Why Is Romney Losing?

With the economy tanking, Obama should be tanking, too, but he is winning. Why is that? Romney is a stand-in for the power elite, but so is Obama. Both are Keynesians; both are corporatists; both are torturers and police statists. We can go down the whole, horrific list. Here is the one difference, however, perceived or real: on the margin, Obama seems like less of a warmonger. Of course, the Drone-in-Chief is a warmonger, too, but Romney seems the more bloodthirsty chickenhawk, and even the belligerent American people are not anxious for yet another war of aggression in the Middle East, this time against the ancient civilization of Persia. But here is what I think put the kibosh on Romney’s chances: he is the candidate of Netanyahu. That helps with the crazed and bloodthirsty neocons and Christian right, but not with regular people, who are the vast majority. Most Americans, when they saw Mitt’s surrogate and his Acme cartoon bomb at the UN, were repelled. And that, finally, is why Obama will probably win.

UPDATE Chris Stone notes that at Intrade, Romney is falling like a rock.

UPDATE from Dom Armentano:

Lew, you are absolutely correct on your explanation for Romney’s plunge. I’ve been telling everyone who will listen (not many these days) that independents have shifted away from Romney at the margin precisely because of his war rhetoric. After all, nothing else has really changed since the conventions. But clearly independents (and some Republicans) have decided, correctly perhaps, that Iran war chances increase with Mitt. My back-of-seat judgment: Ron would be up 5 points on the socialist/fascist in the WH if he somehow had been nominated.

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8:22 am on September 28, 2012