The latest Gallup Poll shows President Obama running neck and neck with top-tier Republican candidates Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann for the presidency in 2012. This is not surprising given the state of the economy, the out-of-control federal spending, the ballooning federal debt, the $1 trillion budget deficits, the frenetic money printing and the endless wars overseas. No matter who the GOP standard-bearer is in 2012, President Obama will be defeated next year if history is our guide.
Since 1952, the candidate who was elected in a year ending in 0 or 2 has served won two consecutive terms. Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952, breaking the Democrats five term hold on the White House, and reelected in 1956. John F. Kennedy was elected in a squeaker in 1960, assassinated in 1963 and his successor Lyndon Baines Johnson won the 1964 race in a landslide, thus keeping the two consecutive term trend intact.
Ronald Reagan served two terms, easily winning in 1980 and then won reelection in the 1984 landslide. Bill Clinton won in 1992 even though Ross Perot’s independent bid garnered 19% of the voted and then won reelection in 1996 against a weak GOP nominee, Sen. Bob Dole, and Ross Perot. George W. Bush won the most highly contested presidential election in American history in 2000 and won reelection in another squeaker in 2004.
Candidates who have won the presidency in years ending in 6 or 8 since 1952 have not fared as well. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 and lost reelection in 1980. George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988 and lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. However, Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 and reelected in his 1972 landslide against George McGovern, only to resign the presidency in 1974 because of the Watergate cover-up. In other words, Nixon served less than 1½ terms in the White House.
Barack Obama easily defeated the supposedly electable John McCain in 2008, and it’s been all downhill from there. Obama’s “hope and change” campaign theme has proven to be a lie. Obama has given us George W. Bush’s third term on steroids—more big government at home and abroad.
There are several reasons for this political cycle. Suffice it to say, it is the economy, stupid. In 2012, the economy will be shaky, inflation rising, the dollar falling, and a high probability that the U.S. will still be heavily involved in Middle East nation building, to the delight of the neoconservatives.
We are in the last stages of the welfare-warfare state, fiat money experiment. Rep. Ron Paul is the only candidate who understands why the federal government has evolved from a republic to an empire and has a “plan” to restore limited government at home, protect our civil liberties, revitalize America’s free enterprise economy, stop the debasement of the dollar and end the immoral, illegal wars overseas. President Paul would lift America’s stature overseas because he would offer friendship and trade as the best way to secure world peace and prosperity.
Republican voters have the opportunity of a lifetime to nominate a real patriot, a compassionate human being who dedicated his life to bringing babies into this world, a fiscal conservative who understands the meaning of living within one’s means and the greatest defender civil liberties who has ever served in the House of Representatives.
The next few months will reveal if GOP voters want a republic or a crumbling empire. If they choose wisely, they will overwhelmingly select Ron Paul to face Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. Beginning in 2013 the Paul administration would begin the healing.