Over at Townhall.com, Donald Lambro of the Washington Times sees Ohio going red this election cycle, and has some choice words for the anticipated victory:
With the Buckeye State’s jobless rate stuck at 10.5 percent, one of the highest in the country, Obama’s dubious assertion doesn’t appear to be selling. Ohio has lost more than 130,000 jobs since he signed his $800-billion spending stimulus into law.
And that’s not the only presidential message falling flat in the state. Obama and his party are hoping to convince enough Ohioans that if they vote Republican in November, it will only bring back the George W. Bush-era policies that he claims led to the 2008 recession.
But a new Rasmussen poll shows that former Bush administration official Rob Portman is maintaining his strong lead over Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, the state’s failed Democratic jobs czar, among likely voters in the open U.S. Senate race.[…]
Political analyst Erin McPike writes on the Real Clear Politics website that Portman “has endured a spate of attacks from Democrats who refer to him as ‘the architect of President Bush’s economic agenda,’ but polling in the state has been trending slowly in his direction nevertheless.”
The state’s poor economy and high unemployment — tied (Oregon) for the ninth worst in the country — is the driving force behind voter flight from the Democrats. But Fisher has also run a disastrous campaign. He has not come up with a substantive plan to spur economic growth and jobs. Advisers and staffers have left his campaign. He has struggled with poor fundraising. He’s focused largely on attacking Portman.[…]
It is an axiom of American politics that elections are about the future, not the past. Ohioans are going to vote on the economy in November and not on George W. Bush, but in doing so, they will be voting for two of Bush’s longtime political allies.
In the words of the Internet: