The Iranians said they would release the hostages only if Carter was defeated, I think.

With Clinton and Carter stumping for Obama, you'd think a lot more of the South would be in play..

The parallel we'll be seeing this year isn't 1980, it's the electoral rout of 1984.

Who really knows what the leisure suit crowd was thinking?

The dynamics of just how polarized the republicans and democrats have become vaporize any parallels to 1980. Time to rejoin the 21st century.

Don't forget the lack of a serious third candidate. If John Anderson hadn't been running as a third-party spoiler, Carter almost certainly would have gotten enough votes to win reelection. But Anderson siphoned enough votes away to lift Reagan above the bar.

There is no third party spoiler this time.

This will be an election around turnout. Obama's star has faded, and polling registered voters will be meaningless. "President Romney" has a nice sound to it.

Even the narrative that Reagan broke through at the convention is off. Reagan started to surge well before the convention; that event provided merely amplified the trend. Clearly the electorate was already becoming convinced that Reagan was the guy, and the convention only cemented it. My guess is he was able to surge after that debate largely because the electorate had spent the previous six months feeling pretty good about him. Romney, by contrast, was not surging before the convention and has done nothing to make the electorate feel positive about him. Could this make it even more difficult for him to turn a strong debate into the kind of momentum he needs?

Check out this graph of 1980 polls to see how the convention didn't provide the breakthrough for Reagan: http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/08/09/what-really-happened-in-the-1980-presidential-campaign/

The Romney camp also behaves as though the public is completely unaware that Republicans deliberately weakened recovery efforts (watering down legislation, filibustering almost every job-creation bill, threatening to shut down the government, creating a phony debt ceiling crisis) and that they have done everything they could to undermine the President's efforts (GOP governors refusing federal funds, killing long-planned infrastructure projects, slashing public sector employment).

It's a con game the GOP expects the public to buy hook, line and sinker. Glad to see it seems to be harder for the GOP to dupe the public this time around than it was during the Bush era.

Why let silly little things like "facts" interfere with RWNJ delusions of grandeur.

Just reviewed timeline of Iran/contra scandal. It is almost as complicated as Mitt's tax deductions.

After Atlanta fell, Jefferson Davis fell into the full-on denial that all too often occurs in leaders after a war has become unwinnable. A West Pointer, he gave a bombastic "come back here, I'll bite your knees off" speech where he said:

What, though misfortune has befallen our arms from Decatur to Jonesboro', our cause is not lost. Sherman cannot keep up his long line of communication, and retreat sooner or later, he must. And when that day comes, the fate that befel the army of the French Empire and its retreat from Moscow will be reacted. Our cavalry and our people will harass and destroy his army as did the Cossacks that of Napoleon, and the Yankee General, like him will escape with only a body guard.

Upon hearing about that speech, Grant said "Mr. Davis has not made it quite plain who is to furnish the snow for this Moscow retreat."

Similarly, Mr. Romney has not made it quite plain who is to furnish the year-old Iranian Hostage Crisis for this 1980 victory.

The Iranian hostage crisis is the great "but for" of 1980. People today talk about the economy and the debates and Reagan's winning charm and blah de blah de blah de blah, but somehow they forget what was far and away, the absolutely dominant fact of political life in 1980 and the critical factor in that election. It was all people talked about. It seemed to eat up at least half or two thirds of every nightly newscast. The other news was referred to just that way: "in other news . . ." "Nightline," and Ted Koppel's career as a high-profile newsman, began as nightly "special reports" on the crisis which morphed into a more wide-ranging permanent news program as people got into the habit of tuning in to it every night. Like "Nightline," Every single night, on every single network news show, they closed with how many days the crisis had been going on.

For a year, the hostage crisis fostered a growing rage, joined to a sense of impotence and self-doubt that was custom-made Reagan's narrative frame about Carter and America's post-Vietnam ennui and place in the world generally. Reagan barely had to refer to it because every button he pressed was a button created by that sense of impotent rage. You had these people in the streets every night screeching "Death to America" and the failed rescue attempt which came across as just more muscle-bound clueless bumbling ineptitude like the kind that lost the Vietnam War.

Reagan owed his election, as much as anything, to the personal animus the Iranian regime built up about Jimmy Carter. The fact that even after a deal was negotiated, they refused to release the hostages until the day after Carter left office says it all.

So where, Mr. Romney, is the hostage crisis that will be a year old on Election Day to help you reproduce 1980?

I remember the 1980 election vividly. Liberals hated Carter but couldn't vote for Reagan, and John Anderson simply wasn't strong enough as a candidate. It was very painful. We do not have any of that this year.

Romney can not claim failing memory for his lies.

Mitt Romney - The Great Prevaricator

Mitt Romney should draw little comfort from 1980. The recession of the early 1980's probably was as bad as the 2007 perhaps worse. The country had also went through many convulsions from the Vietnam war, Watergate, and the terrible energy crisis brought on by the Yom Kippur War. The stagflation of the 1970's had interest rates for house mortgages approaching 18% or higher. Also the late 1970's and early 1980's were a time of huge economic transformations going on across the Midwest. Industries like the automotive, steel, and other industrial sectors were undergoing the first real stages of the global economy. Steel plants and small industrial plants all across the industrial Midwest shut down for good as newer plants were made or jobs outsourced overseas or just eliminated.

We are going through a different time right now. China and India are huge industrial powers. America has to adapt to these changes with year around school, green energy programs, infrastructure investments, changed tax policies, and reduce military budgets. Most Americans are still struggling to really understand why our job growth is so sluggish. The answers are our over reliance on imported OPEC oil, our health care system that costs twice as much as any other country, and our education and infrastructure all that need massive upgrades. Once we figure out that our challenges of the 21st century are economic we will start to do what we have to do. I see nothing from Mitt Romney that addresses the challenges facing America in the 21st century.

I certainly hope it's not 1980 again. Being 13 years old just once was more than enough for one lifetime.

At least there is no more mystery surrounding what Rove has been doing with all that cash he's been stockpiling. An opportunity for Romney to appear Presidential...oops

The shameless Repubs are out on the airwaves amping up their 1980 Carter/Reagan theme and patting tone deaf opportunistic Mitt on the back, for falling on his face and disgracing all Americans.

The 1980 comparison, championed by Romney's aged mercenary brain trust: Williamson/ Rumsfield/Cheney /Rove /Netanyahu etc. is transparent.. an utterly feckless cynical, outdated maneuver... a new low, even for these guys.

It was deeply disturbing to watch Mitt Romney attempting a Bain on both America's foreign policy and the Obama Administration in a time of tragedy and crisis.

Regarding the Bain way: Venture Capitalists like Romney look for, or manufacture opportunities into which they can insert themselves. Crisis situations are what they capitalize on to exploit the companies they have been grooming and are targeting for take over.

This is standard practice for venture capitalists to establish themselves as being on par with or superior to the Founders/Inventors/ Small Business Owners whose companies they will take apart and profit from. Casualties are not their concern. Mitt is just being Mitt,,,what a sad day for Republicans...and all Americans.