What do you think Romney's strategy will be if he wins the primary and goes head to head with Obama and what are his odds?

Probably the standard right wing tactics of demagoguery. Calling him a socialist, a radical leftist, anti Israel, anti christian, anti guns and blaming him for the deteriorating economy that is actually improving. Also known as lies.

If he’s smart, he’ll slide back to the middle and portray himself as a fairly liberal republican. He can support this with his record as governor in Massachusetts.

Problem is, I think he’s gone too far down the right-wing rabbit hole through the primary for this to work.

I usually follow American politics quite closely, because it usually ends up affecting Europe one way or another, but honestly, I have lost track.

Who is that again? is that the one who leaves his wives when they get sick, the one who is obcessed with Satan and likes calling Obama a ‘nig…’ or the one you can tell is evil just by looking at?

I’m guessing he will reveal himself as a T1000 made of liquid evil and try to take over the planet. He will probably do away with votes and democracy, and then we all get to find out he is actually very gay, and that he wants to start banning heterosexuality and executing anyone with an IQ higher than 80.

Since Clinton, USA politics have gone weird.

I think he will try his best to steer clear of the right wing social issue stuff and focus on his plans vs Obama’s to change or fix the economy and the national debt. Romney will stick with lower taxes, and talk about his business experience, leadership qualities, and free market. It’s tricky, because I still believe, I have said this all along, that a large oercentage of people on both sides make their final voting decision based on social issues. The Supreme Courts decision on “Obamacare” will affect whether Romney haros on that. If the court deems it unconstitutional then parts of Obamacare go away with Romney not having to do anything. But, I do wonder how that would affect Romneycare in Massachusettes?

I like to think that if Romney became president he would kind of leave social issues alone. He may not actively help women’s issues, gay issues, etc, but I don’t think he would chip away at rights concerning these groups.

What I was wondering the other day, I thought about writing a Q, was who keeps the social issues most alive and in the conversation in the presidential race? Is it the left leaning people or the right?

It will be very interesting to me who he chooses as a running mate, assuming he gets the nomination.

@poisonedantidote, you may be thinking of Bill Clinton on treating your wife worse than a dog thing and vice president Joe Biden said Obama is “articulate, bright and clean”; without a doubt you can tell Nancy Pelosi is evil just by looking at her.

I don’t think his odds are good unless the economy tanks.

Which might happen given the mess in Europe and Israel’s willingness to start a full-scale war with a country in a strategically important oil shipping route.

@poisonedantidote, you’re thinking of the other Republican candidates (Gingrich mostly). In all honesty, I’m hugely relieved that Romney is going to be the nominee. I don’t agree with his right-wing policies or his foreign policy worldview, I think they will demonstrably harm the country and the world much more than Obama’s would. But at least Romney would likely be a competent president. He’s highly intelligent and wonkish. A Romney presidency would not be as disastrous as a Gingrich or Santorum presidency, or as bad as Bush Jr.‘s was.

I think Romney is in a really tough spot (why he put himself there reveals something disturbing, if you ask me):

His church is central to his life. Being a Bishop in the Mormon church is a rather distinguished position – akin to being a Reverend in a Christian faith. He will have to downplay this greatly.

In his private sector experience, he was beholden to the shareholders – and we all know who holds our bonds. How can he run on that experience?

In his public sector experience, his single most significant legislative accomplishment was Romneycare – an achievement highly regarded in MA, but one that he has since disavowed. He certainly won’t want to bring up where MA was after he finished compared to when he started, in terms of either employment or goods produced, because he left them significantly worse off in both regards.

In his personal life he has accumulated vast wealth, and he would prefer we not know how he did this – hence the extremely sketchy tax returns on a very limited period. He has made it clear that he will not be releasing anything more.

He certainly can’t come at PBO for being “elitist,” given that he went to Harvard, too, and got twice as many degrees there.

I doubt he’ll want to place too much focus on the family history of running for public office – look how well it turned out for us last time we indulged the family dynasty thing.

