FINAL UPDATE: Top 12 Excuses Conservatives Are Already Making For Losing The Election

FINAL UPDATE 11/5/12: The final days wouldn't be complete without a final excuse: Hurricane Sandy.

UPDATE 10/5/12: This post when originally published on Oct. 3 was a "Top 10" list. It has been expanded to include the new excuse: "Chicago" Rigged The Jobs Numbers. [1]

All the current polling has President Obama beating Mitt Romney [2] and Republicans failing to take over the Senate [3]. There is an obvious reason for this: the public likes how progressive Democratic policies have worked in the past four years more than how conservative Republican policies worked in the past eight. [4]

Accepting the obvious is proving difficult for conservative leaders. Instead of taking responsibility for past policy mistakes and proposing changes, conservatives are frantically coming up with various excuses why they are about to take a ballot box beating.

The list is impressive. Let it not be said conservatives are not creative.

12. "Chicago" Rigged The Jobs Numbers

When the career civil servants at the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8%, conservatives immediately concluded it was evidence of a "Chicago" conspiracy. From Politico: [1]

“Chicago style politics is at work here,” Florida GOP Rep. Allen West wrote on his Facebook page. “Somehow by manipulation of data, we are all of a sudden below 8 percent unemployment, a month from the presidential election. This is Orwellian to say the least and representative of Saul Alinsky tactics from the book “Rules for Radicals” — a must read for all who want to know how the left strategize.”

...

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric and a frequent Obama critic, also suggested the numbers were cooked [on Twitter]. “Unbelievable jobs numbers. … these Chicago guys will do anything … can’t debate so change numbers." ... Eric Bolling, saw something sinister at work [also on Twitter]. “WOW Obama Labor Dept (7.8%) smarter than all 25 of Americas top Economists (8.2%est) … or something far more insideous [sic]." Radio host Laura Ingraham also bought in [on Twitter]. “Jobs #s from Labor Secretary Hilda Solis are total pro-Obama propaganda..."

11. The Fed Rigged It

When the Federal Reserve announced a new round of "quantitative easing" or "QE3" to accelerate job recovery, several House Republicans accused it of rigging the election for President Obama. The Hill reported: [5]

“It really is interesting that it is happening right now before an election,” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho). “It is going to sow some growth in the economy, and the Obama administration is going to claim credit.” “I am shocked, just shocked, that politics are going on in this city!” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said sarcastically.

...

“They are the ones who always say they want to remain independent. So they should consider, just how independent are they when they come out, only 50 days before the election, with this?” said Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.).

And here's Fox News pundit Andrew Napolitano [6] saying that QE3 is "intended to make somebody look good between now and November 6. You know who that is,"

10. Skewed Polls Depressed Republican Turnout

Many conservatives are complaining that most national polls are "oversampling" Democrats, even though most pollsters don't weigh their data based on party identification [7] since partisan makeup of the electorate can fluctuate.

Glenn Beck's "news" site "The Blaze" amplified a blog post touting the conservative theory behind the poll numbers: [8] "These over-samplings serve a few purposes but mainly drive down enthusiasm for Republicans while assisting the Obama campaign with 'bandwagon' supporters who simply like being on the winning team..."

9. The Government Suppressed The Military Vote

On Fox & Friends, guest co-host Eric Bolling asserted that "it's becoming more difficult, relatively more difficult, for military personnel to get an absentee ballot [9], yet we're supposed to believe that getting a photo ID just makes it way too difficult for an American citizen to vote."

As Media Matters [9] noted, the head of the Military Voter Protection Project, which provided the data that Fox & Friends based its discussion on, said, "The military voting issue has existed long before the current administration. I simply don't see any politics at play." [9]

8. The Government Allowed People To Vote Early

Having more people be able to vote [10], by states allowing ballots to be cast before Nov. 6, is a "recipe for fraud," according to Rush Limbaugh. [11]

7. ACORN. Again.

From Dean Chambers [12] of UnskewedPolls.com [13] fame:

While the media is creating the perception that Obama can and is winning, the campaign and it’s supporters are working with their allies and former members and leaders in groups like ACORN and others to change the actual vote outcomes as much as they can. ... By creating the perception that Obama is winning, the media is giving the campaign a margin in which to be able to engage in voter fraud and make it believable ... this is precisely why Obama’s Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder is fighting voter identification laws so strongly. They know they are far less likely to win the if the election if honest and fair.

