Romney’s VP Pick: Here’s My Bet

Obama has been leading in the polls. Recent polls from CNN and Fox News (which was conducted by one of my UT professors’ polling firm Shaw & Research Co.) put Obama on top by 7 and 9 percentage points respectively, which is above the standard margin of error. Gallup poll conducted Friday put both campaigns at a 46-46 tie. Rasmussen tracking provided Romney with a two point advantage. Mr. Obama has also been leading in most of the swing states. Romney needs a good convention, a good vice presidential pick, and good debates to carry him over the top: it is an uphill battle for sure.

As for the VP speculation, the Romney campaign has been trumping up its VP selection by pestering supporters with emails asking them to donate for a chance to find out the identity of Romney’s running mate and rolling out a new Apple app as a tool for supporters to be the first to find out about the pick. In a recent CNN/ORC poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, Marco Rubio came out on top of the list, with Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Chris Christie of New Jersey close behind tied for second. Ok look, as much as I would like for Paul Ryan to be Romney’s running mate, I do not think that is very likely purely out of strategic concerns. Nate Silver, a respected statistician turned pollster, puts Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) at a mere 2.8% as a deciding state to carry Romney over, while he pegs Ohio (18 electoral votes) at 34% decisive to a Romney win. Wisconsin already has Scott Walker, the governor who took on the unions and survived a liberal, special-interests campaign to unseat him. Walker is also speaking at the Republican National Convention to trump up support. In addition, the President has been leading in Wisconsin for weeks now. These realities alone deprive Paul Ryan of a chance at VP, not to mention the Left has successfully painted Ryan as a radical affront on the women and the poor through his budget plans. Ryan himself is not vastly popular in his home state with 30 some percent approval. If Ryan is picked, more negative ads will flood the air to bring down Ryan’s credentials and paint him as killer-of-Medicare-as-we-know-it, which is a liberal way of deflecting from the real issue: entitlement reform. I am a huge fan of Paul Ryan. I think he is one of the few Republicans in Congress who had the balls to offer a bold plan to reign in the country’s fiscal binge. But in a tight election year, Ryan may be too “bold” of a pick. Ryan will be red meat for the “gotcha” mainstream media’s dog-and-pony show, a good pick for the Party’s fiscal hawks, but bad for the electability of a Republican presidential candidate in a tough election year. 

Bobby Jindal, Republican governor from Louisiana, has been a name thrown around as well. From a strategic standpoint, Jindal makes absolutely no sense for Romney’s electoral gains. Jindal has a phenomenal resume that arguably outshines Romney. Why do you want to make a sequel of Batman and focus solely on Robin (McCain/Palin)? The campaign would be stupid to pick Jindal as the VP ticket.  

Other names include Bob McConnell, Rob Portman, and Marco Rubio. According to Nate Silver, Rubio has a net positive impact of 2.8% in his home state, while Portman has 1.1%. Bob McConnell has a 3.5%, but Virginia has only 13 electoral votes, 15 less than Florida. Rubio is predicted to increase Florida’s win chance by 15%. In the same blog, Silver however predicts that Portman and McConnell will have the most likely impact (about two percentage points) on winning the election. That’s how the numbers look today. Here are some qualitative considerations.

McConnell is a popular governor in Virginia, a state that went to a Democratic President in 2008 for the first time since LBJ. Virginia is an important state for Obama. He has campaigned and fundraised in Virginia numerous times this year. The state has a relatively low unemployment rate at about 6%. Even though southern Virginia bordering North Carolina has higher jobless rate, that area of state, being rural, small town America will most likely go to Romney anyways. The key urban center in Northern Virginia, where an economic boom, similar to that of Austin, has brought in diverse, highly-skilled workers to IT and government contract jobs. Places like Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County, Prince William County, Loundon County are some of the wealthiest counties coupled with lowest jobless rates in the country. Bob McConnell carried all three of these wealthy counties in 2009. With McConnell as surrogate, Romney can tap into these counties and steal a win in Virginia. With a Real Clear Politics polling average between 3-8/10, the country rejects Obamacare, 49.9%-42.2%, a 7.7 percentage point lead in favor of repealing. There is only one candidate who is campaigning to repeal Obamacare in this race. Team Obama has a tough sell to make in these rich counties where people are perfectly fine with their health care. Therefore, it is not overly optimistic for me to think Romney has a good chance with Virginia.

