As he gears up his reelection effort, Obama is trying to use that record, and especially his emphasis on the home front, to win the political support of veterans and military families in a handful of important swing states.
It is a bold attempt to cut into a traditionally Republican constituency, one the GOP won’t concede without a fight — particularly to a Democrat who opposed the Iraq war, is not a veteran and is described by many Republicans as a weak leader who travels the world apologizing for America.
Republicans have long defined themselves in part on their hawkish stance on national security issues and their popularity among the military and veterans. But the makeup of the nation’s armed forces is changing, and Obama hopes to win over veterans by appealing to the same subgroups that propelled him to victory in 2008: women, minorities and young people.
“There’s a different face of the American veteran now,” said Lauren Zapf, 30, a Navy veteran who served in the Persian Gulf and who spoke recently at a gathering in Northern Virginia for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Timothy M. Kaine. “The president’s stance on social policies, his work with military families, what he was doing with policy in both Iraq and Afghanistan — I appreciate that.”
Republicans concede the group’s new battleground status. “Veterans are truly a cross-section of the population,” Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said in a recent interview. “I appreciate the fact that the president is engaging our warriors and their families.”
Obama lost veterans nationally in 2008, as Democrats usually do. But he won those under age 60, a better result than Sen. John F. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, achieved four years earlier. Today, Obama is making a significant push in battleground states with large military installations, such as North Carolina and Colorado.
Nowhere is the effort more apparent than in Virginia, which Obama and his presumed Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, are expected to visit extensively in the next six months. The president formally kicked off the general election campaign this month with a rally in Richmond. That same week, Romney spoke in Hampton Roads, home to the largest concentration of the state’s 1 million service members, veterans and their families.
For a moment there I thought Obama was going to allow actual active duty, foreign or ocean-serving military men and women to get their votes counted.
I see that was just a side thought now.
Of course not!
But IF veterans or families with military in them want to vote Obama THEIR votes will count.
Let’s not forget, Romney not only is not a veteran, but actively—by his actions of going to Paris on a religious mission—actively avoided military service during war time.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
As opposed to Joe “maxed out the college deferments and then claimed a case of asthma that no medical professional could ever prove” Biden?
And yes, clearly, the religious mission was all a scam on Romney’s part. It’s not like Romney acting as a Mormon missionary in any way relates to his life-long religion or that his father and other family members did the same thing before him. I mean, if it wasn’t a scam, that would mean liberal schmucks like you didn’t bother to get your facts straight and are desperately trying to equate Romney’s experiences with something/anything else.
The only real matter of difference is that Romney has never done anything to demean or insult the troops. He didn’t accuse them of carpet-bombing civilians like Obama did. He didn’t oppose the surge like Obama did. He didn’t suggest they cowardly flee in the face of a brutal enemy like Obama did. He didn’t try to end their health care in 2009 and make them pay for their care like Obama did. He didn’t say they were fighting just for him like Obama did. And he doesn’t see the soldiers as photo-op props like Obama does.
I recall John Kerry’s bid for the military vote and a number of Democrats boasting that he was going to walk away with it simply because he was a veteran. And according to even CNN’s own figures, Bush trounced him in that regard – for reasons that were obvious to anyone paying even the slimmest attention. Simply being a veteran won’t automatically score a majority of the military vote; how you’ve treated the military does. And Obama apparently has a lot to make up for if he wants their votes.
When Romney was in college (during the Vietnam conflict) he protested IN FAVOR OF THE DRAFT!
When he took his deferment and went to France he learned French and worked to 30 months trying to covert secular French people to his church.
He had only limited success, two people he taught joined the church of Latter Day Saints.
But he did nearly get killed.
He was driving a car with a few passengers when they were hit by another car.
One of his passengers did die.
The spokeswoman for that church in France said this:
“You live simply, deal with your money, learn a language and talk to people a lot about their problems. It makes you grow, and change. Everyone who has gone on a mission in our Church will tell you that they are the main beneficiaries, because they learn to live. Mitt Romney had this same experience.”
Not exactly the partying Bill Clinton did while pretending not to inhale.