Polls Show Clear Shift Towards Romney

It’s really too early to make a big deal out of Presidential polls. But there are several polls out that are just to good to ignore. Here in Michigan, Romney is up 1 among likely voters. Romney also has small leads in Ohio and Florida while the candidates remained tied in Colorado. Even the gender gap is tightening, the left’s faux war on women line is failing. Also last month Romney was able to out fundraise Obama by around $16 million. This isn’t a sign of the tide turning in Romney’s favor but it does set things up well for the Republicans come the fall.

Obama has been savaged by one piece of bad news after another for the last three months. It all begins with his whisper in the ear of the Russian President. Then Obamacare was savaged before the Supreme Court, then the Arizona immigration lawsuit was savaged. Economic numbers are down. The President’s campaign message is all over the place, he spent a week talking about Romney’s dog, now he’s calling him a vulture. Bill Clinton is becoming a problem. Now security leaks are becoming a hot issue, even Democrats are outraged. His cabinet looks incompetent, Eric Holder insists that emails that contain the phrase ‘fast and furious’ doesn’t actually refer to the Fast and Furious program. Of course we cannot forget Tuesday’s repudiation of public sector unions in Wisconsin.

It could get worse for the President with the Supreme Court scheduled to rule on Obamacare within the next three weeks. It is with that ruling that Obama has an oppertunity to turn the tide. He essentially has two choices if Obamacare is ruled unconstitutional. He can argue for a modified version of Obamacare with all the goodies people seem to support such as children staying on their parents policy until they’re practically middle aged (26) and guaranteeing coverage for preexisting conditions. His other argument is to double down on socialist medicine and argue for an outright single payer system like he did in 2008. If he’s wise, he’ll go with the former because it gives him an opportunity to make healthcare an issue in this election and on his terms no less.

Romney has to love the numbers he’s seeing so far. His campaign must be confident at this point. He needs to do two things which will help his campaign. First he needs to beat Obama to the punch on healthcare. If Romney is going to support some of the goodies of Obamacare which are popular then he needs to come out and do it right now before Obama has a chance to formulate a response to the Obamacare decision. Politically this is a good move, even if economically it isn’t.

Second, Romney needs to formulate a long term economic plan and present it clearly and concisely to the American people. He doesn’t need to do that today but he needs to start putting that together in order to roll it out in August. If economic numbers continue to stagnate or slide, the election will become a pure referendum on Obama. For Romney to win that, he needs to at least be able to demonstrate that he has a grasp of the issues and has a clear alternative to Obama. This is what Reagan did in 1980 and what Clinton did in 1992.

The polls are encouraging for Romney and the Republicans at this point. In the very least, even if Romney isn’t able to win states like Michigan or Wisconsin he’s going to force Obama to spend time and money there that cannot be spent in real battle ground states like Ohio and Virginia. Most importantly for Romney at this point though is that Obama has utterly failed to define him, no matter how hard he has tried. That will pay dividends in the fall. We may look back at this period as the time when Obama let victory slip through his hands.