The national ACORN organization no longer exists. [14]

6. Obama Was Never Vetted

In March, Breitbart.com launched "The Vetting" [15] because "Andrew [Breitbart] wanted to do what the mainstream media would not. First and foremost: Andrew pledged to vet President Barack H. Obama ... he wanted to show that the media had failed in its most basic duty: to uncover the truth, and hold those in power accountable, regardless of party. From today through Election Day, November 6, 2012, we will vet this president..."

Breibart.com has been "vetting" ever since. [16] Daily Caller too. [17]

And yet, it is never enough. Red State's Erick Erickson wrote recently: [18] "Honestly, he hasn’t really been vetted. We do not know a lot about Barack Obama from his time before the United States Senate. Much of what we could learn has conveniently disappeared. The few things we do know — like his connections to terrorist Bill Ayers — are dismissed by the media."

5. The Libya Cover-Up

Rush. Try to follow. [19]

They engage in a cover-up. They concocted a phony scenario. ... They don't even care. They got their political mileage out of this. They established the narrative that it was the video. They had a solid week of doing that, no matter who was protesting and saying it wasn't. They had the world believing it and the US media spreading that it was a video. Now the guy that did the video is in jail, and there's nothing to see here anymore. We move on.

Now it's the economy, and "it couldn't be tackled any better by anybody else." The Clinton bump. Democrat National Convention. That's exactly right! Obama cares, as Michelle told us and he told us. Biden told us how much Obama cares. "Gosh, he doesn't do anything but worry about the economy and jobs!"

...

Here's why the FBI isn't there: The FBI will find out what happened, and the regime does not want that reported. The FBI will not lie about what they find, so the regime's gotta keep them out of there.

4. Romney Wasn't Conservative Enough

Laura Ingraham declared "conservatism wins" always [20], therefore Romney losing must mean he's not being conservative enough.

Rush Limbuagh similarly concluded [21] that if Romney "would just go full-bore conservative [he would] wrap it up."

3. The American People Are "Morons" Hooked On Welfare

El Rushbo: [22]

Obama's out on The View and with Letterman and so forth. That's who he's gunning for. That audience. He's really coalescing the Moron Vote. He's banking on the fact that of the universe of Americans who vote, that there's a winning majority of morons in there. He's got academia and he's got the media and he's got the Hollywood crowd. Then he's going after the actual Americans outside those institutions. He's not going for the middle class. He's going for the morons.

This apparently is why, according to Rush, Obama forcibly put half of America on welfare: [23] "Obama sees welfare recipients as a majority coalition, and now we have record numbers of people on food stamps. Coincidence?"

2. He's Black

George Will: [24]

Obama’s administration is in shambles, yet he is prospering politically. This may not, however, entirely be evidence of the irrationality of the electorate. Something more benign may be at work.

...

the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.

1. The Hurricane Did It

As Talking Points Memo thoroughly covers [25], top Republicans are shoehorning in one last excuse before it's all over:

“The hurricane is what broke Romney’s momentum. I don’t think there’s any question about it,” said Haley Barbour, a former Mississippi governor, RNC chairman and respected political strategist, on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “What happened was the news media absolutely blacked out any coverage of the issues.”

Karl Rove made a similar argument to the Washington Post on Saturday.

“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy,” said the Republican strategist who is spending millions to help Romney win. “There was a stutter in the campaign.” He described it as a “subtle disadvantage to Romney” on balance.

“Obama has temporarily been a bipartisan figure this week. He has been the comforter-in-chief and that helps,” Rove said. The storm, he told the Post, was “the October surprise. For once, the October surprise was a real surprise.”

Anonymous Romney campaign aides sounded the same note to CBS News.

“Campaign sources concede superstorm Sandy stalled Romney’s momentum. For eight straight days, polls showed him picking up support,” read an article Saturday afternoon. “[Romney’s] leads in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa still hold in the internal polls, campaign sources say, but Romney’s movement flattened out or, as the campaign likes to say, ‘paused.’ Nevada is now off the table, and those neck-and-neck swing states are even tighter.”

It is highly debatable whether or not attention to the Hurricane stalled Romney's uptick in the polls, or if it was one of many other factors, or if it had stalled out before the storm's landfall. [26]

But even if it was largely the hurricane, what Barbour misses is Sandy didn't "black[] out any coverage of the issues," the ability of the president to lead in crisis, work well with others and effectively manage our government is precisely what Romney was trying to question, and which the response to the disaster thoroughly refuted. [27]