Don't get me wrong, that Romney story about his dog on the roof is the dumbest ****, America deserves to be nuked into oblivion from space for talking so much about it, so I can only imagine how much it's of keen interest to America's morons and how much play it will get into November.

I maintain Romney would have been better served strapping his house servants to the roof rather than a dog. Like if his autobiography was, oh, we strapped Maddie the house cleaner to the roof and took them to DisneyWorld to help keep the hotel room clean, half of America would be like how magnanimous, the help got a free trip to DisneyWorld or Yosemite or wherever they were going. This gets political play because EVERYONE loves dogs but we can probably all think of dozens of humans we've love to strap to the roof of our car and drive down the highway with and whip them with 60mph winds or whatever, because we hate them or hold them in such low-esteem or whatever. No one feels that way about dogs though. Romney just strapped the wrong species to his roof, common mistake.

Obama has a pinterest board already? Genius, imo, esp. if R. Money hasn't figured it out yet. Women eat that **** up, and appealing to women is going to be critical to Obama's reelection. Obama pins a few cute pet pictures, they get repinned by millions of women all across America, and a collective "Awwwwwww" rings out from sea to shining sea. Obama and the people around him definitely have their fingers on the pulse of how people like to communicate nowadays.

I the big question for a Romney presidency is how willing and strong would he be in pushing back against a more conservative Congress that will attempt to strong arm him into rubber stamping everything they want

Ann Romney has had one for awhile
http://pinterest.com/annromney/

the key thing with Romney is if any other semi-decent candidate ran against him he would not be the nominee, hell even if Rick Perry simply waited till the primaries before agreeing to a debate he might of pulled it out.

Romney was literally the least worst candidate available who no one really likes or can relate to. He's also kind of strange (compared to your average joe) and super fake. The people who hate Obama will vote for anyone over Obama...but the people who are like meh politics until Sept/Oct will look at him and I'm not sure they will see a whole lot of reasons to vote for him...so it just becomes a question of are there enough reasons to vote Obama OUT of office rather than just give him 4 more years to keep trying to fix the mess we got ourselves into.

What are the employment/economic numbers doing in Sept/Oct/Nov - if its not bad or even just optimistic/positive for the future...Obama wins.
Nothing Romney or the SuperPacs do can offset that.

Obama is probably more likely to have us out of Afghan before Romney, bit less likely to start war with Iran etc (dem vs. rep basically)...and comes across in general as stronger on foreign policy. Romney has no ground to best Obama on in FP unless something blows up or he does a 180 and is like...let's ****ing bail out Afghan right now!

I guess Obamacare could be a wrinkle.

The thing is, if the court declares the mandate unconstitutional, there are talks it could trigger the repeal of the entire bill. Repealing Obamacare has been one of Romney's primary pledges, which would then be off the table.

Romney and the GOP will just come back with the narrative that the stakes are REALLY HIGH now that Obamacare is gone because, if you reelect Obama, he will come back with a NEW MORE COMMUNIST PLAN, if you let him! The mandate was struck down, so he'll come back with Socialism Single Payer! YOU CANNOT REELECT OBAMA!!!!!

I think it's really too hard to predict the political fallout of SCOTUS's decision on ObamaCare, but Romney can certainly pivot from "I will repeal ObamaCare" to "elect me, to prevent the passage of ObamaCare 2.0!!!," and in fact, that's really almost better for Romney:

- removes the obvious Obama apologetic that ObamaCare = RomneyCare
- allows the right to do what they do best, remove any semblance of an actual policy or law to reference, and just create a fanciful and imaginary new secret Obama health care plan to argue against. Now, instead of Obama and Romney debating the merits of an actual plan, it's Obama debating the merits of whatever crackpottery the right cooks up will be Obama's "retaliatory" move. Normal human beings would say like "oh that's not very unlikely" but it's just really hard to predict what's going to animate America's street urchins. In the face of defeat, Obama's going to have to give his base something, like "we'll double our efforts to get a comprehensive health care plan passed," which is all the right needs to turn him into a demon President possessed to install Communism.

Is that really a winning issue, though? I mean, even the GOP base has to recognize that the status quo is terrible, right? Meanwhile, the Dem base gets more motivated.

If Obamacare is struck down what do you think Obama's reaction will be? Will he propose different legislation or just shrug his shoulders and give up?

If he has half a brain he'll craft a new plan to run on.

Agree - running on a "plan" is often better than a record, since record's can be complicated with real-life concerns and issues.

Well Dvault's post seemed to assume that the R's would need to invent something to run against if the bill was struck down hence the question.

The GOP base will probably tell pollsters they're upset with the status quo but there's nothing Obama can offer, short of becoming a white Republican, that would ever assuage their fears that whatever Obama's Plan B is isn't really a Bolshevik plot to enrich the undeservings. This isn't a policy debate at all and the unfortunately reality is that whenever the topic turns to new social welfare programs, the right is really good at firing everyone up that it's a quadrillion dollar deficit inflating boondoggle that wink wink nod nod just goes to the lazy blacks and stuff.

I just wouldn't feel confident SCOTUS condemning PPACA is some auto-loss for Romney, it's just so easy to see Romney and the GOP turn anything 'Obama' and 'health-care related' into the summer of 2009 again. Yes, everyone is upset with the status quo of how health care resources are delivered in this country, but until the Democrats prove they can craft a plan and successfully defend it once the right-wing spins it through the swamp machine, I think I'd rather talk about something else if I were a Democrat.

The two aren't exclusive. The plan that Obama crafts to run on will in all likelihood bear very little resemblance to the plan the Republicans convince their base he's running on.

Obamcare is considered to be (fairly?) the most significant piece of legislation passed on a partisan basis. The GOP base has every right to think their voice will not be heard.