Reich Predicts Romney Win

Mitt Romney has turned into such a skilled debater that he could trounce President Barack Obama in their three head-to-head encounters in the run-up to the election,  former Democratic Labor Secretary Robert Reich believes.

Romney “is going to be debating somebody who is not nearly as good a debater as his reputation,” Reich tells Atlantic Magazine in its September issue. He says that under live questioning, Obama “can seem kind of wooden” and “at a loss for words.”

“Even if Romney is scripted and not spontaneous, he will come across as ‘on his game,’ ” Reich tells the Atlantic. “The danger for Obama is that Romney can still look better than Obama, if Obama does not have the same degree of discipline about the debates.”

Reich, now Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was quoted in an extensive article in the Atlantic by its longtime national correspondent, James Fallows. The magazine’s report was based on an examination of tapes of Romney’s debates throughout his political career.

That first began with three contests against Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy for the U.S. Senate in 1994 and continued with Romney’s successful 2002 quest for the statehouse, his failed 2008 presidential bid and finally with the 2012 Republican presidential primaries.

Reich ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Massachusetts governor in 2002. Romney defeated Shannon O’Brien in the general election.

“He will have done a huge amount of homework,” Reich says of Romney. “He will have moot debates with debating partners, as they all do. But he truly will have internalized a lot of the questions and the most-effective responses.

“He will have the zingers ready, and he knows the importance of those zinger lines. He will have it down — even the humor. He will know that self-deprecating humor is enormously useful, and will have rehearsed it.”

Generally, debate watchers will see a comfortable, confident Republican presidential candidate with a style that embodies “faultless preparation, crisp and precise expression, a readiness both to attack and to defend, and an ability to stay purely on message,” the Atlantic reports.

The magazine says Romney’s weaknesses are “thin factual knowledge on many policy issues, a preference to talk in generalities and a palpable awkwardness when caught unprepared and forced to improvise.”

He will face an incumbent president who is a seasoned debater, having sparred with Hillary Clinton, and who has had four years’ experience in setting policy. But Obama’s theme from 2008 — “Change you can believe in” — has now become “Things could be worse” and “I need more time.”

Thus, “the Romney team has the impossible challenge of trying to imagine every question or attack line that might come up in debates with Obama, while the Obama team tries to imagine what Romney’s might have missed.”

Still, the Atlantic continues: “Debates are and have been his strength. The Romney who took on Teddy Kennedy 18 years ago remains a highly useful guide to the candidate who will stand next to Barack Obama in the three debates scheduled this fall.”

This Mitt Romney solidified his strategy within minutes of his first debate with Kennedy in 1994, two weeks before the election. It came in a response to why the six-term Kennedy, 62 at the time, was not trouncing the younger upstart.

“People in Massachusetts have been watching, for 32 years, Sen. Kennedy,” Romney said in his response. “They appreciate what he has done, but they recognize that our world has changed and that the answers of the 1960s aren’t working anymore.”

With that, Romney’s basic tact was set: “That it was possible to love Teddy Kennedy but recognize that his time had passed, and that the ‘real’ answers weren’t the ones Kennedy could present,” the Atlantic reports.

“This is instantly recognizable as his frame for the 2012 presidential race as well: his opponent is likable but not up to the job.”

Romney then added: “People recognize that government jobs just can’t do it for Massachusetts. We need private-sector jobs. And so they are looking for people who have skill and experience in the private sector, who know how to help create jobs, who will do the work of traveling from state to state and around the country to bring jobs to Massachusetts.”

The Atlantic report concludes, “Through the rest of that evening and in the follow-up debate two days later, Romney did not succeed in breaking Teddy Kennedy’s connection with the people who had voted for him six times before. But he did his level best, with a variety of tools and tactics he has relied on ever since.”

They are: attack your opponent, defend your record, anticipate the opposition’s arguments and be ready to counter, show “a flash of sly wit’ — and stay “unwaveringly on message,” bringing “every question on every topic back to his main theme.”

It was, in this case, “Sen. Kennedy was great for his time; that time has passed; I know about business, which is what we need.”

Kennedy won, but Romney got 41 percent of the vote.

During the 2012 presidential primaries, Romney, in none of the nearly 50 televised hours, was “judged the big loser; in many, he was the clear winner, and as the campaign wore on, the dominant image from the debates was of a confident Romney, standing with a slight smile on his face and his hands resting easily in his pockets, looking on with calm amusement as the lesser figures squabbled among themselves and sometimes lashed out at him,” the Atlantic reports.

