Come ON Mitt Romney, can you at least look like you’re trying to win this thing? After being the first presidential candidate in history to not get a post – convention bump since Bill & Opus, Romney has gone into total meltdown mode. He screwed up the Libyan crisis, got busted for being ‘himself’ on a hidden fundraising tape, got caught using a spray – on tan to win over Latino voters and now the bad news: According to Politicusa, a Zogby poll released late last week shows that things are downright miserable for Mitt.
Obama leads in almost every region of the country, and only trailed Romney by six points in the South, 41%-47%. Among voters who shop at Wal-Mart on a weekly basis, Romney’s lead is within the poll’s 3.4% margin of error, 45%-42%. Obama leads with voters who are or who have a family member in the military, 54%-39%. Most surprisingly, Obama only trails Romney by seven points with those who consider themselves born again Christians, 40%-47%. The president also leads with NASCAR fans, 48%-41%.
For President Obama, a Democrat, to be leading amongst military members and their families is a dire warning sign for Romney only a week out from the first presidential debate. For Romney to have less than a double digit lead in the South is unheard of, but for him to be losing out amongst the epitome of Angry White Men, the NASCAR Dads, means this campaign might really be on life support. The only sport more popular amongst Republicans than NASCAR is Pro-Golf but that’s not the real issue.
Symbolically there is no sport with a greater association with the Republican Party than NASCAR. But is it really just Mitt has dropped in popularity amongst this special group of sports enthusiasts or is there something else to it? According to the same story:
Romney’s problems with NASCAR fans could go back to when he mocked them while attending the Daytona 500 this year. The New York Times reported Romney’s Daytona experience in the most classic of ways, “But the crowd initially booed Mr. Romney, who occasionally struck a discordant note, as when he approached a group of fans wearing plastic ponchos. ‘I like those fancy raincoats you bought,’ he said. ‘Really sprung for the big bucks.’ And when asked if he was a fan of the sport, he mentioned that ‘I have some great friends who are Nascar team owners.’”
Campaign class 101: Never ever ever insult sports fans during the campaign season, and always find out who the hometown team is and root for them. Apparently Mitt can’t even figure that out, which isn’t surprising since the only sport that he’s ever shown interest in is high end horse-dancing. Well, if he keeps up his current pace he’ll have plenty of time to learn about NASCAR, football and any other sport that interests him. Because at least as of right now, it doesn’t look as if he’ll be all that busy past the first week of November.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.