Zogby: Romney handily defeats Obama among independents

My take:

So, Mitt Romney is the front-runner, for the time being, among three unannounced but likely candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. He leads President Obama by 11 points among independents and trails Obama by only 2 points overall, according to a Zogby Poll released Thursday. Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee trail Obama by much bigger margins.

This is an exceptionally strong showing by Romney, whose overhaul of the Massachusetts health care system, while governor, became an embarrassing model for Obamacare. He has weathered that embarrassment.

From here, Romney's upside is terrific. Obama's anti-American policy regime, designed to weaken, and perhaps bankrupt, the country, has driven up the national deficits and debt and raised doubts throughout the world about this country's viability.

For Romney, this may induce a sense of deja vu. He earned his wealth by picking through the boneyards of corporate America, salvaging things of value from the debris. Later, as the Salt Lake City Olympics were careening toward debt-ridden disaster, he was called in to turn things around, and did.

Now, history may be calling again, except this time it is the nation itself that has been placed at risk by a corrupt and reckless Democrat Congress and a White House that uses thuggish Chicago tactics to enact legislative memorials to long-dead leftist icons.

"Medicine is the keystone of the socialist arch," said Vladimir Lenin, chief architect of Russian communism.

Obama appeared to take those words as his command, leading an absurd, exaggerated attack against the world's finest health care system.

Romney, on the other hand, undertook the Romneycare project for a practical reason. At the time, Massachusetts was taxing businesses to compensate for shortfalls in the health care system. Some businesses were leaving the state. The point of Romneycare was to preserve the state's tax base, while also extending health care to underserved citizens.

In any case, that's an old story and any resentments against Romney already are reflected in the polls.

Those polls show that, among independents, Obama is weak while Romney is strong.

The well-tailored Romney seems tailor-made for the task at hand.