A few gaffes occurred — most notably, the “$10,000 bet,” offered to Texas Gov. Rick Perry during an Iowa debate — but, overall, “As his rivals were felled, or destroyed themselves, Romney kept moving ahead,” the Atlantic reports. “His mistakes were few, and his focus was steady, on whichever of the sequential challengers was most threatening week by week.”

Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, tells the Atlantic: “Romney is a seriously under¬rated debater. The truth is, he under¬stood what his job in all those debates was. When it was to go out and finish Rick Perry, he did it. When it was to hold the lead in New Hampshire, he did it.”

Even David Axelrod, Obama’s chief campaign strategist who prepared the president for his debates with Arizona Sen. John McCain in 2008, praised Romney.

“As a debater, he is remarkably disciplined,” Axelrod tells the Atlantic. “It is very unlikely that he is going to come in there without knowing much of what he is going to say, or without having practiced it relentlessly or delivered it over and over.

“He is very good at internalizing the one-liners and knowing when to fire. And he can run off large set pieces from memory pretty effectively.”

A Response to Obama's Marxist Leaning

Obama Is No Marxist - I Know For A Fact

By Daniel J. Rea

I take much amusement hearing right wing radio hosts spew their piffle about President Obama being a Marxist.  First, there is absolutely no evidence to prove this ridiculous accusation.  Their guilt by association of a few people Obama spoke with in the past is dangerous because I can show all these radio hosts can be homosexuals, Nazis, and conspirators to defraud the USA.  Second, they seem to not understand what a Marxist is by definition, and Obama does not meet the definition.  Just because he supports universal health care (which Obama Care is not – this simply requires all Americans to have health insurance, private or government) does not make him a Marxist any more than it did Truman, JFK, Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole, John Tower, or Bill Clinton (all of these people called for public supported government sponsored health care).  Finally, because I had been a Marxist and Obama by no means qualifies like the people I knew and associated with in the CPUSA.

The definition of a Marxist is a person who follows Karl Marx or his theories.  Problem is, Obama does neither.  Obama has never praised Karl Marx nor has Obama followed the theories of Marx.  Quite the opposite actually, Obama has praised the need for private property, helped bail out the auto makers to keep them going instead of nationalizing them, and Obama has repeatedly spoke of the need to preserve America’s capitalist system.  Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin simply won’t let a little thing like the truth hinder them though.  Instead because President Obama met Bill Ayers, was inspired by his professor Charles Ogletree, and worked with ACORN organizer Madeleine Talbott then Obama is Marxist by association.  Even if these people were to be Marxists, which it is doubtful about Ogletree and Talbott, it would not make Obama a Marxist because he knew them or even worked with them.

Many of us know or work with drug addicts (actually Limbaugh is an addict) that does not make us addicts.  Many of us know and work with mentally ill people, that does not make us mentally ill.  Guilt by association is a logical fallacy for a reason, it is ridiculous.  So let’s play the guilty by association game.  By this logic Rush Limbaugh is a homosexual because he associated with homosexuals Eliot Sanders and Norm Woodruff.  Sean Hannity is a Nazi because he associated with well-known Neo-Nazi Hal Turner.  Mark Levin is guilty of perjury because he associates with Oliver North.  That is how ridiculous it is for these petty little charlatans to call our president a Marxist.  These hate prattlers have no shame or decency.

There is a more full definition of a Marxist: One who supports the complete control of private property that is then made communal to gain complete control of labor and capital for adjudication by the collective state.  This definition comes from the Merriam – Webster Dictionary.  Obama fails by this definition because Obama repeatedly has called for the preservation of private property rights.  A big reason he nixed the pipeline deal.  He didn’t want people losing their farm, ranch, and business property to make room for it.  Something the neo-Cons intentionally do not mention.  Obama has not made any comment nor drafted any legislation that would put all employment or money under control of the state.  Instead Obama has drafted legislation that eases employment policies and laws so people can be more easily employed.  Every US bank could have easily been collectivized by Obama just hours after January 20, 2009.

Obama did away with restrictions on who can be classified as a trainee for heavy industry jobs and Obama even pissed off many unions over the summer when he said in Kansas, “I believe unions control employment in some jobs they have no need controlling.”  Obama fails as a Marxist by this more complete definition.  Those who call Obama a Marxist are full of shit, plain and simple.

