The Electability Snooker

Recent polls show that Mitt Romney is catching up to and passing Barack Obama in favorability for November's presidential election.

While it has been said for months by the likes of Rush Limbaugh that Obama would lose to whomever the GOP put at the top of its ticket, establishment party operatives pushed the "Romney is the only electable candidate" meme.  The catchy jingle stuck and Romney essentially ran away with the delegate count despite being a candidate who clearly was not favored by a majority of GOP voters when given more conservative options.

Many of those who ultimately voted for Romney in the primaries did so solely on the electablity issue--he was not in tune with what they believed personally on the role of government in the everyday lives of most Americans, but they refused to take the chance that Obama might win the election if a more risky candidate was chosen.

Well, here we are almost a full half year from the upcoming election and the Obama campaign is stumbling over economic and foreign policy hurdles with almost dizzying regularity.  He is crashing and burning and every bit of news that comes out of Washington these days tosses a little more gasoline onto the fire. Obama might very well prove to be the weakest incumbent presidential candidate in history--and the GOP, at the behest of moderate party leaders, is facing him with a moderate country club republican who believes in global warming, socialized medicine, supported raising the debt limit, TARP, and spent a good amount of his last two decades dissing on Ronald Reagan.

Is Romney favorable to Obama?  Dumb question--I'd also rather lose a toe than a hand.  The better question is whether or not the GOP should have produced a truly conservative candidate to run against a guy that by comparison makes Jimmy Carter appear competent.  

The unelectable guy in this contest was always Barack Obama.