Clueless Right-Wing Pundit Round-Up

Even as the polls were showing that the game was up for Mitt Romney – with all the states he needed stubbornly refusing to swing in his direction – there has been an incessant outpouring of right-wing spin on both sides of the North Atlantic. Typical of that on this side has been our old friend Donal Blaney, telling “Whisper it at the BBC: Obama may well lost next week”.

Ho yus, and how might that happen? “Daily tracker polls from Gallup narrowly seem to suggest that Governor Mitt Romney will become the 45th President of the United States and that Barack Obama will be turfed out of office after just one term”. But Gallup always leans right: Blaney is fixing on the information he wants to see, rather than that which reflects reality. But, as the man said, there’s more.

He smears Obama as “Kenyan-American” and sneers at his “body goddess” wife, then appeals to authority with “I have spent time in Virginia and Florida this past week”. Virginia and Florida have both voted for Obama, so maybe Donal listened to the wrong people. That might be why he blames the lack of appreciation in the UK for Mitt Romney on “the monolithic, left-liberal BBC”.

Blaney then rambles off into an apocalyptic vision of how the USA will turn into Sweden in the event of an Obama victory. He won. And it hasn’t. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, Dick Morris lived up to his first name by serving up a giant helping of congenital stupidity: “in October, Obama lost the Southern swing states of Florida (29) and Virginia (13). He also lost Colorado (10)” for starters.

Dick continues “And now, he faces the erosion of the northern swing states: Ohio (18), New Hampshire (4) and Iowa (6) ... In the next few days, the battle will move to Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and Minnesota (16)”. His prediction? 325 for Romney and just 213 for Obama. Obama won the Electoral College by 332 to 206. Dick indeed. A complete Dick.

And back in the UK, there’s always the Ron Hopefuls of the Telegraph. Like Charles Moore, telling that Romney “best represents his country’s ability to renew itself for each generation”. What a pompous prat. Janet Daley, the paper’s superannuated Glenda, was equally clueless: “Mitt Romney can still win – and he deserves to” she pontificated. He couldn’t, and he didn’t.

Even Philip Sherwell, the paper’s US Editor, joined in: “evangelical voters could now help Republican Mitt Romney to victory”. They couldn’t. And there was always Tim Stanley: “It is neither partisan nor mad to predict a Romney victory. Mitt still has the X Factor”. Except that in the show they just aired, he got voted off. And that post was from Monday, by which point it was obvious who was going to win.

Obama won. Romney lost. And he lost badly in the end. Deal with it, rightie folks.