Romney can beat Obama

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It is the temptation of the columnist to universalize the moment — to present transient trends as exceptional, predictive and permanent. A direction is presented as a destiny. A snapshot is expanded into an epic. But history — driven by decisive contingencies — pays little mind.

Eight months ago, President Obama was losing the debt debate with congressional Republicans. His approval rating was approaching an all-time low, with support collapsing among independents and fading among Democrats. “I think it would be a good idea,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), “if President Obama faced some primary opposition.”

That seems a different political world from our own. But the presidential election is eight months away.

Republicans currently have their troubles. The primary process has not been kind to its likely winner. Mitt Romney has been battered by a series of opponents — really by the series of millionaire Republican PAC donors who splurged on negative ads against him. Romney himself has sometimes sounded like a millionaire Republican businessman — not a stretch for him — with a luxury car buyer’s interest in Detroit and a team owner’s interest in NAS­CAR. The nomination contest has driven up Romney’s negatives while revealing limitations in appealing across class lines.

Romney’s manner isn’t the whole problem. His opposition to the auto bailout — whatever the economic policy explanation — has added to blue-collar suspicions. His use of immigration as a wedge issue against Rick Perry and other Republicans has complicated his general-election appeal to Hispanics.

But Romney has been fortunate in the weakness of his opponents. If he eventually secures the nomination, his luck may hold.

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And it would be a Pyrrhic victory considering that Romney is also anti-constitutional.

We defeat Obama, we lose.

@Ivan:
Ron Paul!!!
Steven Hayward destroys the Ron Paul is the only constitutionalist…..

[Ron Paul’s] constitutionalism is especially narrow and too literally text-based, i.e., if he doesn’t find something in the clearly enumerated powers of Congress in Article I, section 8, he thinks it is presumptively unconstitutional.

I posed the hypothetical question of how he would regard the air force: Article I, section 8 mentions armies and navies, but not an air force.
Is the air force unconstitutional?
What about NASA, which performs many defense functions?

More than one pro-Paul commenter wrote in to suggest the air force would be constitutionally permissible if it was still part of the army, as it in fact originated some decades ago.
Really?
In that case it would be a simple matter for Obama to qualify Obamacare as constitutional by the simple expedient of having Congress declare every American a member of the “army” (or perhaps use the “militia” clause of the 2nd Amendment?), and require all “army” members to purchase health insurance and extend regulation to “army” health care services.
Is this so far fetched?
President Eisenhower worried that the interstate highway project was of dubious constitutionality, which is why it was presented as a national defense measure.
Problem solved, if all you need to do is satisfy a legal requirement for a specific enumerated power.