With 64 seconds to go and the NY Giants 5 yards from scoring and only down by two, Patriots coach Bill Belichick made a rare and very strategic decision – he let the Giants score. That gave him the time he needed to hopefully come back and win the game, instead of the Giants being able to run down the clock.

That was one of the most technical coaching decisions we have ever seen in football and one that can translate to this year’s presidential race.

With less that 9 months to go and facing a decision of eight years of Mitt Romney or four more years of Barack Obama, how do Republican voters go? This poll may shed some light on that:

The latest WND/Wenzel Poll shows none of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates has solidified the base of the party, with one in five GOP voters leaning toward support of Obama in November.

First off, that poll is from World Net Daily, so I’m sure it won’t get a lot of trust, but it does echo something I have thought about for the past few months and even blogged about before. Republicans are not enthused about their candidates – at all! They really wanted to see Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels get in. When it comes to Romney, many would rather have anyone else but him. So do we want to be stuck with one of these guys for eight years or take a loss of four years, put President Obama back in office, and take the time to regroup and get a stronger candidate to run in 2016?

But like Belichick’s decision, there is a big risk here.

By 2016 we could see the economy make a pretty big turn around. Unemployment could easily be back down to the 5% mark and the GDP going up. Likewise we could see the deficit shrinking and the budget under control. In other words, it could be a repeat of the 90’s all over again. If that’s the case, would a Republican win in 2016 or would the American people trust a Democrat more to keep the ball rolling?

If history repeats itself then we would see a Republican win. Bill Clinton inherited a horrible economy from George H.W. Bush and ended up turning it around. By the time he left office the economy was doing great, save the dot com bubble burst. The people then elected George W. Bush President. Of course Bush didn’t win by a landslide as we all know.

One of the rumored Democrats to run in 2016 is Joe Biden. Sure he will be 72 at the time, but that’s only a year older than Mitch Daniels would be in 2020. Joe Biden is also highly liked by a bunch of people on both sides of the aisle. He fills that “I would like to have a beer with that guy” persona that helped Bush win. Biden’s biggest obstacle would be getting past the nomination process. If he did that and made it to the general, I could easily see him besting Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush.

So the clock is running down and Republicans are facing an increasingly hard choice. Four more years of Obama or eight years until they can get someone they really want. I think I would take a Belichick risk and go with the four more years.