Now that the results are in, the votes are counted and the speeches given, the seemingly endless 2012 election can at long last be put to bed. President Barack Obama crossed the finish line well before midnight EST without the drama and discord of elections past, in spite of the slugfest that preceded it. The past 18 months of this election cycle has thrown us curveball after curveball, almost as if they were designed to keep political junkies entertained.
Here are 9 forgotten election headlines, earth shattering at the time, that have faded into election trivia.
For a very brief moment last fall it seemed as if a personable African-American businessman might represent a new path for the GOP to follow, until the Pizza King’s appetite got the better of him.
Rick Perry was another “pretender to the throne” whose Texas cowboy charm and family-values made him the picture perfect GOP candidate, until the debates revealed him to be a bit short on the details at a primary debate. “And I will tell ya, it’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone,” Perry said, gesturing toward Rep. Ron Paul on his left, who had called for five agencies to be eliminated. “Commerce, Education, and the, uh – what’s the third one there, let’s see,” said Perry, as the audience gathered at Oakland University began to laugh.
Thank goodness we still had Newt to provide us with some world class craziness in the primary season. Gingrich has not proposed specific levels for federal spending as a GOP presidential candidate when he touted a truly cockamamie idea to build a colony on the moon. The fiscal conservative also pandered to just about every economic and special interest in Florida which would have sent the $16.4 trillion national debt skyrocketing even more.
Fears on the right that Mitt Romney was a moderate in conservative clothing were married with liberal fears that he was demagogue in moderates clothing when a campaign advisor said that if Mitt Romney got the nomination, “It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch – you can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.” At least Ohio Art got a sales boost out it.
Politicians are no strangers to accidentally being picked up on live mics. But while these are usually minor blushes of the “Major league A-hole” or “This is a big F-ing deal” variety, this one, on the other hand, showed Obama speaking to the leader of a country with which the United States still has a very tenuous relationship. At a meeting in Seoul in March, he told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have "more flexibility" to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election.
Potentially more damaging was the statement by Obama that Republicans immediately seized upon.“If you’ve got a business,” Obama told the crowd during a campaign stop, “you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” For a President whose relationship with the business community was already strained, this could have been catastrophic.
The first of two tactical mistakes before Romney’s post-debate rally personify a negative stereotype of the GOP: An angry old white man yelling at an empty chair that he blames for all of the world’s problems. This was not a reading before angel financers for a new one-man show. It was Clint Eastwood’s performance at the GOP convention. Oy.