The two articles that every pro-Obama British Tory should read

By Tim Montgomerie
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I've made my own brief case for Mitt Romney in today's Times (£). I've argued that he's far different from the demonised caricature of the Democrat ad campaign. Instead he's better-placed to end the gridlock in Washington that is preventing America from facing up to its fiscal challenges. I give examples of the ways in which Barack Obama is far from the uniting figure that is sometimes suggested.

Posted below are some of the best chunks of writing on the American election. I particularly recommend the top two quotes from David Frum and Ross Douthat - especially to any British Conservative who is supportive of Barack Obama...

Obama's recipe for America is to do what Gordon Brown did: "The country's most pressing economic problem IS the break-down of the old middle-class economy. Wages are stagnating at the middle, class lines are hardening, and more and more of the benefits of growth are claimed by the very wealthiest. President Obama delivered his answer to this problem in his important speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, a year ago: more direct government employment (at higher wages), more government contracting (to enforce higher wages), and more government aid to college students (in hope that expanding the number of degree holders will raise their average wage). Obama is following a path explored by the British Labor governments of 1997-2010, when the majority of the net new jobs created in northern and western England, Scotland, and Wales were created in the public sector. That approach pushed Britain into fiscal crisis, when the recession abruptly cut the flow of funds from south-eastern England to pay everybody else's government salary." - David Frum for the Daily Beast.

An election about the size of American government: "Already our government redistributes too much from the young to the old, from working families to retirees, from productive entrepreneurs to protected clients. To accede to this government’s permanent expansion is to walk, with eyes wide open, into the kind of economic and demographic trap that has ensnared the weaker economies of Europe today. President Obama did not single-handedly put us on this path. But he has kept us on it, accelerated our progress down it, and campaigned for re-election as though taking this course had no downsides whatsoever. He’s the candidate of the Medicare status quo in a country facing an entitlement crunch, of government bailouts in an economy with a crony capitalism problem, and of contraceptive mandates in a society with a birth dearth. For an incumbent president facing a mistrusted opposition party, this may prove a formula for a narrow electoral victory. But for the country that might vote to re-elect him, it risks four more years of drift, stagnation and decline." - Ross Douthat in the New York Times.

Romney is in contention because he's not the grotesque caricature of Democrat propaganda

By Tim Montgomerie
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About a month ago we asked Tory members who they'd support in the forthcoming presidential election. I was heartened and surprised that Mitt Romney enjoyed just over 40% of respondents' support. In recent years - because of the Iraq war, because of gay rights issues, because of the Cameron love-in and because of the Obama stardust effect - it was all the rage to be an 'Obamacon'. Not so much anymore it seems. Less than a quarter of British Tories would now vote for America's incumbent president. All that fiscal red ink and class war have finally ended the love affair.

The two presidential candidates go head-to-head for the second time tonight. Debates don't normally make a big difference in US elections but when the two men are (at the time of blogging) separated by just 0.4% in the poll of polls this and the third debate might well matter. Mitt Romney will be hoping for a repeat of the first encounter when three-quarters of viewers gave him victory over a somewhat lifeless Obama. My theory is a simple one. Romney wasn't spectacular three weeks ago but he turned up and looked a reasonable, competent and not unlikeable guy. The attempts by the Democrat machine to demonise him were OTT and in ninety minutes of prime time TV Romney confounded the grotesque caricature.

The heavily-unionised Democrat get-out-the-vote machine (particularly well-organised in the battleground states) probably means that Romney will need a 2% to 3% lead in the national opinion polls to actually win and at the moment he's short of that. If I had to bet money I would still bet on Obama therefore*. But time and time again the President cannot get above 50% in the crucial approval ratings. This suggests at least half of the country don't want to re-elect him. If Romney can reassure tonight and in the final debate - if he can convince viewers that he'll be president for 100%, not 47% of Americans then he can win. Obama's economic policies have clearly failed. It's now a question of whether enough Americans are ready to trust Romney with their jobs, their medical care and their futures.

* The number-crunching Nate Silver still gives Obama a 64.8% chance of victory.

Mitt Romney receives momentum shift as he easily bests Obama in first presidential debate

By Matthew Barrett
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Mitt Romney and Barack Obama met for the first of three presidential debates last night. Expectations were high for Obama going into the debate, with a majority believing he would be the better debater, a majority believing he would win the election, and polling for the last few weeks which has shown the two candidates a little less even than they had been a month ago.

