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May 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Republicans are ready to pounce. “You have to admit that four years ago
he was exciting,” said Cortland Putbrese, chairman of Richmond GOP. “But
now people have seen him in action for years, they are disenchanted”.
Membership rolls have doubled since Mr Obama’s inauguration, Mr Putbrese
claims, and 2008 Obama voters are defecting.
In places like this, that could spell trouble. Alongside perennially tight
battlegrounds Florida and Ohio, Virginia has taken on an outsized importance
in the campaign. Its 13 electoral college votes could end up deciding
whether Mr Obama is returned to the White House or evicted by Mitt Romney,
his presumed Republican challenger.
Mr Obama currently leads the former Massachusetts governor here by an average
of 3.2 per cent, according to a RealClearPolitics aggregate. But
conservatives are bullish about closing this gap as their candidate – bogged
down until recently in a messy party primary – hits his stride and gets out
his message.
The reason is the same as everywhere else: America’s economic pain has barely
relented for more than 40 months. Official figures yesterday showed 115,000
new jobs were created in April – hardly enough to keep up with population
growth. Unemployment fell slightly to 8.1 per cent, but only because tens of
thousands of jobless Americans were not counted because they had given up
looking.
Mr Romney, a former private equity boss and Winter Olympics chief worth $250
million (£160 million), promises that he is the chief executive to steer the
US out of the doldrums.
“Obama spoke a good game on the economy and then made health care reform
his number one priority. It’s been a disaster,” said Pete Snyder, the
Republicans’ Victory Chairman for the state. “People are going to vote
based on their pocketbooks”.
To Stanley Greenberg, the veteran pollster who advised Bill Clinton and Tony
Blair, the sputtering recovery presents Mr Obama with a different challenge
to transatlantic incumbents on the centre-Left who also found themselves
struggling to recreate the idealistic waves of excitement that swept them to
power.
“For Clinton in 1996, the economy was on the way up, and he could run on
hope and crossing the bridge to the 21st century,” said Mr Greenberg.
By 2001 Tony Blair had fostered “disillusionment and loss of trust”,
but thanks to the steady boom, “they were poised for a different
trajectory”.
Instead, Mr Obama has little choice but to plea with American voters that
things could be worse. “We’ve spent the last three and a half years
cleaning up after other folks’ messes,” he told a fund-raiser last
week. Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser, summarised Mr Romney’s campaign as: “You
didn’t clean up our mess fast enough”.
The President’s salvation may be that Mr Romney, driven hard to the Right on
social issues by his primary opponents, faces yawning deficits among women,
young people and Hispanics. And while Mr Obama’s star may have slipped, his
opponent appears determined to remain a charisma vacuum. Perhaps, however,
that is the order of the day.
“I’m not saying people are going to saw off their right arm to vote Mitt
Romney,” conceded Mr Snyder, the Republican chairman. “But we are
in dire straits. Are you going to go for the guy you still want to hang out
with, or the guy you’d never have a beer with but who is a turnaround man,
when America needs a turnaround?”
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