Honestly, if one wishes to dislike the Obama presidency there are numerous reasons.  One, Obama’s pathological promise breaking.  The deficit is not cut in half yet.  Obama has not created the millions of jobs he promised.  There is no foreclosure protection agency.  Two, one could also look at his failed policies.  Obama’s Mid-east policies have failed.  Egypt is moving closer to Islamist control.  Syria continues to ignore Obama and the State Department.  Iran refuses to talk to Obama or Sec. of State Clinton.  Obama’s presidency is the biggest failure since that of Jimmy Carter’s, there is simply no need to falsely label Obama as Marxist.  Three, the absolute refusal of Obama to submit a budget to Congress.

I know firsthand Obama is not a Marxist because I used to be a Marxist.  I associated with people who hated capitalism and were willing to do almost anything to bring down the US government.  When the Soviet Union fell we fell apart as American Marxists.  The CPUSA crawled into a shell that it will never be able to escape, especially after 9/11.  There was nothing to hold to because Marxism had proven a huge failure.  Today, the Marxists I knew who stayed on with the movement are pathetic imitations of their former selves.  If I were still a Marxist I would definitely be against Obama and his half assed policies that have further wrecked our nation at the price of the suffering of the poor.  What Obama actually wants is for the US to be a nanny state like the European states are.  A cheap Euro Socialist imposter that joins hands with Socialist Europe and redistributes the world’s wealth until Ayn Rand is seen as a prophet and not the dime store novel writer she was.

Obviously Obama isn’t noticing the miserable failure Europe’s experiment with Socialism is.  There is wide difference between Socialism and Marxism.  The UK was a Socialist state through much of the Cold War but stood against Soviet Marxism.  Some dumb asses in the Lamestream Media forget real history and just like to throw labels and names around.  Personally, I always thought if Europe wanted to solve all of their problems then they should stop screwing around and become real Marxist states.  That helped the Soviets because when it all fell apart they became more capitalist and republican than the US is.  There is much that can be criticized of Obama, but calling him a Marxist is like calling the Pope an Atheist.  The label just does not fit.

 Obama is obviously an Uncle Tom for big industry.  Look at his handling of BP, his recent refusal to have Google’s privacy policy checked by the FTC and FCC for consumer privacy violations, and his acceptance of election donations by huge insurance, energy, and technology corporations.  Obama is as much a big industry ass kisser as Regan and Bush I and II were.  That is a far cry from being Marxist.  My Marxist friends would eat Obama for lunch and shit him out for dinner.  They have absolutely no respect for a man who pretends to be friends of the poor while kissing the asses of the likes of Warren Buffet, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Hayward.  Oh well, to each according to need and from each according to ability to lie in the Lamestream Media. 

I miss those days some times.  In the end we were no more than middle class suburban kids looking to be different from the soulless neocons around us.  We had a penchant for Toyota, Edie Brickell, and Mondale.  Our neocon classmates had a penchant for BMW, Tom Petty, and Reagan.  We wanted nothing to do with them.  Some of us grew out of it and others stayed in the “Party” and were in central Dallas over the summer Occupying Old City Park.  To those comrades I say with teary eyed nostalgia and fondness, the revolution is past.  Now occupy a job.

Daniel Rea is a good friend of mine and sent me this in an email.  I reprint it here with approved editing as a response to my previous post. 

Obama's Marxist Leaning

“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.” – Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”

As a college student, Barack Obama expressed Marxist views, including the need for a new socialist U.S. government, according to a student who says he shared the future president’s opinion at the time.

Such views by a college student may not be surprising. And like most students who hold radical views, Obama’s positions, at least publicly, have evolved substantially. 

However, this new window on Obama’s youth and early political thinking demonstrates how little is known about the background of America’s 44th president. 

Dr. John C. Drew, a grant writing consultant in Laguna Niguel, Calif., tells Newsmax he met Obama in 1980 when Obama was a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Drew had just graduated from Occidental and was attending graduate school at Cornell University. 

Drew’s then girlfriend, Caroline Boss — now Grauman-Boss — knew Obama because she shared classes with him at Occidental.

During Christmas break, Drew says he was at Grauman-Boss’ home in Palo Alto when Obama came over with Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, his roommate from Pakistan.

“Barack and Hasan showed up at the house in a BMW, and then we went to a restaurant together,” Drew says. “We had a nice meal, and then we came back to the house and smoked cigarettes and drank and argued politics.”

For the next several hours, they discussed Marxism.

