President Obama's 2012 dilemma

Karl Rove, who was Dubyah's David Axelrod (in case you've forgotten), has a good article over at his Wall Street Journal blog on why 2012 is not 2004. His reasoning certainly makes sense to me.

It's a myth, Mr. Rove points out, that President Bush's re-election was due primarily to a Republican effort at turning out the base. Efforts to reach independents and undecideds were equally important. But there is no question that turning out the base was basic to the 2004 Bush campaign, and will have to be for President Obama's in 2012.

And despite superficial similarities in President Obama's numbers now and Dubyah's at about the same time in 2004, there is one major- and decisive-difference between the two campaigns, clearly seen already in the reaction of Ed Rendell, Bill Clinton and others to the Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain and the whole business of venture capitalism.

Mr. Obama has governed more-or-less from the center. But despite all the denials from the media, his record before assuming the presidency placed him farther to the Left than any Democratic nominee since George McGovern. And again despite the media's chronic state of denial, the base to which he will have to appeal is far outside the mainstream. In fact, it is out-and-out anti-capitalist.

The issue isn't whether Mr. Obama is a socialist, as those on the Right given to loose rhetoric have insisted for the past four years. The issue is that if his base isn't socialist, it certainly is hostile to free enterprise and those who succeed at it. That base is exemplified by the Occupy types and others who see our economic system as the root of our nation's problems, if not of all evil.

And the more Mr. Obama plays to that base, the more he will alienate an American electorate that by and large is strongly in favor of free enterprise.

The President is on the horns of a dilemma: given the hostility of his base to capitalism, the more he fires up thatbase, the more he drives the centrists and the independents into Mitt Romney's camp. It may be wishful thinking on the part of this Romney supporter, but it seems to me that there's no way out for the president- especially because, despite what the media keeps telling us,

It certainly seems to me that the class-warfare strategy the administration and Democratic party generally has adopted has painted them into an ideological corner it will be very difficult for them to escape by November.

HT: Real Clear Politics