Don't Believe Obama's Re-Election is Inevitable

I hear it every day -- President Barack Obama is going to win; Republicans don't have a chance; none of the GOP candidates are electable. This is the chorus of the mainstream media.

On the contrary, Obama's re-election is not inevitable. In fact, I would go so far as to say his re-election is questionable at best.

First, let's take a look at the facts. Michael Scherer of Time wrote that a study done by political scientists Christopher Wlezien and Robert Erikson, finds that over the past 15 presidential campaigns, economic performance in April of an election year was almost as good a predictor of the vote outcome as the economic performance in November, and far better at predicting the outcome than early head-to-head polling.

Scherer goes on to show some revealing numbers. Gallup's measurement of satisfaction with the direction of the country was 14 percent last fall, five points lower than President Jimmy Carter's at the same time. Consumer confidence was largely negative last year worse than the 1991 malaise that sank Bush, who was turned out of office in 1992 despite an economic surge earlier that year, Scherer wrote.

These are but a few of the less-than-encouraging numbers for Obama's re-election prospects that Scherer outlined in his article Campaign Numerology: History suggests that Obama is running out of time to turn the economy around.

But this election is about more than the numbers, it's about the message.

You'll hear about Obama's billion-dollar campaign and his unbeatable behemoth of a campaign operation that is using technology and social networking in ways never used in campaign history. All that's true, but the Republicans shouldn't be scared of his gargantuan effort.

You can have the largest operation in this nation's history -- which quite possibly could be what Obama has -- but all the money and effort in the world will not get you re-elected if the message is not right. And the message is where the Democrats are fundamentally wrong.

Americans aren't interested in class warfare. Expressing a deep disdain for America's entrepreneurs-which is what Obama does with his class warfare rhetoric-might tap into a populist fervor, but it will hardly get votes.

Moreover, promising Americans you'll pay their mortgages and fill their gasoline tanks won't prove fruitful either. You might remember Peggy Joseph back in October of 2008 who left an Obama rally saying, I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. If I help him, he'll help me.

Well, I wonder what Peggy Joseph is saying today while millions of Americans are still worrying about paying for gas and their mortgages. Americans are smart, and I have confidence the electorate will see through the empty promises Obama will make over the next few months.

While Obama is inciting class envy and making false promises, the Republican nominee will be espousing a far different message. I hope it will go something like this.

Conservatism is about trust and compassion. It is about believing and trusting that man, when left to his own accord-in the absence of burdensome government regulation-can achieve greatness.

It is compassionate in that it recognizes a large welfare nanny state only serves to enslave man, making him dependent on government, handicapping man's self-reliance and suppressing his innate ability to create and produce.

That, in a few words, is conservatism. If the Republican nominee gets the message right, and relentlessly champions conservatism at its core, he cannot help but prevail.

Kayleigh McEnany is a writer and political activist who graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and studied at Oxford University. She is the founder of www.RealReaganConservative.com. She writes every Tuesday for the International Business Times.