2012 and the Obama Landslide

I've read a great deal of dithering in recent weeks about the current field of Republican candidates and how vulnerable the President is because of the economy and his seeming willingness to let the Republicans in Congress pull down his pants and take his lunch money. I've yet to read much of anything that actually points out the reality of it all, however.

2012 is already in Obama's pocket, and I will tell you why. Back when George W. Bush started his campaign for President, Karl Rove made the very cynical decision to rev up the "base" (read: crazy nutjob wing of the Republican Party) and sell out the entire Republican Party to its most extreme wing in order to accrue short term gains while ensuring long term weaknesses. As a result, the only way for any candidate to grab the Republican nomination is for them to skew their pandering further and further to the right to the point where sensible people are disavowing the scientific evidence concerning global warming and the theory of evolution and raising their hands in support of not taking a lopsided offer of spending cuts to tax hikes that any sane person would sign onto in a second. Eventually, in order to secure the nomination, the candidate has painted him- or herself into the crazy-dazy corner, where every utterance is extreme and toeing a nonlooney line is no longer an option.

And this is the persona that the candidate is stuck with throughout the general election campaign. For without the nutbags, the candidate has no basis of support and can only be seen as an equivocator. Unreasonable or unethical, those are the two possible images. Either is a losing proposition.

And all the liberals who complain so vehemently about the President and his performance (me included) will vote for him again because the idea of having a Perry or a Bachmann or a Palin as President will be too much to bear and because they have a tendency to talk too much from emotion (remember, these are the same folks who were going to move to Canada if Bush were elected or reelected) and not enough from a practical consideration of the options that lay ahead.

And the Independents will, by-and-large, decide that sanity is preferable to insanity and will vote for Mr. Obama as a possibly weak but eminently sane candidate.

There will be no melodrama. It won't be a squeaker. Obama will win and handily. The end.