With apologies to Thomas Suddes, the Cleveland Plain
Dealer’s and Columbus Dispatch’s fine columnist and who is considered to be an
expert on Ohio
politics, I will go out on a limb at this point and make a prediction.
Ahem.
Mitt Romney will win Ohio.
Suddes wrote last week that he believed President Barack
Obama could take Ohio with strong showings in Franklin County and in counties
that are home to our major universities. He noted that Catholics might not be
as enamored with Obama as they were four years ago but figures that blue collar
and union voters are in Obama’s court because of his defense of the American
automobile business.
That gives Obama northern Ohio
but not necessarily central Ohio
where Romney and Obama have spent and will spend considerable time during the
campaign.
Suddes also pointed out that Obama defeated John McCain by
262,000 votes in 2008 and that George Bush beat John Kerry by 119,000 votes in
2004.
When you’re talking about roughly 5.5 million voters in Ohio, those aren’t big
numbers. And consider this: Ohioans gave Jimmy Carter the boot in favor of
Ronald Reagan by 454,131 votes in 1980.
I have no science behind my thinking, but I do have my
hearing aids turned up. And the general sense I get from talking to the folks
who last time voted for Obama is that they’re plenty disappointed in the
current state of things.
No, they don’t want to play golf with Romney or drink a beer
with him. He’s not Reagan, or Bill Clinton for that matter. But he does offer
the alternative along with a promise to fire the Treasury Secretary Ben
Bernanke and do away with what has come to be known as Obamacare.
And business people, health care administrators and
physicians hate – and I mean hate – Obamacare. A couple of friends who serve on
hospital boards in Ohio and elsewhere contend that Obamacare will be a big factor
in the demise of small, locally controlled hospitals.
So, I contend the final county-by-county map will be colored
red and blue in almost the identical way the Bush-Kerry map was in 2004. That means
Tuscarawas County moves to Romney in 2012 after
giving the nod to Obama in 2008. Holmes
County remains a solid
Republican stronghold.
(Disclaimer: I withdraw my prediction if Romney continues to
say dumb things on the campaign trail. He has enough time to overcome September
gaffes, but his October musings might do him in.)
Suddes, incidentally, labeled Tuscarawas County a “Catholic
county.” I’m not sure where he got that. The county has a significant number of
Catholics, but certainly they do not represent a majority of churchgoers.
***
Life is full of unintended consequences. One of them is the
proliferation of political yard signs that have been planted in lawns and
fields throughout the Tuscarawas
Valley.
I’m told we are seeing the signs earlier and earlier because
of early voting.
Do you get it? The election is no longer in November. It’s
in October now. All of October.
So the signs – because they are more important to a campaign
than anything else – have to be in the yards early so they can convince people
to vote for a particular candidate. You know, I’ve always voted for the
candidate with the most political yard signs. How about you?
Who said fall is the most beautiful time of year?
***
Speaking of proliferation, how about all those robo calls to
the Do-Not-Call landline phone line?
Here is a list of calls I received one day last week,
according to my caller ID: Toll Free 866-611-4385; Lower Interest 360-474-3901;
Lower Interest 971-220-1787; Wireless Caller 330-289-3307.
Those calls were received in a 10-hour period and do not
include two unlisted number calls. Four of those calls came while I was trying
to write this commentary.
By the way, I answered the wireless caller call because of
the familiar area code and it turned out to be someone from the Sherrod Brown
campaign. Now, I can’t even trust wireless callers, so be forewarned.
More from Dick Farrell
is at TuscBargainHunter.com
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