saddle our grandchildren with debt just to provide disaster relief. Now, he won't answer whether or not he supports his previous position. He is stuck. Say he still agrees and look heartless to the nation or say he now supports FEMA and gives his base more reasons to be doubtful of his commitment to their causes?
So, Romney will lose and the Republicans will blame it on Sandy. They will claim that Romney had the momentum (per the media) and that the hurricane and Christie made the President able to fool the electorate into thinking that Obama was really Presidential. As they know, the President isn't really in charge, it is the people under him that are responsible for how well the effort is going. Obama, to them, is just politicizing and speechifying about how great he is. Christie wants to be President in 2016 and sees this as his best opportunity. The uninformed voters aren't smart enough to see through the biased media coverage and will vote Obama back because he looks the part.
With no reason to believe that Romney has failed, or that the increasingly extreme viewpoint of the conservatives has failed, the Republicans will not have an internal war (yet) for the soul of their party. They will stay on course with the Tea Partiers, Libertarians and Social Conservatives still living uneasily with each other. As they continue their policies on abortion, gay marriage and immigration, not to mention destroying government from the inside, the overall population of the US is moving away from them. They will keep shedding moderates. They will become ever more conservative and extreme.
You think this election season is bad, wait until 2016. Maybe that's the horror movie D'Souza should have made.