PAGE 4A CLAREMORE PROGRESS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow is too lazy to form an opinion."

- Will Rogers

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Romney's message to Obama voters: He will let you down

Mitt Romney has just one job going into the last stretch of the presidential campaign. He has to connect with people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but are disappointed with the president now. He has to assure them that they didn't make a mistake back then, that it wasn't crazy or stupid to believe Obama's promises, but that things just haven't worked out. And he has to convince them it's OK to choose a new candidate this time around; they don't owe Obama another vote. The situation facing Romney is hard for some Republicans to BYRON YORK comprehend. They didn't buy Obama's bill of goods in the first place and find it hard to sympathize with anyone who did. But there are millions of people who voted for Obama who are not only disappointed in him but have come to the conclusion that he does not deserve to be re-elected. The problem for Romney is they might still be persuaded to vote for the president. Making them comfortable with the idea of leaving Obama is Romney's job. Romney campaign advisers are very, very familiar with the type. They do polling, they do focus groups and they see the phenomenon everywhere. Says campaign pollster Neil Newhouse: "These voters are my mother-in-law. She's a soft Republican and voted with pride for Barack Obama in terms of what it meant for the country. And now, every time she talks to me, she's more than disappointed. She's frustrated. She's upset. She thought she was voting for a transformational leader and feels like we got just another politician." You can bet Newhouse and the Romney campaign are not basing their strategy on one mother-in-law. They're undoubtedly seeing the same thing all the time in their research. The important thing for Romney, aides believe, is not to rub the voters' noses in their decision from four years ago. Don't bash Obama, don't even harp on how he's not up to the job -- that carries the implication they should have known that when they voted for him Just focus on the point that his policies have not made things better. "You've got to be careful in terms of how you talk about the president," says a top Romney campaign aide. "It's his policies and performance voters are concerned about -- that's the focus." On the afternoon before the Democratic convention began in Charlotte, political messaging guru Frank Luntz convened a focus group in a local office park. He gathered 27 voters, 24 of whom had voted for Obama in 2008. Some were sticking with the president, but a larger number were undecided, and a few had already jumped to Romney. Luntz played some campaign commercials for them. The best-received ad was one produced by the pro-Romney super PAC Americans for Prosperity in which '08 Obama voters expressed disappointment with his performance in office. "I think he's a great person; I don't feel he is the right leader for our country," said one woman in the ad. "I still believe in hope and change -- I just don't think Obama is the way to go for that," said another. They reluctantly concluded that Obama has not earned another term in office. The focus group members liked the fact that, as one said, "it's not a negative ad" and did not feature "dark music playing and black-and-white images of (Obama) on the screen." Another liked that the ad makers "weren't bashing him, weren't being mean, weren't being nasty." The people in the ad seemed like real people, not political hit men. And they said what those voters were thinking Luntz also played the group a few clips from Clint Eastwood's much-discussed stand-up routine at the Republican convention in Tampa. (A significant number of them hadn't seen it.) Eastwood was gentle with Obama voters, saying he felt good when Obama won, but high unemployment has gone on for so long that "it may be time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem." The group watched a clip in which Eastwood said "You, we -- we own this country ... Politicians are employees of ours ... And when somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go." The clip got a very positive reception from Luntz's group, and not just from the few Republicans. That is not good news for the employee in the White House. Between now and Nov. 6, Romney has to reinforce those voters' thinking about Obama -- and give them a clear picture of what a Romney presidency would look like. The job will take care and hard work, but the voters are more than ready to go along. Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.

