http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html I dunno what everyone else is looking at, but realclear shows 229 - 191 w/118 tossup in favor of Obama. Likelies are 175 - 159 in favor of Obama. 270 needed to win. All the swing states are still swinging, far as I can tell from this map. Can't figure out where the idea that the swings are already R is coming from... (And yes, looking at this now is just timewasting. Or entertainment. Certainly not serious.)
I didn't say the swing states were R, I said they were in a statistical dead heat. That's not good considering Romney has been getting his brains beat in by Gingrich and he is still tied with Obama. Once the primary is over those swing states are going to firm up. I'm betting they will move slightly to the right. AK thinks to the left. We'll see.
Just need to run one ad: Romney supports Ryan's plan. Keep repeating it. Don't stop. Very simple, very effective. You could turn the election into a complete slaughter simply by sticking to this.
...and I just saw this at Real Clear: http://www.mittsbloodmoney.com/ If I were a Republican, I'd want Newt silenced, fast. Holy crap.
The problem with that ad, for the Republicans, is that the Democrats don't need to change a thing about it, except a few words in the text. I literally did a doubletake on it, because it seemed crazy to me that it would come from a Republican. I was just watching the MSNBC coverage, and Ed Schultz was interviewing some guy from this SuperPac, and threw him a question about Mitt & Bain, clearly looking to get some dirt out of him. Sure enough, the guy goes into his spiel on Damon & Medicare fraud. I mean, WTF? He didn't even have enough sense to realize he'd been baited into giving a Dem insider all the info that guy would need to draw & quarter Romney come general election time. Oh man. If I were headin up the RNC, I'd have Newt drummed out of the freakin party. Absolutely crazy. Reminds me of a bit out of Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72* where George Wallace won Florida from Muskie just by showing up at a NASCAR race. In this case, all Obama's gonna need is two ads: one with Romney endorsing the Ryan plan, and this one for the follow-up. In the immortal words of the late Dr. Thompson, nothing else will be necessary. [size=-2]*Best book about Prez elections ever written; if you want to know what happened to Santorum in Iowa, take a look at the part where they're counting the votes in the Dem primary in Ohio; the Humphrey urban machine - backed by the Dem establishment just like Romney today is backed by the Rep establishment - was in full battle mode, holding back the results from Cleveland's inner city districts until they knew just how many votes they'd need to put Humphrey over, in the same way the Romney folks robbed Santorum of his Iowa win, holding back the results Santorum needed to put him over and only allowing him to have them when it was too late for it to do him any good as a surprise headline of the sort he could have used to gain some Big Mo goin into NH.[/size]
Newt is going to start a Civil War in the GOP -------------- I hope he does start a civil war. I hope he tips over the apple cart.The status quo is a friggin mess. The Reps, imo will be better off for it in the long run. That's what we are looking for the long run.