That leaves him with “All American Guy with Good Family Values.”

Which, of course, we already have in the White House.

…which will, thus, leave his campaign with the strategy “Obama isn’t really an American because he’s a dark-skinned Muslim socialist.” That strategy worked relatively well for the Republicans in 2008, and they had far less competent candidates than Romney.

Yes. I am afraid it might come down to that, again. sigh

Romney will likely shake his “Etch-a-Sketch” and come out as a “compassionate conservative”. Then there will be a continuous set of lies from the end of the Republican primaries until the elections. Super Pacs will flood the airways and what are left of the Newspapers with additional lies, innuendo, and probably revive the birther and Muslim charges.

We will then have elections and exit poles will show a definite victory by Obama. The count, however will show that Romney slipped by with 51% of the vote. There may be contested states but the Supreme court has that covered.

That will be followed by the imposition of something similar to the Ryan budget, the rich will have their tax breaks and the poor will be very poor. I expect the life expectancy rates for ordinary citizens will drop considerably.

Romney will probably get a new vice president in the next election but whether people vote or not it won’t matter because the democracy will be successfully crushed by the 2016 elections. Social Security will be a ponzi scheme, medicare will be eliminated or unrecognizable.

I expect a revolution by 2020 but it won’t matter to me because I will have died because of insufficient Medicare. I feel sorry for all of you young people living in Feudal society.

Being a reformed fundamentalist, I am having a hard time seeing how the far right Christians will vote for him. They have been told for years that Mormon’s are evil, trying to infiltrate our society and appear “normal” while they are trying to snatch away your soul with a Stepford wife sort of kindness. Nothing surprises me anymore though. They have set their constituents up to believe that Obama is a Muslim, so they will probably go with “the lesser of two evils” approach.

I am worried that the Obama camp will tack fundamentalist-Christian to siphon off evangelical voters who are turned off by Romney’s mormonism.

@Qingu, I’m sure some PAC will emerge to do that. I’m not sure that it will come from the Obama “camp,” and I’m sure it won’t be oficially “sanctioned” by Obama, but I have heard rumblings in that direction from Christians on facebook ect.

@Qingu What exactly does that mean? I’m not farmiliar with the wording: tack fundamentalist-Christian to siphon off evangelical voters who are turned off by Romney’s mormonism. What’s tack? How would Obama get the evangelicals?

@JLeslie , Obama’s Christian doctrine is “acceptable” to most fundamentalists, while they believe Mormons are a cult.

Tack as in sailing… change direction, in particular towards headwinds.

Dems don’t fare well with evangelicals so don’t usually bother pandering to them. But if evangelicals don’t want to vote for a Mormon, Dems might find favor in “tacking” their campaign to pander to evangelicals after all.

Obama’s “social darwinism” comments might be a first taste of this, which I’m totally fine with since it’s one of the few places where evangelicals and liberals share some common ground in theory at least. But I just don’t want to see too much pandering, and certainly not changing of policy positions, to get the disaffected anti-Mormon fundie vote.

Wow. That would be amazing to me if Evangelicals actually went for Obama, becaise they dislike the idea of a Mormon that much. So, would you say Romney should choose a big time souther evangelical running mate to maybe get the right wing vote? I always felt that would keep the independents away and would be a bad move, but with what you point out, maybe not? I figured the right wing of the party would never vote for Obama.

I wish that I could think of something funny for you. We all need a good laugh don’t we? Perhaps the joke is on us all in this case. HA!

Bottom line up front: Romney will likely lose against Obama.

Romney will concentrate on explaining how and why he thinks that Obama is leading the U.S.A. in the wrong direction. Romney will also go over and over his plans for a smaller and simpler government and encouraging job growth as well as his foreign policy as well any plans on over turning Obama-Care.

As far as Romney’s Mormonism is concerned. I don’t think that that will be much of a factor in this election.

Romney’s biggest adversary in this election is not Obama. It is the left slime machines.