Despite all that expectation, any serious person would agree that Romney won the debate pretty handsomely. Obama appeared to be tired and distracted, often looking down, and rarely engaging in eye contact with Romney. Romney, on the other hand, looked voters in the eye regularly, and often talked to the President when making his points.

While Obama gave long, rambling, introspective and academic answers, Romney gave clear replies and got his points across often. Indeed, after the debate, statistics showed Obama had spoken for several minutes longer than Romney, but it felt quite different at the time. 

Lord Ashcroft's Republican Convention diary day four: Thursday

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft has been submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans met to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

The final night of the Convention, and the last big chance to introduce Mitt Romney to the nation. In advance of his speech, Olympians, members of the church of which he was pastor, and former colleagues vouched sturdily, and sometimes movingly, for the Governor's character and competence. Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples (in which Romney's company, Bain Capital, invested), said he was well qualified to control government spending: when he first told Mitt about his plan for a chain of office supply stores "he got really excited about the idea of saving a few cents on paper clips". Clint Eastwood was a popular choice as the surprise special guest. People think Hollywood types are all "left of Lenin", he said, but there were some Republicans too: "they just don't go round hotdoggin' it".

***

With RNC Chairman Reince Priebus

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, whom I had met a few months ago and briefed on the state of British politics, invited me to watch the acceptance speech from his skybox. It will soon be clear how far Romney's performance has gone to establishing himself in the public mind as something other than (as one insider put it) "John Kerry without the medals". Romney's best lines contrasted his own approach with that of his opponent: "President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. [Pause for prolonged laughter]. My promise is to help you and your family". Republican strategists anticipate only a small bounce in the polls, but expect the jobs figures out at the end of next week to neutralise whatever small gains Obama could expect from his own Convention.

Lord Ashcroft's Republican Convention diary day three: Wednesday

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft will be submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans are meeting to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

The thing that makes this election so hard to call is that according to historical precedent, neither candidate can possibly win. Presidents do not get re-elected when their job approval is as low, and unemployment is as high, as it is for Obama. But challengers do not win when their personal negatives are as high as Romney's. Another yardstick it at hand. Since 1964, with one exception in Michael Dukakis, the victor has been the candidate who led in the Gallup poll 100 days before election day. So who was it, Obama or Romney? It was a tie: 46% to 46%.

***

Given the state of the economy and the disappointment with the President's record, says Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report, Romney ought to be comfortably five points ahead. Romney himself is the main reason why this is not the case: "He has a keen analytical mind, you can see why he is one of the top corporate problem solvers. At the same time, if he had taken one of those Myers Briggs tests, I don't know that it would have suggested he go into politics". In addition, while the party's potential supporters have always divided between "country club Republicans" and "truck stop Republicans", the Democrats' greater appeal among white collar classes means there are now more of the latter, while Romney is naturally one of the former.

***

If Romney is largely a blank slate in the public mind, the same is even more true of Paul Ryan. As his speech on Wednesday night showed, he is tremendously popular with activists, but they are the only ones who know anything about him outside his Wisconsin Congressional district. Republicans here say his selection as the Vice Presidential nominee shows the seriousness of Romney's candidacy. With echoes of George W. Bush's choice of Dick Cheney in 2000, the decision seems to have been taken with an eye to governing at least as much as for what he can bring to the campaign. Ryan's case against Obama was that he had wasted borrowed money trying to create a culture of entitlement: the President wants "a country where everything is free but us".

Lord Ashcroft's Republican Convention diary day two: Tuesday

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft will be submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans are meeting to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

It seems surprising at first that so many in Romney's team have told us that the purpose of this Convention is to introduce their candidate to the American people. With ten weeks to go, should they not have done that already? Sensibly, most Americans do not pay any more attention to politics than they have to – only the partisans know much about him. To most others, he is just a rich Mormon. So far, concedes Neil Newhouse, Romney's pollster, "the Obama campaign has done a better job of defining Mitt Romney than we've done ourselves". This helps to explain why, despite a strong lead on the economy and the deficit, Romney is not yet winning. Unusually for a politician, the Governor dislikes talking about himself: "he wasn't brought up that way".

