Obama pollster: GOP is trapped in the 1980s, ‘out of gas’

[swag]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/obama-pollster-gop-is-trapped-in-the-1980s-out-of-gas/2012/11/08/093b4f78-29be-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_blog.html

By Greg Sargent

This morning I talked with Obama’s lead pollster, Joel Benenson, and he offered fresh detail on the campaign’s theory of the race and on why the President was able to win reelection amid such a bad economy.

“From the start, you had a theory on the Republican side: They were going to make this a referendum on President Obama, using the old Ronald Reagan question,” Benen told me, in a reference to Reagan’s famous “are you better off” line.

“But the American people were focused on, which candidate is going to make my life better over the next four years?” Benenson continued.

“Overwhelmingly, Americans viewed the economic crisis and recession as an extraordinary circumstance — not as an ordinary recession,” Benenson continued, adding that “the more Romney and Republicans tried to talk about this as an ordinary recession,” rather than a “massive crisis,” the more they seemed “out of touch and tone deaf.”

If that’s right, the irony is striking. Romney cast Obama as a failure, based on the notion that the recovery was not proceeding as fast as other recoveries have. But this may not have resonated with voters because they understood that Obama had inherited an extraordinary situation — exactly the idea Romney tried so hard to get voters to forget.

. . . more

[RobertEarl]

1. It was too close

Meaning too many Americans still have their heads up their asses when it comes to democracy.

Democracy was almost bought out and sold to China. It was too close for comfort. No one on DU should be getting too comfortable.

[GliderGuider]

5. The global environment has been sold to China as well

For a couple of container-loads of iPads. Which means the global economy has been outsourced there as well.

And the hard truth is, it ain't even their fault. We didn't want the environment or the economy any more, we were only too happy to get rid of them. It might be nice if they weren't using all that coal to make the iPads, but that's free enterprise for ya. We got a great deal on them, though...

[DonViejo]

2. The closing paragraph sums it up nicely...

“On all the issues of the day, their party is a little bit out of gas,” Benenson said. “They’re having the same conversation they had 25 years ago.”

Yep, that's the modern GOP

[adieu]

4. And that conversation 25 years ago

Was something that was 35 years before, making the current GOP talking about 60 year old topics (which convrniently skips globak warming).

[ROBROX]

3. BILLIONS SPENT FOR A BIG RESET

All those poor things who voted for the GOp have no memory of all the evil which occurred in the past 3 years by the GOP in Congress. Plus I think many of the RED states maintain a big GOP vote by inbreeding which means reduce education and cognitive processes which promote THINKING. These state promote the idea of letting others do the thinking and the idiots will do the work for low wages.

[Odin2005]

7. They are drunk on Reagan, and now the hangover.