Does the strategy include snuffing out Osama?

I’ve had a lot placed in my e-mail box of late; fortunately this wasn’t time-sensitive.

It’s a look at how the other half plans to live in 2012:

The accompanying text noted the following, from campaign manager Jim Messina:

I want to show you a quick presentation I’ve been giving to the first staff coming on board here in Chicago, outlining our strategy to win and our overall approach to this campaign.

In the weeks and months to come, we’ll ask grassroots supporters like you to meet with one another and local organizers to take the first steps to victory on November 6th, 2012.

But before we begin meeting in living rooms and backyards across America, it’s important that we communicate with each other about a set of principles for the organization and our overall strategic thinking about how the race will shape up.

The most important aspect is this: Our campaign will be grounded in President Obama’s experience as a community organizer. This notion of ordinary people taking responsibility for the organization at the neighborhood level is not only the way to win, it’s also the way politics ought to work. Our campaign will be an example of innovation and efficiency, but it will also be an example of civic engagement at its best and most rewarding.

(snip)

This plan will evolve as we get feedback from grassroots supporters like you over the weeks and months ahead. That’s already happening — as you know, we’ve already started the process of having one-on-one conversations with people in every state to gather thoughts and ideas, and thousands more talks will take place over this spring and summer.

But this briefing should give you a sense of our current thinking about how we’ll build an unprecedented grassroots campaign to win — with you leading it.

No, that billion dollars Obama plans on raising will lead it – follow the money (if you can.) A billion dollars can slap down a whole lot of Astroturf. While they want to “act like an insurgent campaign,” the ugly truth is that Obama has an abysmal record of lacking accomplishments (save the bin Laden killing, which was in many ways handed to him by his predecessor – you know, that guy he likes to blame for all his problems.) And that thinking will by necessity evolve, based on current events we can’t yet foresee. How do you explain away $5 a gallon for gas, for example – blame the oil companies, of course!

It’s all about shifting blame for problems created or enhanced under the Obama regime.

Let’s look at a case in point, brought up by Messina in the video. Review the 2004 electoral map, which showed fairly solid Bush country in most places save along the coasts and the upper Midwest. By 2008 many of these areas had seen a slight economic decline, but a large factor in how the Democrats racked up such voter registration gains was their work in blaming Bush for every one of the country’s maladies, coupled with the drumbeat of a compliant media pounding home a message that we were stuck in an Iraqi quagmire which was sapping America’s resolve. No wonder people were ready for ‘change’ and they got it, voting out the continually moderating GOP majority in 2006 and finishing the job by electing Obama in 2008.

And regardless of who the GOP put up to follow in Bush’s footsteps he or she would’ve had a tough row to hoe. Yet John McCain was perhaps the most uninspiring Republican candidate to come along in some time. His one chance at the polls came when he picked a conservative firebrand as his vice-presidential pick, but he threw it away when he suspended his campaign to work with Obama to address the economy. It showed a lack of leadership as he played into the Democrat’s hands and, quite honestly, I think he was fortunate to only lose by 6 points. (Had McCain selected another moderate as VP, like perhaps – as one rumor had it – Joe Lieberman, I think he would have lost by 20 because conservatives would have stayed home in droves.)

But in 2012 the tables may be turned, with the exception that the media isn’t continually beating down Barack Obama. Still, the economy hasn’t improved from 2008, we’re still fighting a war on now 2 1/2 fronts (Libya rising while Iraq winds down), gas prices are back to summer 2008 levels, and government spending is surging well beyond even George W. Bush’s high deficit levels. In 2010, just as in 2006, the party in charge of Congress was tossed out. (It was only Senate demographics that saved a Democratic majority in the Senate, since they had a pretty much equal number of seats at stake with the GOP. In 2012, the large number of Democrat Senators who swept Harry Reid into power in 2006 are sitting for re-election – if Republicans make similar inroads next time they take back the majority.)

And while it’s no safe bet that Republicans won’t wear out their welcome, much of their success hinges on Barack Obama’s continued failure. It’s why killing Osama bin Laden was a godsend for President Obama, and we’re sure to be reminded thousands of times that Obama was in charge when Osama assumed sea temperature.

Hey, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile. But, as it was in 1992, it’s the economy stupid. President Obama better have less than 8 percent unemployment by the middle of 2012 or he’s toast – you can take that to the bank and hope the financial institution is ‘too big to fail.’

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

2 thoughts on “Does the strategy include snuffing out Osama?”

  1. Killing Osama does two things for Obama — it gives him a boost in his approval rating (quite necessary) and provides justification for his decision to bring our troops home in droves, even though it really has no effect on the scenario over there…

Comments are closed.