RX for GOP: Take One Chill Pill Daily

Republicans need to chill.

Too many of the GOP faithful are turning into nervous ninnies.  Sources of their angst are almost too numerous to list.  It includes worrying about too many debates, too much candidate sniping, too much talk of social issues, too long a primary season and on-and-on ad nausea.  

The latest malady is a contagion known as candidate fatigue.  The Republican hang-wringers are tormented because they imagine voters have become jaded by the process and its participants.  They pine for a fresh face to perk-up party enthusiasm.  

Such unhealthy behavior plays into the Democrats' hands.  GOP partisans have taken a bite of the forbidden fruit on the media's Tree of Wisdom.  They should know better than to be seduced by the mainstream media's moronic misinformation.

Many have developed amnesia over the Democrat opponent on the ballot: Barrack Hussein Obama.  The beleaguered president has more baggage than a fully loaded Southwest Airlines flight.  And he is faced with a yawning enthusiasm gap of his own among key constituencies.

African-Americans and young people have been hardest hit by the president's inability to steer the nation's economic ship out of troubled waters.  Both groups are worse off economically today than they were at the end of President Bush's second term.

Consider that unemployment among African-Americans stood at 15.8 percent at the end of last year.  That is the highest jobless rate among this ethnic group since 1984.  Black males have suffered even more.  A shocking 17.1 percent of African-American males were unemployed at year-end 2011.

Those percentages offer a stark contrast to the unemployment rate of 8.3 percent for the nation as a whole in January.

Young people have fared somewhat better than blacks, but they lag the overall population.  Latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show unemployment among 20-to-24-year olds sits at 13.3 percent.  The 18-to-19-year old jobless rate rests uncomfortably at 20.5 percent.

President Obama cannot secure a second term without winning large majorities among both young people and African-Americans. Most pundits have forgotten that John McCain won the majority of voters over the age of 35.  Voters under the age of 30 went for Obama by a margin of 68-to-32 percent.

Obama's historic candidacy had near unanimous support from blacks, garnering 95 percent of their votes.  Yet the president has begun an urgent appeal to this loyal base in recent weeks because of flagging interest in his reelection.  Sounds like someone has punched the panic button.

Obama not only is banking on huge majorities from both factions, but his reelection will likely pivot on their turnout.

About 131 million people voted in 2008, an increase of five million from the 2004 presidential election.  The surge included two million more African-American voters and 3.4 million additional voters under 30.  Voting among all other ethnicities and demographic groups either declined or remained the same as 2004.

Turnout among voters under the age of 30 was 49 percent, the highest in decades.   Many were first-time voters. A full 43 percent had never voted in a previous presidential election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).

Any falloff in either turnout or vote margin in those critical groups spells disaster for Obama's reelection chances.  Obama would have never claimed the office had not those two constituencies pushed him over the top in swing states, such as Ohio and Florida.

That's why a recent poll is causing migraine headaches for Democrats. Research indicates that 44 percent of voters under 30 disapprove of how the president has handled youth unemployment.  A minority of 33 percent approve of Obama's policies, FOX News reports.

In the latest Rasmussen Poll, the president's approval ratings among all registered voters remain in negative territory.  Fifty-three percent of voters disapprove of Obama's job performance. Those results induce ulcers among Democrats.

Republicans forget the paper-thin margin of victory for Obama in the last election.  It was anything but the "sweeping mandate" reported in the media. McCain won more states, 30-to-20.  The population of counties won by Obama was 127 million, compared to 143 million for McCain.

As these numbers suggest, Obama has much more to fret about than Republicans as the novelty of a black president wears off.  Yet the anxiety level continues to spike among GOP diehards every time the mainstream media spews bilge about how unattractive and unelectable its candidates are.

Republicans need to switch off their televisions and chunk their newspapers.  The Lame Stream Media is in the tank for Obama.  Its "news" coverage might as well be orchestrated by the Obama Reelection Campaign.

Chilly media coverage of GOP candidates is par for the course, but it will be Barrack Hussein Obama who is left out in the cold on election night.