In Florida, Senator Marco Rubio has the political profile and the conservative credentials to not only solidify Romney’s support in Florida, a key swing state, but he is vastly popular among the Tea Party brand of the party and the so-called conservative purists. And let’s face it, a rising star in the new Hispanic right? Jackpot. If Florida’s 29 electoral votes go toward Romney, and if he takes back Wisconsin and Virginia, states that went to Obama in 2008, he doesn’t need Ohio to win the election. However, admittedly, the scenario I proposed is rather rosy because Wisconsin and Virginia have been trending Democratic. In turns of resource allocation, Ohio (18 electoral votes) is still THE strategy for the Romney campaign, and he needs to do anything to shore up support to carry 50%+1 in Ohio, even if that means picking Rob Portman as his VP…or so some strategists would suggest. But a plurality, 42% of voters polled in Ohio, either don’t know or haven’t heard of Portman. Actually a PPP poll concludes 55% Ohioans don’t know Portman in his own state! What use is that? While it is true that 16 out of 22 vice presidential picks since 1968 came from home states already in candidates’ favor, often those are states with little electoral gains such as Connecticut, Delaware, Wyoming, etc., (Bill Turque, Washington Post), Rubio is from a state that hails 29 valuable electoral votes, the same state that had riveted the nation in 2000 with butterfly ballots and Supreme Court drama.

Nate Silver predicts that Rob Portman will boost Romney’s election win potential by 2 points, while Bob McConnell will carry it over by 1 point. To the non-political watchers, in a current world of party polarization and divided America, that can be significant enough to carry Romney to the top on Election Day.  

Of course, the media and the pundits love a good horse-race. To them, this is the NFL draft of politics. Couple weeks back, network television was hyping up Condoleeza Rice as Romney’s potential VP, to all serious Republicans, we knew that was a desperate call from media running out of guesses, which is a good sign for the Romney campaign – keep them guessing. The media has been focusing on Tim Pawlenty (uh no jose), Rob Portman, and Paul Ryan in the last week. 

Republicans need to stop fooling ourselves and put up a show for the mainstream media. Barack Obama is arguably one of the best political communicators, orators, rhetoricians, BSers in the history of the United States. He has some of the brightest political operatives working for his campaign. And despite his recent habitual lament of how the Republicans are beating him in the fundraising game, his campaign is still ahead of the game having raised some $550 million, compared to Romney’s $395 million. To put that in perspective, Obama campaign has a fundraising advantage of $155 million that could easily employ more than 860,000 Kenyans for a year based on the country’s per capita annual income of $1,800. Republicans should not and cannot underestimate the Chicago political machine that is behind the Obama campaign.

On an interview with Chuck Todd of NBC, Romney said that he wants a VP who has “a vision for the country, that, that adds something to the political discourse about the direction of the country.” Rob Portman doesn’t seem to fit the description. Senator Rubio is a young conservative firebrand who will ignite the conservatives, tear down the stereotype of Republican old “white male” club, and provide political hope for fiscally conservative, anti-communist, Catholic, pro-family Latino voters. Going the Florida route in an electoral plan via Rubio seems like the best VP choice for me for Romney and the Republican Party. For an owner of a 200-year-old haunted house in Ohio, Portman is too spooky of a pick for the Republican Party. I understand the rationale for a “boring white guy” as running mate; but come on, I can’t be the only guy who thinks a Romney-Portman might be too boring that people may not even turn out to vote?

CNN just broke the news: Romney campaign will be announcing his VP pick in Norfolk, Virginia tomorrow morning (Quick! All network reporters, get on the first plane to Norfolk #BostonAirport backed up on tarmac) 

Here’s my relatively rosy Electoral Map. We will see where political tides take up in the next three months. Wisconsin was a big call for me, but let’s wait and see.  

Liberals Out There: Speak up for Rachel Elizabeth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gERsTy2GiPM

I had a wonderful birthday celebration over the course of the last few days that some political headliners eluded me. Now I have mainly stayed away from the Chick-fil-A controversy mainly because I think it was blown out of proportion. With a slew of pictures from prominent Republicans with Chick-fil-A bags as backdrop and from kiss-ins organized by anti-groups, the whole shebang was more of a theatrical event than anything of substance. Politics is a nasty business. I get it. We have Senator Reid accusing Romney for not paying taxes for over ten years, Obama coining catchy phrases like “Romney hood” and “You didn’t build that,” and Sandra Fluke, the feminist warrior, speaking sooo passionately for women’s right to government contraceptives; and of course, there is Chick-fil-A, with the latest victim of the episode being an innocent employee named Rachel Elizabeth. This is what happened at one Chick-fil-A drive-thru. 

