It raises a few red flags knowing that the GOP is not settled on a front-runner.
Polling isn't getting us any closer figuring out which candidate will clinch the nomination. In fact, it's making things more and more clear that there is no front-runner. Is that bad? Yes. Is it still too early to put pressure on the electorate to make that decision. No. It hasn't been before.
Early poling gave Romney the thumbs up, and the inevitable nod floated tepidly his way when Nevada came through for the former Massachusetts Governor (in Nevada, Romney swept the vote winning by 48 percent, with Gingrich at 23 percent, and Paul winning 18 percent, according to CNN). But, as CNN's Wolf Blitzer confirmed Romney's win, there was doubt among the voters in one Nevada county. During a town hall in one county, a voter stood up and scolded a crowd of about seventy community members that they shouldn't vote for the person who they think will win the nomination, but the person they know will do the best job with running the country. That county cast most of their votes for Ron Paul.
Are the Republican voters going to elect the person who has the best chance of defeating Obama and not the person who will be the best president for their party? Do the primaries make voters in other states 'give in' and decide who to vote for solely because they want to win? It's calculated in a way that's damning, and we've heard the track played before in the media: The Tea party doesn't like Obama, John Boehner doesn't like Obama, Eric Cantor can't stand him, the Republican House doesn't like him, now Republican voters don't like Obama. In conclusion, we don't like Obama so we'll vote for the man who can take him down, not the man who we want to be president.
If this is true, then the voters are even more divided. Polling shows the numbers, pure and simple, but not the reasoning. It makes me wonder if voters can really be that fed up with Congress -and the others we put in office- when we vote for them for the exact reason we shouldn't vote for them.
Is all this good or bad for Obama?
Not a thing about running for office should include words like 'coast' or any derivative of that word (i.e. coasting). Not that I've overheard Dems saying this, but coffee house jokes (or watercooler jokes, however you see it) have suggested it. President Obama has a lot of work to do to win over the public as well. Democratic voters must also be responsible for who we put in office. I don't think that voters want to be reminded of why they voted for Obama the first time. They want to know why he'd be the best president to run our country.
And in the fall, whoever will challenge President Obama as the Republican nominee, let's hope that we as voters pay less attention to who's ahead in the polls and more attention to who's the best man for the job.
What do you think?
