to move up and down
Americans line up early to issue verdict on Obama, Romney after most expensive election campaign in history
Americans started to vote in a presidential election on Tuesday with polls showing President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney neck-and-neck in a race that will be decided in a handful of states.
Polling stations opened across the eastern United States and parts of the Midwest as dawn broke. At least 120 million Americans were expected to vote on giving Obama a second term or replacing him with Romney.
Comparing the actual policy positions of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
So where do President Barack Obama and his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney stand on the issues? We look at what they’ve said in the debates and elsewhere. (Illustration by Richard Johnson/National Post)
Election century
The defining issues of the U.S. elections in 1908 and 2008 charted similar territory — a banking crisis, a loss of consumer confidence and a plummeting economy. With less than a month to go before the 2012 election, the National Post looks back at a century of election results and the issues of the day. (Graphic by Richard Johnson/National Post)
Mark Steyn: The Sesamization of America
Mitt Romney’s decision to strap Big Bird to the roof of his station wagon and drive him to Canada has prompted two counterarguments from Democrats: (1) Half-a-billion dollars is a mere rounding error in the great sucking maw of the federal budget, so why bother? (2) Everybody loves Sesame Street, so Mitt is making a catastrophic strategic error. On the latter point, whether or not everybody loves Sesame Street, everybody has seen it, and every American under 50 has been weaned on it. So far this century it’s sold nigh on a billion bucks’ worth of merchandising sales (that’s popular toys such as the Subsidize-Me-Elmo doll). If Sesame Street is not commercially viable, then nothing is, and we should just cut to the chase and bail out everything. (Illustration by Steve Murray/National Post)
Kelly McParland: Romney heads into political playoffs with odds against him
Five years after he set out to win the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney finally has the job. Rick Santorum’s decision to “suspend his campaign “, which is the new political term for “quit trying” leaves the former one-term Massachusetts governor as the only viable candidate.
Not that the two remaining no-hopers are planning to “suspend” their campaigns. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich plan to hang in there until the convention, though neither has the money, support or serious potential to win. Neither has much else to do: Paul says he won’t run for another term in Congress, and Gingrich is an attention junkie who can’t bring himself to abandon the rush he gets from spouting off in public. But only Romney can win.
When Mitt Romney was asked if he followed NASCAR, he replied: ““Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.” Maybe he met them through his wife, who owns a “couple of Cadillacs”
Colorado student charged in ‘glitter bomb’ of Mitt Romney
A Colorado student faced misdemeanor charges on Wednesday for flinging glitter toward Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney in an increasingly frequent protest act some commentators say should be subject to prosecution.
The practice of “glitter bombing” has mainly been the domain of gay rights activists targeting Republican politicians and other public figures who oppose same-sex marriage.
University of Colorado Boulder student Peter Smith, 20, who faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted, said he has no regrets about his protest. (Photo: Ben Garvin/Getty Images; Craig Lassig/Reuters)
Gary Clement’s Week in Review for Jan. 22 to 28, 2012
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How the secret Navy SEAL raid unfolded: Obama saw window to save hostages
David Frum: How our oil became a U.S. campaign issue
Apple’s results were so big…
Barack Obama is right — wealth inequality is a threat to capitalism
Jonathan Kay: At Occupy protests and in activist circles, income inequality usually is cast as a social justice issue, which is why too many conservatives snidely dismiss it
The United States of Envy
Terence Corcoran: Welcome to the United States of Envy, land of the free and home of the brave so long as nobody makes too much more money than the next guy
Analysis: Mitt Romney withstands the attack deluge … for now
Maybe being the presidential campaign’s symbol of capitalism isn’t so bad after all. After the two worst days of his run for the Republican nomination — days in which even foes within his party branded him as an elitist job killer — former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney seemed to be on top of the world. (Photo: Reuters/AFP/Getty Images)
Ways to win and lose the New Hampshire GOP primary
New Hampshire is in the news a lot these days because Tuesday the “Live Free or Die” state will hold the first primary in the U.S. presidential sweepstakes.
And because it is the first primary, it can make or break a contender’s momentum.
In other words, New Hampshire may be small, but its influence on U.S. politics is huge.
So what will it take for Republican presidential wannabes to win this key primary? Well first off, the nominees better forget all that stuff about wining votes through new-fangled notions like social media.
To be successful in New Hampshire requires old-fashioned “retail” campaigning, namely lots of baby-kissing, hand-shaking and Town Hall-attending. Simply put, “Granite Staters”, as they call themselves, want to see candidates up close.
Sheldon Alberts: Mitt Romney may not be re-electable
According to almost every national poll taken over the past six months, Romney fares better in a hypothetical head-to-head contest against Barack Obama than any of the other five remaining GOP candidates.
But he suffers from a real problem — the more people see of him, the less they seem to like him.
In Iowa, he won the Republican caucuses on Jan. 3 despite not growing his support at all in the four years since the 2008 campaign.
New Hampshire is Romney’s second home — people here know him as well as anybody — and yet Suffolk University’s tracking poll has shown his support slipping in each of the past four days he has campaigned here.
Anyone But Romney: The race by the Republican right to find an ‘ABR’ continues
Contenders to Mitt Romney in the republican presidential race have emerged and then faded – support for the former Massachusetts governor one of the few constants in the nomination race.
Despite Mr. Romney’s inconstantly high poll rankings, the GOP can’t seem to fully embrace him. The National Post’s graphics team takes a look at the ups and downs of the race so far.
Related:
‘Pizzazz’ propels Rick Santorum into three-way GOP Iowa caucus race
Sheldon Alberts: For many divided Republicans, beating Obama trumps ideology
As tens of thousands of Hawkeye State Republicans prepare to kick off the 2012 U.S. election campaign Tuesday with their first-in-the-nation caucuses, polls show voters still torn over a trio of top-tier contenders trying to break free of the GOP pack.
Iowa voters have a mixed history in picking the eventual GOP nominee, often supporting very conservative candidates who struggle to win over more moderate Republicans in later primaries and caucuses.
But many Republicans say they’re worried less this year about ideological purity than beating Obama.
“I’m a little conservative, like a tornado is a little bit windy. But we’ve got to win,” said Betten, explaining why he is still considering backing Romney.
“I think Obama hates the United States, and I think he wants to destroy it internally. I think this election is critical because of that.” (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Ron Paul blows a gasket over questions on race statements, storms out of CNN show
When you’re running for president — or even just for your party’s presidential nomination — it’s generally not good idea to storm out of interviews on a national cable channel because you don’t like the question.
So maybe it was a mistake for Ron Paul to take umbrage with the badgering he was getting on CNN about racist newsletters that were published under his name 20 years ago. Under cross-examination by CNN’s Gloria Borger, Paul got increasingly upset at the questioning and finally unclipped his microphone and left. Bad idea, because the storm-out is sure to get more attention than the original interview would have. And that in turn will attract more attention to the newsletters, which Paul has been trying to explain away for a decade or more.