“He was arguing a straightforward Marxist-Leninist class-struggle point of view, which anticipated that there would be a revolution of the working class, led by revolutionaries, who would overthrow the capitalist system and institute a new socialist government that would redistribute the wealth,” says Drew, who says he himself was then a Marxist.

“The idea was basically that wealthy people were exploiting others,” Drew says. “That this was the secret of their wealth, that they weren’t paying others enough for their work, and they were using and taking advantage of other people. He was convinced that a revolution would take place, and it would be a good thing.”

Drew concluded that Obama thought of himself as “part of an intelligent, radical vanguard that was leading the way towards this revolution and towards this new society.”

In contrast, “My more pessimistic Marxist perspective indicated this was not a realistic possibility, that we really hadn’t seen a sort of complete revolution take place anywhere in Western Europe, and that this isn’t what had happened in more socialistic Germany or in France,” Drew says. “He was pretty persistent, that I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Drew’s viewpoint that a revolution was unrealistic “made me very unpopular that evening. It was considered a reactionary and insensitive thing to argue,” says Drew.

Drew saw Obama again at a party Obama and Chandoo gave in June 1981 at the house they shared. Drew went on to become an assistant professor of political science at Williams College.

In 1981, Obama left Occidental to attend Columbia University. During that year, Obama spent “about three weeks” visiting Chandoo and his family in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the account of Obama spokesman Bill Burton during the campaign.

Chandoo is now a financial consultant who was formerly a broker at Oppenheimer & Co. He has contributed to Obama’s campaign and helped raise more than $100,000 for him as a bundler.

“If that’s what John Drew said, that’s what he said,” Chandoo commented. “I can’t remember Obama ever talking like that. It sounds a bit absurd to me, but that’s my opinion. I can’t remember him ever expressing an interest in being a Marxist.”

Much of what is known about Obama’s past has been revealed and defined by Obama himself, largely through his two bestselling books “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.” 

In these works and throughout his career, Obama has clearly identified with the oppressed. In “Dreams from My Father” Obama details how white settlers and sugar companies came to dominate and exploit his native Hawaii.

In that memoir, Obama said that at Occidental, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”

As president, Obama has espoused the view that the rich are not sharing their wealth with the less fortunate. In a Sept. 6, 2001, radio interview, Obama expressed regret that the Supreme Court hadn’t engaged in wealth redistribution.

In some ways, Obama’s opinions about American-style capitalism seem to mirror the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Obama’s minister who was his self-described mentor and “sounding board” for 20 years. Wright’s “Black Value System” denounced “our racist competitive society” and included the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness.”

The Black Value System defined “middle-classness” as a way American society seduced blacks into achieving economic success, thus snaring them rather than “killing them off directly.”

In a similar vein, when he discussed politics with him in 1980, Drew says that in Obama’s view, “America was definitely the enemy, and American elites were the enemy, and whatever America was doing was definitely wrong and bad. He thought that perhaps the Soviet Union was misunderstood, and it was doing a better job for its people than most people realized.”

Chandoo said he doesn’t know which professors Obama was referring to in his book. Asked when he last saw Obama, Chandoo said he has not seen nor talked with him since before Obama became a U.S. senator. However, under “community member,” the White House listed Chandoo as a guest at Obama’s Ramadan dinner last fall.

When asked about that, Chandoo acknowledged from his home in Armonk, N.Y., that he attended the dinner. Despite the fact that fewer than 70 people were in attendance, Chandoo added, “I did not get a chance to see the boss.” He then said he shook hands with Obama in a receiving line.

Chandoo said he has been in touch with Caroline Grauman-Boss over the years. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Burton, now deputy White House press secretary, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Drew’s encounter with Obama’s early political thinking adds to the mystery that has shrouded his past. 

For more than a year during the campaign, the media were aware of Obama’s ties with the Rev. Wright, for example, but the press did not reveal them until Obama was far ahead in the primaries.

Obama has contributed to the lack of knowledge about his past by refusing to release early documentation about his life, including his college and Harvard Law School transcripts and his senior thesis at Columbia.

Referring to Obama’s quote from “Dreams from My Father” that he associated with Marxist professors, Drew says, “What he’s not saying is that he was in 100 percent total agreement with those Marxist professors. When you understand that, Obama’s later associations and policies make more sense, including why he was taken in by Rev. Wright’s ideology.”

In 1983 and 1984, Drew says he came to realize that his own Marxist views were rubbish. He now considers himself a conservative.