Some self-righteous duffus went to a chick-fil-a drive thru getting only a cup of water. While at the service window, he broke out in an illogical anti-corporation rant against an innocent server, Rachel, whose cool-headed, superb customer service throughout this whole thoroughfare is laudable and demands the attention of all liberals who supposedly fight for women. How dare does Adam Smith go off and berate and lecture an innocent woman whose sole job is simply there to serve him, the customer?! Who is he to question how other people make a living and publicly abuse them thinking he’s holier-than-thou? Adam Smith is everything repugnant about progressive liberals that conservatives despise: people who are spineless, lack common decency, and ostentatious bandwagoners who don’t think for themselves. Regardless of his opinions about Chick-fil-A, for Smith to make a fuss about the situation in a smug, smirky kind of way and to verbally harass an employee at a drive-thru (while paying absolutely nothing) all while on camera, only undermines whatever motive he had to begin with.

I seriously doubt anti-Chick-fil-A activists will claim Smith as one of their own. I just hope that people on both sides can recognize what he did was incredibly ridiculous. Just to be clear, I am all for free speech; therefore, I stand by Smith’s right to speak up. But if Smith really wanted to make a political statement, he could have written letters to Chick-fil-A, given money to pro-equality organizations, and run for office himself! There are legitimate democratic channels for him to vent his frustrations, yet he has chosen to victimize an hourly-waged employee of a multibillion national corporation that has given money to certain organizations that espouse, among many things, anti-gay sentiments. Think about that causal chain! For Smith to think he is gaining “purpose” by doing this is both irrational and sad. I mean the guy waited in line to go through the drive thru window to grab his…water, creepily without asking for permission taped the whole encounter, and apparently put it up on YouTube, hmmm what kind of recognitions is Smith seeking? A “pro-gay” woman-bashing YouTube star?!

Not only does he attack Chick-fil-A for being “hateful” and “horrible,” he has the chutzpah to question Rachel, “How do you live with yourself and work here?” He even challenges Rachel to “stand up” for herself. PEOPLE! This guy is a gutless bully who turtles up in his car and picks on women. Please by all means denounce his action. And what’s more?? He leaves the drive-thru window feeling somehow compelled to say that he is not gay. ”I’m totally heterosexual and not a gay in me” O really?? I don’t know about you, but my gaydar is ringing off the chart…I feel bad for this guy. He made a fool out of himself, and he stupidly hinders the effort of pro-equality activists in this country.  Congratulations Citizen Smith, you not only managed to offend all the young, hardworking American women working in fast food industry, you have also succeeded in offending the LGBT community, the very community you attempt to stand up for in the first place? The conventional distinction between liberals and conservatives lies in those with hearts and those with brains (this is an oversimplication and a joke for the political nerds out there), unfortunately for Adam Smith, he possess neither quality. 

American Conservatism Needs to Return to Its Roots: GOP in Dire Need of a Rebrand

Politically, Ted Cruz made national news last night by pulling off an upset and won the Texas Republican Primary Run-Off against David Dewhurst, a party establishment favorite going into the election to replace Kay Bailey Hutchinson who is retiring after this term. With heavyweights like Sarah Palin, Mike Lee, and Jim DeMint making personal appearances in the Lone Star state in favor of Cruz last week, as well as endorsements from Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Pat Toomey, Tom Coburn, and the longtime well-respected conservative thinker and former Attorney General under Reagan, Ed Meese, Cruz has the label Tea Party “insurgent” written all over him. The choice was clear for conservatives across the state: a moderate legislative negotiator (read compromiser, status quo) vs. a proven conservative fighter. More than 1.1 million voters, including myself, voted in the Republican Primary in a suppressed statewide turnout of mere 8.5%. Cruz won 56.8% of the vote, while Dewhurst managed to get 43.2% of the vote, a wider gap than the 10-point lead to Cruz predicated by Public Policy Polling over the weekend (source: Texas Secretary of State Election Results).

This election was a big prize for the Tea Party movement. It also signals the political fracturing in this country and within the Republican Party itself. The Republican Party is desperately in need of a rebranding in this November election and in the years leading up to the end of the decade. Currently, many ideological inconsistencies exist in the Party’s platform and policies that undermine the strength of the Party. Republicans of all stripes need to have a national convention and dialogue, especially with young Republicans who will inherit the Party and the country in the coming decades, about their vision for the Party’s future and hash out the differences. Americans are looking for a fiscally responsible government that is more effective and efficient, one that does not step over its constitutional boundaries, one that respect human rights and personal liberty, and one that can provide real hope and prosperity to millions of jobless Americans. The GOP can deliver that agenda, but infighting needs to give way to reality. Party paternalism needs to stop. Dogged pursuit of out-of-touch wedge issues need to desist. Real dialogue needs to happen. A younger generation of Republicans with its own set of political values and beliefs need to be incorporated into the Party agenda in order for the Party to stay relevant.

