I was blessedly away for a 4 day weekend so missed the media barrage, which I hear was unbearable.

Water cooler conversation from my GOP co-workers today tells me Newt is toast. Descriptions bandied about ranged from "used car salesman", "space man", "pandering" to the more complimentary "worse of two evils".

It's understandable that the focus would be on Republican candidates in the midst of a GOP primary. But we shouldn't forget that the general election -- like all incumbent elections -- will largely be a referendum on Barack Obama. And, under current conditions, Obama is every bit as unelectable as the Republicans supposedly are.

He lists why (with details):

1) Obama is still unpopular. Almost all models of presidential elections examine presidential approval ratings (very few use challenger favorability, incidentally), as presidents rarely win many votes of those who disapprove of their performance in office. In other words, Obama probably needs to be pretty close to 50 percent approval on Election Day to secure re-election. (In 2004, George W. Bush was at 49.7 percent in the RCP Average on Election Day.)

As of this writing, Obama's job approval in the RCP Average is 46.8 percent. For the last month, his job approval in Gallup has bounced around between 42 percent and 46 percent, averaging 44.7 percent.

SNIP

2) The economy is still a millstone. As I noted above, there has been some good economic news lately. But the flip side of this is that we've heard it before: Late 2010 and early 2011 were filled with bullish reports on the economy, as was early 2010 (remember "Recovery Summer"?).

The bigger problem for the president is that things are improving too slowly for him to really reap the benefits.

SNIP

3) The president's domestic agenda is unpopular. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, the DNC's vice chairman, recently stated that Obama's national message "will be that he passed the health-care law, single-handedly saved the car industry, ended the wars and has had 22 months of job growth."

Selling this will be a very difficult task. Almost two years after the health care law passed, only 37.6 percent of Americans are in favor of it, one of the lowest measurements RCP has found. The 22 months of job growth is a nice statistic, but such an argument, made vigorously, risks sounding out of touch to a public that believes that the economy is still in dire straits.

As for the auto bailout, we haven't had much in the way of recent polling, although close to 60 percent of Americans fairly consistently opposed the bailouts when they were pending before Congress, and a January 2010 Allstate/National Journal Poll suggested only 34 percent of Americans believed the administration's actions with the auto industry had helped the economy. As for the stimulus, Obama's other major domestic achievement, in January 2010, 75 percent of Americans said they believed a majority or more of stimulus funds were wasted. Rybak doesn't mention that achievement, but Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich will.

The only clear winner here for the president is ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is, most voters don't care that much. In the past year, I couldn't find a single poll where more than 9 percent of adults named the wars as their top priority; that distinction consistently belonged to the economy.

In other words, Obama doesn't have a major popular domestic initiative to run on. The foreign policy issues where he is strongest are of low salience. This is not where a politician wants to be nine months before Election Day.

4) Head-to-head polling. This is of limited utility this far out, but it is worth a brief mention. Obama leads Romney by only a 47.5-45.1 margin in the RCP Average. His lead against Gingrich is large, but he's still only at 51.9 percent, about where his approval rating maxed out after bin Laden was killed.

SNIP

5) We've heard it before. Finally, most of the arguments for why the president is electable should sound vaguely familiar. They were mostly made in 2010 and offered as reasons why the election wouldn't be so bad for the Democrats.

Romney has a presidential jaw. And a Presidential hair cut. He must have some degree of intelligence but he sounds stupid.
On the other hand, Gingrich has gnarled lips and very shifty eyes. He is very stupid some people think he is an intellectual. Reminds me of the late Mr. Buckley, the darling of PBS.

That would have been a win for the country and your candidate if he had met that promise/expectation.

Newt appears to be in a semi-florid state, and I predict that his head may actually explode on the air when the results are in - which may be followed by the first-ever, on-air (and not on one of the p@rn channels) orgasm by a political candidate - Romney - thrilled because he knows that the more volatile Newt is, the crazier he talks, the more he eases Mitt's path to the nomination, and closes the door on even being considered as anyone's running mate [look out, Callista - a Newtie with a bruised and battered ego is a Newtie who may feel constrained by his marriage vows and handcuffed by his newfound commitment to Catholicism. Don't say we didn't warn you!]

The losers?  Us - there's no way another 9+ months of this doesn't constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Lettuce

Which is more important?

Let's just say, I won't be putting the Florida Primary results in my plant journal....

But, what I'm seeing is the same kind of 2008 support being resurrected, but that now seems to have to divorce itself from that record, or put a lot of spin on it, and there's a high level of anger directed at anyone who dares to say or do anything that harshes their mellow.

I mean, what do you say to people who just flat out tell you that it doesn't matter to them what Obama does, whether they like what he's doing or are opposed to it, because they will vote for him no matter what?