Far-right talk not helping the GOP
If Barack Obama wins re-election he’ll have several thank-you notes to write.
He’ll want to drop Newt Gingrich a letter, thanking him for bringing up GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital, setting the stage for the Democrats’ attack on the issue. Ditto for Rick Santorum, who took health care reform off the table by highlighting Romney’s support for the individual mandate in Massachusetts.
And the president will compose a nice note for Clint Eastwood, thanking him for the empty chair speech in Tampa.
But Obama should save the special stationery for U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, the Missouri U.S. Senate candidate, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
Akin’s fumble of the abortion-access question is well-known, of course. Less understood is the impact it had on Romney’s race: In the week before the Republican convention, the nominee had significantly closed the polling gap with Obama and was positioned to take that momentum into the GOP gathering.
Instead, the Akin blow-up dominated headlines across the country.
And Romney’s convention bounce vanished.
Then last week Kobach, along with Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, refused to quickly bury a birth-certificate challenge to Obama’s place on the state ballot. Their decision also popped up in newspapers and on blogs across the country, sucking up air, about the time Romney wanted to talk about Obama’s foreign policy record.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/18/3821824/dave-helling-far-right-talk-not.html#storylink=cpy
