I had an interesting chat with my father-in-law today. He's an archetypal Reagan Republican -- rural, socially conservative former small business owner with a deep distrust of government regulators. He only watches Fox News, he thinks Sarah Palin got a bad rap, and he contends that all the Congressmen, Republican and Democrat alike, are more or less corrupt and self-serving. He's exactly the kind of person -- and regular voter -- I never get to talk to living in the Bay Area, in fact, so it was a good opportunity to get more understanding of people like him.
Some of the stuff he had to say was pretty interesting -- he thinks that Obama hasn't done enough to help small businesses, and while he understands the context of "didn't build that" he thinks that even in context small business owners will find it offensive while they're struggling to make payroll -- he thinks that the government should provide business owners with more financial support to deal with the reams of government regulations they have to comply with. He suggested that some of the stimulus choices, or the health care act, are more conditioned towards the needs of the urban professional/service worker than the rural self-employed, which seems at least possible to me -- as I said, I don't really know much about the things that affect rural business owners. Unfortunately, some of the other stuff he had to say was pretty uninformed -- he did mention the "Congress exempt from Obamacare" thing until I googled it for him. He thinks Obama is an okay guy, but blames him for not being able to break the partisan gridlock, which seems somewhat naive to me, although when I pointed out Republican intransigence, he suggested that Obama should've used his charisma to make his case directly to the voters, which is definitely something I wish he'd done as well. He was sympathetic -- he said "I wanted Obama to be successful" -- but not really approving of his performance.
On the other hand, he hates Mitt Romney. He mentioned some of Romney's earlier gaffes (the "I didn't make that much from speeches, only $300,000 or so" thing) and said straight up that he doesn't think Romney has any understanding of people like him and their problems -- nor that he even seems interested. He's a businessman, he observed, but not one that has ever had to deal with the real issues of running a business. He's also not a big fan of Mormons, unfortunately. I doubt he'd vote for Obama, but he's definitely not going to vote for Mitt Romney. He might write in Herman Cain, though.