The More You Know Him, Is --well--Not to Like him Much

The Romney campaign is crying about the ABC/Washington post poll, which shows Obama with a 51-45 lead over Willard and independents now backing Obama 48-47, when Willard had a 12 point lead in January. 50% of Americans believe President Obama deserves re-election, which is higher than Bill Clinton at the same period of his re-election bid and the same as George W. Bush, one month out from his re-election in 2004. President Obama now has an approval rating of 50%.

What must gall the Romney camp is that 52% of Americans say the more you know about Willard, the less you like him. That's double the number who say they like him better now they know him.

Even Republican pollster Rasmussen now has Obama at a 50% approval rating and beating Romney by 49-42 in the general election.

Well,Romney did manage to squeak out a 50% victory in Nevada, but he did worse than in 2008 in terms of total votes. In fact, 27.2% lower. The turnout was almost 25.6% lower. In the end, Romney won 3% of the Republicans in the whole state.

It seems the Romney campaign have wrapped the candidate in Saran Wrap since he has not answered a question from a voter since January 13. With the new Secret Service detail, observers are debating whether the removal of Romney from people is a plus or a negative. But as we have seen so far the more he campaigns in a state the less popular he becomes.

Romney is sticking to his guns that Obama made the recession worse. He is now using U-6 unemployment figures, which are always higher t prove his point. But Ezra Klein of the Washington Post points out that even those figures are reducing in the same proportion as the regular figures. Let's not forget January's figures showed the private sector grew at 254,000 jobs and George W. Bush's last January was a loss of 818,000 jobs. But as Rush Limbaugh says, that was caused by the election of Barack Obama.

The former Republican mayor of Caramel, California didn't win the hearts and minds of Republicans with his Super Bowl ad for Chrysler. "It's half-time in America" wasn't as good as Eminem's Detroit ad last year. But it got Karl Rove steamed. You thought Clint Eastwood after delivering a pep talk to America was going to endorse President Obama. Rove cried this was "Chicago-style politics" orchestrated by the Obama campaign and then he bitterly complained that the President bought the car industry's allegiance with government loans.

Remember "Bin Laden's dead and General Motors is alive." The Eastwood ad should run every time Romney airs an ad in the Michigan primary.

Why are the Republicans constantly throwing tantrums? Ezra Klein tries to explain in today's Washington Post that President Obama is the most polarizing moderate ever. Klein indicates that Obama is the most moderate Democratic President in the post-WWII period but draws fire all the time. The reason is that Republicans have gone farther right than the Democrats have ever gone Left in our modern history. For this reason, Republicans on ideological grounds oppose President Obama, even though Gallup shows that vast majorities of Americans support his policy initiatives.

Frank Schaeffer in his personal blog wrote that President Obama will be vindicated. Frank was a Republican and co-founder of the religious Right and warns about the people now controlling the Republican Party. Frank has been tossed off progressive blogs for defending the President against Republicans and reasoning why he has not pushed progressive ideas as the liberal/ Left wanted. It's worth a read.

These are early days. Romney feels that he must do in Frothy Mix Santorum to nail down the nomination. Luckily. we will have a brief period of quiet on the primary front until Super Tuesday.