In contrast, Drew says, Obama has never revealed how his political thinking evolved and “what were the logical steps he took to get out of his Marxist world view.”

Proof Obama Is A Pathological Liar

Accusing someone of lying is a serious matter.  Especially when that someone is the President of the United States.  Charges of that nature should be leveled based only on absolute proof of a deliberate statement, intentionally made, whose sole purpose is to deceive.  Based on this criterion, President Obama is a liar.  Demonstrably so.  And a disturbing pattern is emerging that allows for the possibility that our president is a serial liar.  Consider:

In just the last month, Obama has made several statements that are just not so.  Statements made to the American public that were in direct conflict with known facts.

In April, Obama flatly stated that implementing ObamaCare will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion.  A day later, the Congressional Budget Office reported that statement was 'incorrect,' pegging the "deficit savings" at $210 billion over 10 years.

In the same April 15 speech, Obama stated that the tax burden on the wealthy is the lowest it has been in 50 years.  A simple fact-check proves him wrong.  Obama did not correct his false statement and the media didn't either.

In January of 2009, Obama stated that it was no longer necessary to kill Osama bin Laden to win the war against al-Qaeda.  On May 1, 2011, after the successful raid by Navy Seals that killed bin Laden, Obama told the nation that he made the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden a "top priority,"and had instructed CIA Chief Leon Panetta to make this job number one.  Which statement is correct?

Last week, several of my friends asked me if I believed that bin Laden was really dead.  The questions weren't surprising, considering the mass of misinformation and conflicting accounts of bin Laden's death now emanating from the White House.  It appears the question of bin Laden's demise was only settled after al Qaeda issued a statement confirming it. 

What does it say about Obama's credibility when the pro-Arab al Jazeera media reports are given more credibility than our own president?  Maybe that's why Columbia School of Journalism justawarded al Jazeera a journalism prize.

Giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, I'll allow for the possibility that he underwent a drastic change of heart and altered his position on bin Laden.  It happens.  But when added to the increasing number of statements Obama continues to make that defy reality, the facts, and common sense, I'm more inclined to believe Obama's "mis-statements" are a deliberate effort to deceive the American people.

For example: Obama told the American people that not spending money is "mortgaging America's future."  Who knows, it's possible Obama actually believes this, but anyone with an ounce of common sense knows we can't spend our way out of bankruptcy.

Another blooper: Obama stated that increased drilling will not solve our energy problems.  Huh?  Again, the media let this statement go unchallenged.  (At least Sen. Vitter called him on it.)

Obama would have us believe that the big bad oil companies are to blame for our skyrocketing gas prices, despite the fact that every energy decision made by Obama, from with holding drilling permits to increased regulatory burdens being placed on big oil, has directly resulted in raising the cost of gasoline. 

Obama would like us to ignore the fact that his Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, stated in 2008 that he wants to "figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."  Since then, gas priceshave doubled.  Mission accomplished. 

Despite the pain at the pump, Obama's energy dis-information campaign has been quite successful, with a new poll showing that only 9% of Americans believe that Obama is responsible for rising gas prices.

Tailoring the facts to reflect the most favorable interpretation is an accepted prerogative of the bully pulpit.  Every president will of course, spin the news to a certain extent.  This is not new.  But under Obama, there appears to be a deliberate campaign by the White House and many segments of the government to blatantly deceive the American people.  Consider our Department of Homeland Security:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress last week that the Obama administration is trying to come up with a new yardstick to better reflect the improvements it says it has made.  The Washington Times correctly noted that, unable to meet its border goals, the DHS merely moved the goals.

Arizona Sheriff Larry Deaver pretty much confirmed the Washington Time's report, testifying before Congress that the U.S. Border Patrol has told its agents to stop arresting illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico to keep the illegal immigration numbers down.  In other words, deceive the American people by peddling perception as reality.

Obama and his administration are masters in getting Americans to think with their hearts instead of their brains.  After all, emotions are easier to manipulate than facts.  And many truths are easier to ignore than acknowledge.  But not acknowledging reality, doesn't change the reality.  And we ignore reality at our own peril, as we are now finding out on a daily basis.

Though not specified in our Constitution, I believe Americans should have the right to enough information to make informed decisions.  Instead, we are being fed a steady stream of outright lies and deliberate misstatements.  And when we the people fail to challenge our elected representatives when they lie, we not only enable them, we become complicit.  We also forfeit the right to complain when reality hits us in the pocketbook while America continues its slide to the level of a third world country.

