Republican activists at this year\u2019s Values Voters Summit are perplexed that the race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama remains tight.<\/p>\n
According to an AP story from September 15, activist R.J. Robinson put it bluntly: Romney \u201cought to be killing Obama, and he\u2019s clearly not doing that.\u00a0 He should be doing better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Garner, another attendee at this weekend\u2019s conference, elaborated: \u201cIf Romney loses this election, the party really needs to do some soul-searching.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doubtless, it isn\u2019t only those Republicans who were in attendance at the Values Voters Summit who are losing some heart. GOP voters from across the country are frustrated and anxious as well.<\/p>\n
And this is exactly the intended effect of polls that depict this as a tight presidential contest.<\/p>\n
The pollster, along with other journalists and politicians, has succeeded in convincing us that he is on a quest for objectivity. He would\u2014and does\u2014have us think that he is concerned with nothing more or less than simply revealing<\/em> the will of the voter.\u00a0 In reality, however, like his peers in the rest of the media and his counterparts in politics, pollsters shape <\/em>the voter\u2019s will.<\/p>\n This is not a new insight. The early 20th<\/sup> century conservative political theorist and Harvard professor Joseph Schumpeter established this long ago.<\/p>\n Political coverage is no different from commercial advertising, Schumpeter observed.\u00a0 Consumers \u201care so amenable to the influence of advertising and other methods of persuasion that producers often seem to dictate to them instead of being directed by them.\u201d Similarly, the voter\u2019s will \u201cis largely not a genuine but a manufactured will.\u201d<\/p>\n In politics and commercial advertising, \u201cwe find the same attempts to contact the subconscious.\u201d\u00a0 Both also rely upon \u201cthe same technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are the more effective the less rational they are.\u201d\u00a0 Both political and commercial advertising rely upon \u201cthe same trick of producing opinion by reiterated assertion\u201d\u2014not \u201crational argument.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the stimuli\u2014like polls\u2014with which the voter is continuously fed are not designed to discover his wants.\u00a0 They are designed to create them.<\/p>\n Yet politics and commercialism are alike in another respect: politics is <\/em>a form of commercialism.<\/p>\n Political journalists, pundits, pollsters and the corporations that they serve have a deeply invested monetary interest in doing all that they can to arouse, as much as possible, the enthusiasms of audiences.\u00a0 A presidential election season, more so than anything else, provides them that opportunity, for it is only during such times that Americans from coast to coast take at least some interest in the political life of their nation.<\/p>\n Since, then, it is only once every four years that a presidential race is held, it is a no brainer that media figures should use every ounce of their power and influence to render it as exciting as possible.\u00a0 Like anything that excites consumers, exciting politics sells.<\/p>\n And a tight presidential race is more exciting politics than one that is not so tight.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Bear all of this in mind as we make a few notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, in 2008, Obama beat John McCain by seven points.\u00a0 This was a decisive victory, yes, but not anything at all like a landslide.\u00a0 And this was at a juncture when the aged, debilitated McCain was as powerful a symbol of the GOP fatigue pervading the country as was the unknown, youthful, and charismatic Obama a symbol of the equally pervasive hope for a new course of direction.<\/p>\n Still, Obama couldn\u2019t best McCain by more than seven points.<\/p>\n Second, Obama now has a record\u2014a record of which no one who is not an Obama loyalist has anything very good to say. In truth, it is a bad record.\u00a0 He and his supporters can claim all day long that Obama inherited it from his predecessor, but the reality is that the economy that Obama inherited isn\u2019t nearly as bad as the one over which he presides.<\/p>\n Many people\u2014most, I think it is fair to say\u2014understand this.\u00a0 Actually, their appreciation rivals that of their understanding\u2014a fact born out by the enthusiasm with which voters delivered a truly landslide defeat to Democrats in 2010.\u00a0<\/p>\n This enthusiasm has not abated.\u00a0 Not in the least.\u00a0 And this brings us to our third note.<\/p>\n Everyone who voted for McCain in 2008 can be counted on to vote for Romney this year.\u00a0 Obama, on the other hand, will not garner as much support as he received four years ago.\u00a0 There are far too many disenchanted Obama voters\u2014small business owners and entrepreneurs, some independents, some self-avowed conservatives, and even some Democrats.<\/p>\n Romney is not McCain.\u00a0 President Obama is not the idealistic Senator Obama with whom the American public was presented.\u00a0 The country is now weary of the Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n We should recall these facts the next time we are presented with polls showing this to be a tight race.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Republican activists at this year\u2019s Values Voters Summit are perplexed that the race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama remains tight. According to an AP story from September 15, activist R.J. Robinson put it bluntly: Romney \u201cought to be killing Obama, and he\u2019s clearly not doing that.\u00a0 He should be doing better.\u201d Mike Garner, another…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n