Conservatives can no longer mask their frustrations with Mitt Romney as polls have moved sharply in President Obama's favor since the conventions. Conservatives see the cause as Romney's lackluster embrace of true conservative principles, an unwillingness to fight, and a conspiracy between mainstream media and Democrats to demoralize and depress the Republicans base. Romney is now facing widespread criticism from within his own party, and demands that he get more aggressive about promoting "true" conservative principles.
Rush Limbaugh warns conservatives not to let Mitt Romney, polls, and liberal media to get them down reminding them that Mitt Romney might as well be Elmer Fudd, because they are voting against President Obama.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Well, let me tell you something. You see that and you ball up your fists and say, "What are they talking about!" It's not about them. I hate to tell you this. I mentioned this on the air some time ago. Romney, the best thing he can do is remember this election isn't about him. He may as well be Elmer Fudd as far as we're concerned. We're voting against Obama. I don't care who they put on the ticket, we're voting against Obama. That has not changed, and there are more people now than in 2010 who are gonna vote against Obama.
And David Gregory knows it and F. Chuck Todd knows it. The CNN people know it, and the MSNBC people know it. That's why they're doing what they're doing with the polling data, trying to dispirit you and depress you.
Well, at least, Rush Limbaugh hasn't discovered our secret handshake and passwords yet. More below the squiggle.
Laura Ingraham suggests that, this is a "gimme election," and if Mitt Romney can not win this election, under these circumstances the Republicans Party might as well close up shop and start over. But, she tried to focus her criticisms on Romney's staff and consultants rather than the candidate himself.
Speaking to the GOP, Ingraham said, "If you can't beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party. Shut it down. Start new, with new people."
"Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns; who've run campaigns that have failed; who have message campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired," Ingraham said. "I don't understand that. I don't know why those are the people you hire."
She pressed that the Romney campaign needed to hire stronger branding consultants. "If I'm hiring messaging people, I'm finding out, for instance, who did the original Geico gecko commercial, because that guy or gal who did that, actually knows how to brand something," she said.
During the Republican primary, Ingraham argued that Romney would have to bring his "A-game" to the general election in order to beat Obama. "I don't know if Mitt Romney can beat him," Ingraham said on ABC's "This Week," recalling a conversation she had with prominent conservatives.
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John Podhoretz, a conservative from the New York Post, writes The GOP mini-panic - A warning to Romney camp:
Playing it too safe? Mitt Romney’s reluctance to risk offending swing voters leaves him failing to inspire the voters he needs to keep. ... The Romney campaign seems to have settled on an argument that Obama’s poll strength is just a post-convention “sugar high,” as its pollster Neil Newhouse said in a strikingly infelicitous memo released yesterday that offered no data-driven support for that view and mainly dwelled on how much money Romney has. ... It’s interesting Newhouse hit on the dismissive description of a “sugar high” — because a sugar rush is what Romney’s side needs. ...
That’s not happening now. A CNN/ORC poll released yesterday shows that only 47 percent of Romney voters are on his side because they want to vote for him; 48 percent are casting a vote against Obama.
He has to give those voters more. He owes those voters more, because without more— and with a relentless press barrage designed to depress and worry them — their worry will deepen into panic, and possibly into despair.
Oh noes! Republican worries are deeping due to "a relentless press barrage designed to depress and worry them — their worry will deepen into panic, and possibly into despair." What will they do?
What do conservatives always recommend when they are not reaching voters? Obviously, Romney has not swerved far enough to the right!
Ryan Grim conveys this feeling of hard core conservatives that Mitt Romney has not swerved enough to the right, and needs to draw a line in the sand, and fight more for true conservative principles in Mitt Romney Critics Hammer Campaign For Failure To Fight
WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney and his team will be hit with a merciless barrage of friendly fire in the days after the November election if the presidential race continues its current trajectory and the carping from GOP analysts and strategists the past week is any guide. ... With polls moving in the president's direction, the Romney campaign continuing to stumble, and Obama outraising Romney for the first time in months, conservatives are wondering if the lemon they bought is enough to finish the race. ...
But the wished-for ideological battle has not fully materialized. With shaky poll numbers, the conservative thinking goes, let's at the very least go down with a fight. Invoking the specter of failed Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard warned this week, "It's not enough to float like a butterfly. You have to sting like a bee. No sting, no victory." ...
Weekly Standard columnist Stephen Hayes, talking on Fox News, echoed Kristol. "I feel like now we've sort of reverted to this pre-Ryan moment -- this safe, cautious campaign," Hayes worried, part of a chorus sounding resigned to the realization that while Romney may have chosen the combative Ryan, he left out the combativeness. Or, as former George W. Bush adviser Michael Gerson put it in the Washington Post, "Romney chose Ryan, not Ryanism."
Of all these ideas, Laura Ingraham has the best, shut the Republican Party down, and start over.
But, if a mere week of bad polling can rattle the Republican Party this much, I can barely wait for the next month and the debates.
Order up your popcorn by the gross because it looks like we are going to have plenty of fun this fall election season.