What to watch for at GOP Convention

The national conventions of both major American political parties are gatherings of the faithful. In each case, the ideological base of the party shows up in very high percentage.

 For Mitt Romney, this is problematic. He has never been popular with his party's base. Polls consistently show that supporters of President Barack Obama are more enthusiastic when compared to Mitt Romney's supporters.

The national convention serves as a point in which the parties rally behind their nominees and begin mobilizing at a much faster pace in the field. In a way, it is like a massive national pep rally. For Romney and his close followers, the convention will largely be about convincing his skeptics that he deserves their energetic support.

 Back when it became obvious that Romney would be the Republican nominee, I knew that he would not reset too much toward the "center" as some were predicting. Like another noted moderate, Sen. John McCain, he could not wiggle his way out of commitments made during the primary contest.

 Like McCain, Romney chose a Tea Party favorite, a very risky favorite, in Rep. Paul Ryan. Watch Mitt Romney's speech when he accepts his party's nomination and, I believe, you will see more of the same. He will go out of his way to appeal to the ideological right wing.

Indeed, surrogates will probably spend much of their time during the convention trying to convince Tea Party members and other conservatives that they can trust Romney on key issues.

President Obama and the Democrats should take full advantage of this situation.  The task for them is to clearly illustrate the clear choice that Americans have on election day.  They need to continuously press Romney on issues that show the stark differences on issues that exist between the presidential tickets and their respective parties.

A brokered convention for the GOP?

With Mitt Romney unable to establish clear dominance in the Republican primary, the possibility of a brokered convention is under intense discussion.

If none of the candidate reach the magic number of 1144 delegates, the party must find away of convincing delegates to switch from one candidate to another.  In some cases, delegates are bound by law to support whoever had won the concerned race.  However, many delegates and also the super delegates are free to vote for whomever they want.

Currently, with so many southern states in play, there is a strong possibility that Romney may not get enough votes.  He does long strong in some of the states with winner-take-all systems, but most of these races are not until the end of the primary season.

Romney has been only getting from 25 percent to 28 percent of the vote in southern states.  That may not be enough especially if he loses big in Pennsylvania against hometown favorite Rick Santorum or if he fails to win an important winner-take-all state like California.

Some analysts think that if no candidate gets the necessary number of delegates before the convention that everything will be worked out prior to the convention kickoff.  However, this may be wishful thinking. Obviously there are a lot of strong feelings since even when Romney wins in the primary, he is usually taking less than the majority of votes. For example, in the all-important Ohio primary, Romney only picked up 37.9 percent of the votes.

One thing most people agree on is that the lack of a clear winner will work strongly in Barack Obama's favor. Whether the backroom dealing goes on before the beginning of the convention or during it will not probably make much of a difference.  Either way, it will look like the Republicans are not strongly convinced about their nominee.

Nouriel Roubini sees doom if GOP takes power

Prof. Nouriel Roubini was one of only a very few national economists who accurately predicted the housing meltdown and resulting deep recession. A professor of economics at New York University, Roubini has been described as "a prophet" at the IMF and was rated number 4 in Foreign Policy journal's Top 100 Global Thinkers.

In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Roubini credits the Obama administration's stimulus plan with preventing another Great Depression.

However he warns that if Congress becomes dominated by the Republicans as some are predicting, we could be headed for more economic gloom.

He said the U.S. remains on an "unsustainable fiscal course" and the likely make-up of Congress after elections next Tuesday, in which the Republicans look set for strong gains, virtually takes fiscal reform off the agenda.

The resulting instability could be aggravated by a trigger mechanism according to Roubini including a state government going into debt default.

"The worst of the coming fiscal train wreck will be prevented by the Fed's easing. But the risk is (Obama) ... will then preside over ... a Japanese style stagnation, where growth is barely positive, and deflationary pressures and high unemployment linger."

Reading over the GOP "Pledge to America," one is hard pressed to find any fault in Roubini's reasoning.  The Republicans are basically promising the same types of economic strategies that got us into this mess in the first place.