@JLeslie , There is an entire movement in the fundamentalist Christian camp, questioning their loyalty to the republican party, and really asking the hard questions. The popularity of, theChristianleft.org, and the emergence of New Monasticism and preachers like Rob Bell are challenging the notion of blindly following a political ideology.

@Judi I did not know about these movements, or how organized it might be. I do know plenty of Christians, especially Catholics, but nonCatholics also, who lean left, some are registered Democrats, and some are Republicans, but don’t vote party lines, and definitely tend to think for themselves. Especially they are left when it comes to trying to control or create laws regarding other people’s personal lives. They line up on the left on issues like gay marriage and gays in the military. When it comes to abortion they are kind of split, most of them are pro-choice, but prolife for themselves personally, they would never abort their own pregnancy.

But, do you see people moving left or democrat because of this particular presidentential rac?. That Obama could move Evangelicals over?

@JLeslie , I think some are moving left because of the political climate. Maybe they are not really moving at all, it’s just that the right is going so far right that they can no longer adhere to it. Sort of like Orwell’s Animal Farm. They no longer recognize the Christian theme. The abortion issue was easy to follow, but what the right is doing politically now has some of them taking a second look.
“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

@JLeslie, when I was campaigning for Obama in 2008 I drove around with an evangelical guy. Liberal evangelicals do exist. Jesus was basically a socialist, after all.

The evangelical I campaigned with said he could accept Obama being pro-choice because he seemed to genuinely want to reduce the abortion rate.

Edit: to add to what @Judi said, a lot of the rhetoric on the right today has little to do with evangelical Christianity and everything to do with Ayn Rand-style libertarianism. Ayn Rand isn’t exactly compatible with evangelical Christianity; she was an atheist who thought religion was just as bad as big government.

I don’t know what he will do different from what he is doing. I know the super-PAC will start running ads on his behalf and that should give us a good idea of what it will look like. I’m sure they will attack Obama’s handling of the economy. Gas prices. Too much unemployment. Too high taxes. Bankrupting Medicare and Social Security. Cut spending. Get rid of earmarks. Make government smaller. Be pro business. Repeal Obamacare.

Is there anything new possible? Do they want to pull out of Afghanistan? I doubt it. They probably want to spend more money on guns and the army. They might want to make gun ownership mandatory in NYC.

I suspect they will be for mandatory sequestration of all women who have sex. They want to know if they get pregnant, and if they do, they will put them in protective custody to make sure they don’t have abortions.

In addition they will advocate for rounding up all immigrants, legal or not and sending them to camps where they can be sorted out. Illegals will be shot on the spot as a way to keep others from coming in and stealing American jobs. Along with that, they will continue to build the fence between us and Mexico and also a fence between us and Canada, and they will try to push for mining the coastal waters of florida and the gulf and southern california.

They will outlaw unions and get rid of the minimum wage. Employers will be allowed to break contracts with five days warning.

Church attendance will be made mandatory.

Oh, I could go on, but actually, this isn’t all that much fun. If someone else wants to take up the exaggeration baton, please do.

What else?

If the economy improves/continues to improve… Obama wins hands down (regardless of foe).

If the economy tanks, Obama will lose (regardless of foe).

The way things seem to be going right now (and this is obviously subject to change given the 7 months remaining til the election)... Obama is going to win this.

No matter how Obama does in the elections, the ultra-right has control over voting machines and voter suppression laws l don’t see Obama winning. At best it will be a contested election and the anti democratic Supreme court will appoint the most conservative candidate even if he’s a Mormon.

@Ron_C, will you be revisiting that prediction this November?

@Qingu yep. Is it legal to bet here? By the way, I really hope I lose but doubt that I will.

If what you say is true, @Ron_C, how did Obama win?

The typical right wing tactic of referring to their opponents as ‘liberals’, like liberalism is a bad thing.

@bkcunningham I suspect that Obama will be way ahead on the popular vote (the real vote, not the “corrected” vote)