Preach. Practice. Convince kids not to text and drive

Children are back in school in communities large and small all 100,000 crashes a year involve drivers who are texting. across Oklahoma. It's an exciting, and often hectic, time of year. Those statistics alone should be enough to convince you to Parents are shuttling kids to band concerts and ball games, and put your phone away while driving, but what if I told you, mom running errands in between. Like their parents, students are rushand dad, that you are being watched? ing about too; rushing to class, to practice, to a part-time job. According to a national teen driver survey commissioned by We get busier and busier, and multitasking seems to AT&T, 77 percent of teens have seen their parents text be the only way to get it all done. While society may and drive. We tell our kids not to do it, but many parents celebrate those among us who seem to effortlessly don't listen to their own advice. It's the "do as I say and address multiple tasks simultaneously, there's at least not as I do" method of parenting. one place where a single-minded focus is not only best Maybe, instead, we should practice what we preach. but a must, and that's behind the wheel of an automoIn that same AT&T survey, 62 percent of teens said bile. reminders from their parents not to text and drive would Recognizing this, AT&T recently announced an "It be effective in getting them to stop the dangerous pracCan Wait" pledge day set for Sept. 19 to bring awaretice. ness to this important public safety issue. The initiative DREW EDMONSON If actions truly speak louder than words, how many kids would refrain from texting and driving if mom and comes complete with its own website, full of survey results and statistics that should make it easy for parents to talk to dad resisted the urge too? their kids about the dangers of texting and driving. There is also So, keep preaching, but start practicing too. Join with your a place on that site where drivers of all ages can pledge not to kids in taking AT&T's pledge by logging on to text behind the wheel. www.itcanwait.com . Talk about the statistics. Commit yourself to The company's efforts are based on some startling statistics. never text and drive. Research by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found Remember, your kids are watching. that drivers who text are 23 times more likely to be in an accident Drew Edmondson, a former Oklahoma attorney general, pracor near-accident. The National Safety Council says more than tices law at the law firm of GableGotwals.

Why Bill Clinton is all wet

The Clinton line, an elaboration of Obama excuse No. 37 for beyond its means, borrowing with from future generations to the dismal economy (after the Arab Spring, ATMs, the euro crisis finance a set of programs and tax cuts, without paying for them." and tomato blight in Mrs. Obama's White House garden), goes Bush deserves blame for overspending, but no one lives in a like this: The economy was so damaged by George W. Bush-era more fragile glass house than Obama on that measure. policies that "no president" could have been expected to do better If Geithner and Obama knew in 2010 that the economy was than the record-high poverty, staggering unemployment, too damaged by Bush to repair, why didn't they say so shrinking workforce participation, anemic growth and then? The answer is obvious. They truly believed that a gargantuan debt over which Barack Obama has huge Keynesian spending program would work to stimpresided. ulate the private economy. That misplaced faith was the We're asked to believe that the Obama administrareason Obama could confidently assure Matt Lauer that tion knew all along that things would take longer than if the economy weren't fixed in three years, he'd be four years to improve. "I never said this journey would held "accountable." be easy," the president claimed in Charlotte. On the Bill Clinton, true to his nature, misrepresented nearcontrary, the president stated explicitly on Feb. 1, 2009, ly every relevant fact about the economy for the past 30 MONA C HAREN that if he failed to get the economy turned around in years, and particularly for the past four. How else to three years, he would be looking at a "one-term propocite "arithmetic" when praising a president who has sition." rung up $5 trillion in new debt in one term? How else to count as "savings" $848 billion in money not spent on wars in If the Obama administration knew from the start that the socalled "hole" left by the previous administration was too deep to Afghanistan and Iraq as if those wars were projected to conclimb out of in one term, why did they repeatedly claim that the tinue another decade? recovery was at hand? "Recovery Summer," the White House But back to the financial crisis. That crisis was caused by the website promised, would begin in June 2010. collapse of the housing bubble. If the severity of that crisis Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner authored a New York Times explains the struggling American economy under Obama, one op-ed in August 2010 proclaiming "Welcome to the Recovery." would expect that those states most affected by the housing Geithner wrote, "(A) review of recent data on the American implosion would be in the most trouble. But as James economy shows that we are on a path back to growth." Though Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, acknowledging continuing challenges, Geithner assured readers the states that suffered the greatest losses in home values did not that "the actions we took ... to stimulate the economy helped do noticeably worse during the recovery than those in which the arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting housing crisis was milder. the economy on the road to recovery." A report by the San Francisco Federal Reserve found: Not true. The recovery actually began in June 2009, long "There's almost no systematic relationship between employment before the overwhelming majority of stimulus funds had been growth and home price declines." These findings, the report conspent. Few of those dollars went to construction and other socludes, "indicate that the economy faces obstacles that are nationcalled jobs programs anyway, as the president acknowledged al in scope. The slow pace of expansion has affected all regions later when he said he had learned that "shovel-ready projects" of the country. During the recovery, states where house price were not so. If Bush was responsible for the "hole," but the declines have been relatively mild have not done noticeably betObama administration could take credit for the modest growth in ter than states where housing got hammered." 2010, how can Bush now be held responsible for the slump since The Democrats are hoping they can turn George W. Bush into 2010? Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama into Franklin Roosevelt. But Geithner was on even shakier ground when, during a TV as Bill Clinton once said about another Obama claim, it's a "fairy interview, he explained how the Bush administration had caused tale." the crisis. Mona Charen is a political columnist and former member of "You saw the government of the United States living way the Reagan Administration.

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