At least 40 percent of the electorate shares much of Obama’s worldview; their support for Obama does not depend on the direction of the monthly unemployment numbers. That’s not a weak base to build on, and the Republican task of finding 51 percent who will resist the free-lunch demagoguery of the left grows more difficult with each election cycle.
There is a growing realization in political quarters that there’s more to the resiliency of the Obama regime and his re-election chances than voters’ shifting priorities or occasional upticks in the nation’s economy. But the resiliency of the Obama constituency should not be a mystery: It’s the culture, stupid.
Some very large segments of the population are immune from any evidence or real-world news of Obama’s failures. The challenge for Republican strategists and Romney advisers is that this problem is far deeper than traditional Democratic constituencies such as organized labor and ethnic minorities. The problem for Republican strategists is that they have great difficulty thinking outside the box of conventional economic issues. They fear “social issues” – which are, of course, cultural issues – and have no contingency plan for dealing with them.
The bad news for Romney is that at least 40 percent of the electorate shares much of Obama’s worldview; their support for Obama does not depend on the direction of the monthly unemployment numbers. That’s not a weak base to build on, and the Republican task of finding 51 percent who will resist the free-lunch demagoguery of the left grows more difficult with each election cycle.
The Obama worldview is radically different from any traditional policy framework rooted in limited government and the rule of law. The Obama worldview provides an instant translation for any event that might be seen by ordinary citizens as a policy failure. To Obama and the radical left, when an Obama policy gets disappointing results, it’s because American institutions have failed. To them, that means they must redouble their efforts, not change course.
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