***

Much of the job of introducing Mitt falls to his family. His wife Ann addressed the Convention on Tuesday night. A leader's wife speaking about her husband seems a very American phenomenon, though of course Sarah Brown introduced the practice in Britain. It is hard to imagine a British political spouse beginning as Ann did, however: "tonight, I want to talk to you about love". She did well, though I am sure many would be dubious about the effectiveness of this sort of thing. It also contained a nugget for enthusiasts of political trivia: "some of you may not know this, but I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner". Only some of us?

Lord Ashcroft begins a diary from the Republican Convention in Florida

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft will be submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans are meeting to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

American political conventions may be show business on a gigantic scale – there are 50,000 delegates in Tampa, with the biggest international press corps for any event outside the Olympics – but they matter. They offer the biggest single chance for a candidate, particularly the challenger, to make his mark and present himself to the voters. For Mitt Romney a huge amount is at stake. A widespread view among the professionals here in Tampa is that with President Obama’s approval ratings in only the mid-40s, the voters are open to change; the question in their mind is whether the alternative on offer is acceptable. This carries echoes of the 2010 election in Britain – reminding people it is time for change is one thing; showing the change they want is the change you are offering is another thing altogether.

***

The decision to cancel the first day of the Convention because of the weather was probably right, given the risks if the tropical storm making its way across the Gulf had hit Tampa as feared. That will be little comfort to the Republican Party, which now has to squeeze the maximum value out of the remaining three days. In any event, the Convention is now “split-screen” news – TV discussion of the Republican agenda is accompanied by graphics showing the progress of the storm towards Louisiana, on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Mitt Romney's big throw of the dice, as he picks bold reformer Paul Ryan as his running mate

By Tim Montgomerie
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Recent opinion polls had suggested that at this very early stage of the presential run-in (the big Conventions and potentially decisive debates are still to happen), Obama was beginning to open up a reasonable lead in national and battleground opinion polls. Mitt Romney has decided to respond with a very bold choice as his running mate. Congressman Paul Ryan, 42, is perhaps the boldest VP pick in modern times. Not bold in the Sarah Palin personality sense but bold in the policy sense because Ryan has strong, reforming beliefs and Romney is sending out an electric message to America that any administration he leads won't be a business-as-usual affair.

"America's Comeback Team" is how the Romney website is presenting the Republican ticket.

Strong government, 'the little guy', long-termism and honesty suggested as four themes for future of US conservatism

By Tim Montgomerie
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The Financial Times has been running an interesting series on the future of American conservatism. I've spotted five contributions so far: Senator Olympia Snowe on how the Republican Party can win again; Glenn Hubbard on a long-term growth agenda; Governor Jon Huntsman of the need for true conservatives to "despise crony capitalism"; Congressman Paul Ryan on why Republicans must return to free market principles; and from Francis Fukuyama on learning to love the state again.

I identified at least four big ideas from reading the series and those four ideas seem relevant to conservative parties across the world...

EMBRACE STRONG GOVERNMENT (NOT BIG GOVERNMENT)

Olympia Snowe took on the anti-government mentality of some Republicans (a theme of John Key's recent big speech).  We need, she wrote, "a government that’s more efficient and effective rather than one that’s simply eviscerated... there is a legitimate role for government to help maximise individual initiative and potential... our message to Americans must not be “you’re on your own” – but that government should foster an environment in which personal opportunity can flourish."

Dennis Lennox: The Supreme Court did its job, now it's up to the people to decide the fate of Obamacare

Dennis Lennox is a newspaper columnist for The Morning Sun, a daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Michigan. He is also a public affairs consultant, who has worked internationally and observed elections in Canada, Norway, Sweden and elsewhere. Follow Dennis on Twitter.

The ruling today by the federal Supreme Court that the law commonly known as Obamacare is constitutional and thus valid is what it is. In the wake of the high court’s ruling, commentary from across the spectrum could be seen on television, heard on the radio and read on the pages of newspapers and the updates of friends — real or virtual — on social-networking web sites. Politicians, special interests and their ilk responded too.

The left applauded the ruling as an affirmation of President Barack Obama’s landmark domestic policy program. The right chided the decision. Some extremists called for the impeachment of the chief justice, whose fifth vote decided the fate of Obamacare. A couple could be heard on one Michigan radio station calling for a new “continental congress to form a more perfect union.”

But many of these voices are missing a simple and yet fundamental point: the Supreme Court did not rule, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, on the “wisdom” of the president and Congress in passing Obamacare. Rather, it ruled on the legality — and in this case it decided that Obamacare was a massive tax increase imposed on the cash-strapped pockets of working families and main street businessmen.