Polls tell us that young people still favor the President 56-39. The Republican Party is not on-message with the young voters, who in my belief care more about the cultural and social issues, such as marriage equality and equal pay for woman. Republican Party needs to revisit its stance on some of these issues because frankly its hostility – rhetorical or otherwise – toward gays and women is not “conservative,” but rather stubborn and tyrannical. It is no surprise that Ron Paul, a libertarian, has been a political superstar among otherwise would-be conservative young voters.

I still believe in American conservatism with its emphasis on classical liberal values on individual liberty, respect for the Constitution, peace through strength foreign posture, and fiscal responsibility as the best course for our country. However, I feel like some of the so-called conservatives have catered to a form of lifestyle conservatism that does great injustice to the conservative movement. Their policy stance and rhetoric are grossly out of touch with young voters, who feel the constant tug-of-war between fiscal conservatism and open-minded, socially liberal acceptance of all people and human rights – a tenet that should be claimed by conservatives but is not as result of the Christian Right.

Right now, Cruz will carry the banner of grassroots conservatives in a heavily favored general election to succeed Senator Hutchinson in November. A rising star in the Republican Party, Mr. Cruz with his legal backgrounds rooted in two venerable Ivy League institutions will provide the conservative intellectual gusto alongside Paul Ryan in Washington in challenging status quo politics of overspending and overregulation by the federal government. However, if Mr. Cruz becomes a cultural warrior for the Christian Right’s agenda, we need to revisit the conservative movement pioneered by Barry Goldwater in the late 50s and early 60s, search our conscience, and ask ourselves just what does it mean to be a conservative in the 21^st century America? 

“One cannot help but wonder whether this apparent support [for President Obama] by America’s younger generation reflects a thoughtful assessment of the future of America, or if it harkens back to high school student body elections, where superficial popularity carries the day. Do young voters base votes on critical thought about policies, or on the candidate’s ability to shoot hoops, text on a Blackberry, and fill out an NCAA bracket?”

Why Obamacare is Bad for Young People

London 2012: Team USA!

I haven’t blogged for a while now. It has been a hectic two weeks of starting my internship, packing, continuing with my research project, moving out of my old apartment, and striving to maintain a reasonable level of routine to my life. Summer Orientation is officially over. I am thrilled to have heard wonderful things about orientation from the new incoming class via personal feedbacks and tweets. Thanks to New Student Services, we succeeded in welcoming over 7000 incoming freshmen and transfer students to the UT campus. I am beyond excited for them to come at the end of the month to embark on a new chapter of their life here in Austin. I made new wonderful friends during orientation. I look forward to keeping those relationships strong throughout the upcoming year.

Summer Olympics in London this year has hit it off with a strong start for Team USA. Though I was puzzled by a few minute details during the Opening Ceremony, and frustrated by the absentminded point-out-the-obvious, with at times, unnecessary political commentary by NBC, I thought London has put forth a great Opening Ceremony show for the world to see with memorable moments like the Queen parachuting out of helicopter 007-style, the music through the decades showcasing British cultural evolution, classic Mr. Bean segment, the always emotional lighting of the torch, and the unforgettable sing-a-along with Paul McCartney in “Hey Jude.” Firework lit up the London skyline in a perfecto ending signaling the start of yet another true international sporting tradition cherished by all nations.

When I checked this morning, Team USA is currently in lead in medal counts with 26 medals, and second only to China in gold medal count. The gymnastic team has outdone itself last night and delivered gold for the whole country to see. Those girls have shown grace and confidence throughout the whole competition. Their much deserved champion status last night is a triumph shared by all Americans as we were all riveted to our television, rooted and cheered for Aly, Gabby, Jordan, McKayla, and Kyla. And Michael Phelps, now an Olympian legend, the most decorated Olympian of all time, with 19 medals to show for, is a favorite among all Americans. When I was scrolling through my tweets last night, I saw President Obama’s tweet to Phelps, “Congrats to Michael Phelps for breaking the all-time Olympic medal record. You’ve made your country proud. — bo.” Now for political nerds like myself who follow a whole host of politicians on Twitter, I know that “bo” means Barack Obama himself tweeted. Regardless of my disagreements with the President on policies, that was pretty darn cool.

Look forward for Team USA to further deliver and make us all proud for the next couple of weeks! TEAM USA!!!