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By Steve Deace

Latest Fox News Poll Bad News for Romney

Fox News is where conservatives have gone for sanctuary in recent years to get a dose of sanity in a mainstream media riddled with Leftist ideologues, swindlers, and propagandists. So when the data I’m about to share with you about the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States comes from Fox News, it’s definitely worth noting.

This isn’t data from the Leftist Daily Kos/Public Policy Polling, otherwise known as PPP. Heck, nowadays I’m wondering if “PPP” stands for “Polling People’s Privates,” since it seems like every poll they do nowadays is about sodomy and homosexuality. I think these folks may have polled every state in the country about sodomy and homosexuality just since marriage was upheld in North Carolina by 30 points back in May. And people say conservatives are obsessed with what’s going on in people’s bedrooms.

No, this ominous data trend is found in two questions from Fox News.

The first question from Fox News that raises red flags for Republicans is “which candidate do you believe has a clear plan to improve the economy?” Notice the italics—“improve the economy.” The wording of that question is vital to truly understand the impact of what comes next.

According to Fox News, 41% of Americans believe President Obama has “a clear plan to improve the economy.” While that number isn’t great, especially for a man who ran for president four years ago on improving the economy (along with everything else), it’s still probably higher than most Republicans would prefer.

But it pales in comparison to this: only 27% of Americans in the Fox News poll believe Mitt Romney has “a clear plan to improve the economy.” That’s right—just 27%. In fact, the Fox News poll says barely half the Republicans (53%) believe Mitt Romney “has a clear plan” to improve the economy.

Romney is basing his entire candidacy on the economy, and his economic expertise is what he’s trying to be most known for by the voters. For example, he has said and done virtually nothing on the “Fast and Furious” scandal, or the Obama Regime’s dark embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, because supposedly this election rises and falls on the economy. Very well, but Romney has been running for president non-stop for five years. He’s very well known by the American people, and only 27% of them believe he has “a clear plan to improve the economy.”

Why? The answer is simple—Romney doesn’t have “a clear plan to improve the economy.” Furthermore, Romney doesn’t have a clear plan for anything. His entire etch-a-sketch strategy is predicated on Obama sucks so bad that he doesn’t have to provide specifics on anything. Ask most conservatives why they’re voting for Romney, and they’ll go off on a laundry list of all the things we know are bad about Obama. Almost none of them will give you the objective merits of Romney, or excitement about how he’ll take on the corrupt system with his reformist ideas.

And that’s most conservatives. What about most Americans who aren’t conservatives?

We know the answer to that question, which is found in the second data point that should serve as a wake-up-call for Romney’s consultant-drive, stand-for-nothing but platitudes campaign. By a 47-36 margin in the Fox News poll most Americans believe Obama would be the candidate that would “do a better job looking out for their family during tough economic times.” Based on what we know about Obama, and how many American families are actually worse off than they were when he was elected four years ago, that is both inexplicable and indefensible for the Romney campaign.

It shows the American people do not yet trust Romney to be their next president. While it’s clear based on the results of the 2010 midterm elections and all the polling data thereafter the American people are very skeptical about giving President Obama another four years, it’s also clear Romney hasn’t earned their trust after five years of non-stop campaigning and untold millions of dollars spent.

That is a death-knell for a challenger because the most important threshold for a challenger to clear is to earn the trust of the American people, and demonstrate the credibility it takes for the voters to see them in that office instead. For all the anti-incumbent rancor in the country, the actual numbers tell a different story. Incumbents in the U.S. House and Senate are re-elected over 90% of the time. Historically, incumbent presidents have won about 70% of their re-election campaigns. Since 1892, only five U.S. presidents have failed to win when running for re-election. Herbert Hoover presided over the Great Depression. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush all lost after facing a primary challenge and a divided base. William Howard Taft essentially faced a primary and a divided base when fellow Republican Teddy Roosevelt came out of retirement to challenge him as a third party candidate in the general election.

Thus, Romney’s task is tall even under ideal conditions, but throw in the vapid drivel he’s currently running on, and he’s making his task even taller. By standing for nothing other than how much Obama sucks, Romney’s campaign is placing its candidate in the position of essentially having to root for more American suffering that it can politically capitalize on. When your candidate is filthy rich and white, that’s walking right into the Democrat Demagoguery trap. Obama is not facing a divided base like Taft, Ford, Carter, and H.W. Bush faced. Romney needs even more dire economic conditions like Hoover faced. In other words, he needs us to become Greece by November. Then again, that alone won’t do it, either. FDR still needed to sell Americans on the “New Deal.”

What is Romney’s plan? “Believe in America.” Romney is paying consultants six figures per month to come up with an empty cliché a sixth-grader could put on a patriotic card they make at home with water colors.

Obama has had arguably the worst eight consecutive weeks any American president that hasn’t faced a hostage crisis, terrorist attack, stock market crash, or personal scandal has faced in recent memory. Yet he’s still beating Romney in the latest Fox News poll. Given how much angst exists in the country about this president and his policies, Romney should be up by 10 points right now.

The reason he’s not is Mitt Romney.

(You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow)