The contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination is shaping up to be highly entertaining– at least if you’re a Democrat.
Public Policy Polling reports:
Only 38% of Republican primary voters say they’re willing to support a candidate for President next year who firmly rejects the birther theory and those folks want Mitt Romney to be their nominee for President next year. With the other 62% of Republicans- 23% of whom say they are only willing to vote for a birther and 39% of whom are not sure- Donald Trump is cleaning up. And as a result Trump’s ridden the controversy about Barack Obama’s place of birth to the highest level of support we’ve found for anyone in our national GOP polling so far in 2011.
That’s right. If you’re a Republican who wants to be president, and you firmly believe the conclusive evidence that Barack Obama was born in the USA, 62 percent of GOP primary voters either won’t vote for you or aren’t sure if they will.
Trump’s broken the perpetual gridlock we’ve found at the top of the Republican field, getting 26% to 17% for Mike Huckabee, 15% for Romney, 11% for Newt Gingrich, 8% for Sarah Palin, 5% for Ron Paul, and 4% for Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.
Born-again birther Trump– who claims to have sent investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth status– is probably just messing with us when he claims to be considering a run for the White House. But his Kyl-like tendency to say ridiculous things obviously has caught the imagination of many rank-and-file Republicans.
On the other hand, in a struggling economy, Trump’s willingness to fire people on his TV show may not be a selling point.
Lagging behind at the moment is poor Mitt Romney, whose comparative earnestness and seriousness– and belief that Obama is US-born– may not be what Republican voters are looking for this time.
As a former businessman, Romney claims he knows what it takes to create jobs in America. On the other hand, under President Bill Clinton– who had next to no experience in private business– millions of jobs were created, while under President Herbert Hoover– who had years of experience in the mining industry and co-founded a major company– millions of jobs were lost.
According to Romney:
In 1985 I helped found a company… Sometimes I was successful and helped create jobs. Other times I wasn’t.
As Stephen Colbert observes, this suggests a campaign slogan that all of us can relate to:
Of course Romney’s biggest obstacle to winning over GOP voters is that– as governor of Massachusetts– he created a health insurance program that is suspiciously similar to what Republicans like to call ObamaCare.