I Seriously Doubt Racism Is the Issue

So ABC is being sued for discrimination.  Does this mean Miss Black America, The Black Music Awards, JET, BET, and so forth are racist as well and discriminate?  Give me a break, racism is being used to cover a plethora of stupidity these days.  Forget Dr. Martin Luther King Jr these days, the ilk of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Calypso Louis Farrakhan are ruining this country.

ABC sued for alleged racist and discriminatory casting on the Bachelor and Bachelorette. 

Amish Farm Shut Down

This is frigging ridiculous:

Hundreds of families in the state of Maryland have just seen their source of fresh, raw milk dry up thanks to the U.S. government. The Justice Department, at the urging of the Food and Drug Administration, convinced a federal judge to impose a permanent injunction on Pennsylvania Amish farmer Dan Allgyer prohibiting him from selling his milk to willing customers on the other side of the Mason-Dixon Line.


Just when you think our government can't get any more ridiculous they shutdown a farm for raw milk.  We are steps away from being a carbon copy Euro socialist nation.


Full story here from The New American

Romney Can't Beat Obama After South Carolina

Republican hopeful Mitt Romney will have two big problems if, as expected, he clinches the Republican nomination for the November election: his business background and Hispanic voters.

While most of the media focus on the first, Romney's biggest problem will be the second.

Right now, political pundits in Washington are focusing on Romney's past as former head of Bain Capital, the private equity firm that critics -- including fellow Republican contender Newt Gingrich -- say raided corporations and laid off thousands of workers during his tenure.

The Obama campaign is already salivating at the possibility of using this line of attack against Romney in November. At a time when jobs are the No. 1 U.S. problem, and when Romney presents himself as a successful private sector leader who could turn around the economy, depicting Romney as a job destroyer would go to the heart of the Republican campaign's narrative.

But the former Massachusetts governor may be able to fend off attacks on his performance at Bain Capital by convincing voters that he created more jobs than he eliminated, and that most of the companies he took over ended up healthier than before. That will be a my-figures-versus-your-figures debate, which may very well end in a draw that would neutralize the Democrats' job-killer campaign.

On the other hand, winning over the Hispanic vote will be a much tougher battle for Romney, because it will be a fight that will take place in the realm of people's emotions, which are much harder to twist than facts.

A November poll of Latino voters by the Univisión network found that Romney does not fare well among Hispanics. The poll showed that if the elections were held today, Obama would beat Romney by 67 percent to 24 percent.

The conventional wisdom among pollsters is that no Republican candidate can win the White House with less than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. Former President George W. Bush won the 2004 election with 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. In the 2008 elections, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, a moderate on immigration issues, got 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, and lost the election.

Will Romney be able to win 40 percent of the Hispanic vote when, in his efforts to win the extreme right of the Republican party in the nomination process, he has taken much harder-line stands than McCain did in 2008? It will be very difficult for him to do it, most pollsters say.

In sharp contrast to McCain in the last election, Romney is strongly against an immigration reform that would give a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants who have lived here for decades and meet certain conditions such as learning English and paying back taxes. He also strongly opposes the Dream Act, which would allow undocumented youths who were brought to this country as small children to earn legal status if they go to college or join the military.

While immigration doesn't rank at the top of Hispanic voters' concerns, candidates' stands on immigration tend to mold their feelings toward politicians, and Romney's harsh rhetoric against undocumented workers during the recent debates have left many Latinos feeling, "this guy doesn't like us."

My opinion: If there are no surprises and Romney wins the Republican nomination, he will need to make a dramatic move to win the Hispanic vote. Moderating his rhetoric or stressing that his father was born in Mexico -- where his family of Mormon missionaries had moved -- won't suffice. There is just too much TV footage of the Republican presidential hopeful coming across as bashing Hispanic undocumented workers and their children.

There is speculation that Romney could choose Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate, in hopes of capturing the Latino vote. But that won't work. Rubio is against a comprehensive immigration reform, opposes the Dream Act and has supported Arizona's draconian immigration law. Except for Cuban-Americans, he is unlikely to be seen by most Hispanics as "one of us."

Romney's best bet would be to pick former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is popular in Florida and would help the Republicans win the state, speaks fluent Spanish, is married to a Mexican and is much more moderate than Romney and Rubio on immigration issues.

Barring a daring move like that, Romney can't beat Obama. Right now only a worsening economy can beat Obama.