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According to RealClearPolitics, Mitt Romney is up Florida and North Carolina, within the margin of error in Virginia and Colorado, within striking distance in Nevada, and Indiana “leans GOP.” More problematic for President Obama, Romney has turned Michigan into a swing state, where in the largest poll to date he leads the president by two points.
Nationally, in the Rasmussen generic congressional ballot, which gauges the public’s preference for a Republican or Democratic representative, the GOP leads by seven points. Hotair.com’s Ed Morrissey notes the GOP held roughly the same advantage at this time in 2010, months before the GOP gained sixty-three House seats in a historic landslide propelled by the Tea Party. The same Rasmussen poll shows Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama by four points.
Beyond the Beltway, the stage is being set for an epic GOP win on the national and local levels. Several intrastate events presage such an event and provide plentiful evidence that stories of the Tea Party’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
In Wisconsin, Republican governor Scott Walker endured vicious personal attacks against him, his family, and his lieutenant governor, and then soundly defeated organized labor’s effort to recall him. Walker raised more money, and ably demonstrated how his contentious public sector employee reforms had inarguably successful results. More ominous for organized labor, Walker won thirty-eight percent of the union vote in the process.
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The reality check towards sound fiscal governance occurring in Wisconsin was likewise on display in California (of all places), where voters in San Diego and San Jose voted to reform public employee benefits. These results suggest three takeaways: small government voters (Tea Partiers) nationwide are paying attention, donating and voting; public sector union benefits vastly disproportionate to private sector benefits, especially during a time of continued recession and historic unemployment, are a nonstarter; and independents in even liberal states are recognizing the need to support politicians who take political risks to avoid fiscal catastrophe.
The trend towards smaller, more accountable government, i.e. Tea Party government, is also evidenced by a cadre of aggressive, successful Republican governors who, even in Democratic or swing states, are commanding respect for making the tough decisions leadership requires, and strengthening the public fisc in the process. Mitch Daniels in Indiana, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Bob McConnell in Virginia, and Chris Christie in New Jersey have all skewered the sacred cow of union benefits reform, and emerged more powerful and popular with voters across the ideological spectrum. This state level success augurs, as it did in 2010, massive Republican gains.
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Events abroad are also setting the stage for a Tea Party led election. In Spain and Greece, the California and Illinois of Europe, over fifty percent of the populations under twenty-five are unemployed, public pensions are out of control, green initiatives have squandered billions, and the governments seem powerless to reverse the economic decline caused by decades of social welfare spending for populations that riot to protect the generous entitlements they demand others pay for. Americans are rightly appalled at this infantile response.
For those with eyes to see, the message is clear: Americans will not abide economic suicide in deference to unsustainable, foolish government spending. Indeed, after the last three years of government overindulgence, there seems to be a growing public awareness that “government investments” make no one rich and only bankrupt the country in the process. Indeed, President Obama’s efforts to “Win the Future,” or create an “America Built to Last” seem destined to join their Democratic policy predecessors – the Great Society and the New Frontier – on the ash heap of political history because these empty initiatives are likewise waste masquerading as progress.
It was once said all roads lead to Rome, and that Greece was the birthplace of democracy. Today these debt-riddled bailout junkies threaten the fiscal stability of an entire continent, and in the name of equality Barack Obama heeds us to adopt their economic profligacy as our own. Across America, fiscally prudent voters in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and California have recognized as foolishness what the President sells as fairness, and have bravely chosen a different path. Towards Rome lies only ruin. Come November, voters can and must send the message that our fiscal road will not lead to Rome, or Athens or Madrid for that matter.
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