Bad Storm Rising

After an October to forget for President Obama, we are entering the final stretch of the 2012 Presidential Election. After winning the first debate, Mitt Romney had grabbed the upward momentum in the race, and at one point, even held the advantage in the Talking Points Memo Polltracker average of polls:



But in the wake of the devastation on the East Coast via Hurricane Sandy, the President's bold support of federal disaster relief and the bipartisan partnership he's formed with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may spell the end of hope for a Mitt Romney victory on Election Day.

For example - how much value could a picture like this have in the last week of the election:

Christie invited Obama to New Jersey to tour the areas

Christie's high praise for the President's personal ownership of the FEMA disaster relief efforts form part of a two-pronged political victory for the President. First, the impact of Christie's praise - and why it's such a boost on Election Day:

On Tuesday, Christie did the rounds on morning TV, praising Obama’s performance. “It’s been very good working with the president and his administration,” Christie said on MSNBC. “It’s been wonderful.”

Christie has also made clear that politics is the least of his concerns. When asked in a briefing Tuesday with reporters about how the storm might affect Election Day, he said: “I don’t give a [expletive] about Election Day.”

But here’s the second reason the Obama-Christie team-up, six days before Election Day, is worth its weight in gold to both men’s political futures: Voters – especially independent voters – want more bipartisanship, polls show. This presidential campaign has been the most toxic in memory, but the Obama-Christie photo op is living evidence that when the going gets tough, members of competing parties really can work together.

 Indeed, after a couple years of the shrill bickering of the Tea Party, a high profile Republican governor and President Obama working together to solve the problems put forth by Hurricane Sandy sends an important message that the President is a man of consensus and compromise, as opposed to a legislative bully, an argument that Republicans have been trying to put forth since the President successfully passed Obamacare in his second term.

The second prong in this winning moment for the Obama campaign is the turdtacular response from George W. Bush -era FEMA Director Micheal "Heckuva Job" Brown, who guided the agency during the train wreck that was Hurricane Katrina. His question? "Why did the President respond to dying Americans so fast?":

From the SF Gate:

“One thing he’s gonna be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in…Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas? Why was this so quick?… At some point, somebody’s going to ask that question…. This is like the inverse of Benghazi.”

This, of course, reinforces the obvious idea that even if Jesus came down from the sky and gave the President full marks on the Sandy response, Republican Party leadership would continue to slam him in order to score political points off of the dead bodies of Americans. With Mitt Romney already on the record calling for the end of FEMA as an agency, the Hurricane Sandy disaster has become a nightmare for the Romney campaign - and after a poor final debate, may be the hammer that puts the nail in the coffin for Willard.