Senate [In-Depth Discussion] United States presidential election: 2012

Charisma? None
Notable legacy? None
National appeal? None
Base? None
Cash on hand? None
Appeal? Little
Republican Governor of a reliably Democratic state? TIM PAWLENTY, COME ON DOWNNNNNnnnnnnn!!

 

Pawlenty is one "Why do you want to be president?" question away from being exiled from the race before it starts. I suspect that his answer would make Ted Kennedy's look assured and concise by comparison.

 

The fact that they didn't live during his time actually makes it even easier to indoctrinate them I would think.

Apparently the Jonas Brothers are big fans.

 

I don't have anything bad to say about the Reagan administration itself. I lived through it but only in the literal sense (born in the latter half of '86).

My main problem is what conservatives have done over the past half-decade or so with the memory of the Reagan administration. Reagan never opposed dialogue with unfriendly governments, he compromised with Democrats, he raised some taxes, he started deficit spending and supported amnesty for immigrants. Yet you'd never know it with the way Republican candidates talk about his presidency. They frequently use his image and name to bolster their positions, which in many cases are the exact opposite of the things Reagan stood for, or never advocated.

What I find even more ironic is that the candidates out there invoking Reagan's name are doing so to promote a doomsday message about America's decline, when Mr. 40 himself was all about being optimistic about the future.

 

The Reaganites also generally were advocating eugenics. It's not that eugenics or racism actually died per se in America, of course, but still...

Let's not forget Reagan backing apartheid. Or Saddam Hussein. Or his view that Indians were "quite rich from the oil". Lovely guy. Had a Republican put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, Reagan wouldn't have apologized.

Now on to the choices:

Palin - Oh, please, Republicans, pick Palin. For some reason, the Palin campaign is like a fish in a wooden drum, and Obama has this device that fires a projectile at the fish.
Gingrich - He might benefit from NOHAMOTYO. He might. Most of us remember him for shutting down the government and having us explain fellatio to kids.
Barbour - Another wonderful candidate. It's not that Barbour is a racist, just that he honors the Ku Klux Klan.
Bolton - The ambassador to the UN...who says the UN doesn't exist. Ceci n'est pas un pipe, ladies and gentlemen.
Bachmann - What's bad is, I wouldn't put her at longshot. Like Palin, she appeals to the Tea Party. Of course, she also has no chance of winning moderates.
Santorum - It's bad enough, what his name also means, but this defender of man-on-dog love will hardly be a viable candidate.

 

Don't worry, she won't get the nomination. But, she will hopefully shove Pawlenty aside in Iowa.

Romney will take New Hampshire, and then we'll have a nice battle royale set up for Super Tuesday.

 

Yes, and the battle will highlight for the rest of the country just how far to the right the fight for the soul of the GOP has gone.

If anything, it will push moderates back to Obama, assuming he doesn't really screw it up (and that's a big if).

I have to wonder if it wouldn't be the best thing for the GOP if they nominated a Tea Partier who lost in a landslide, potentially leading to the kind of realignment that would help bring some centrism and sanity back into politics.

Peace,

V-03

 

The powers that be aren't going to go for Bachmann any more than they would've gone for Palin. She'll make a splash, get a lot of media attention, and then lose after Iowa. She definitely has potential to be a top-tier loser, a Huckabee rather than a Duncan Hunter, which of course would be good for her personally.


It's probably going to be Romney or maybe Pawlenty. I personally would support Mitch Daniels, who is as boring as Pawlenty, but with a better record as governor.

 

Daniels is very reasonable and would play well nationally, but a) he is not running and b) he is a not a fire-breathing social conservative, which would doom him in Iowa with the likes of Huckabee, Palin, and Bachmann around (assuming that they were to run).

He's more like Reagan in his approach, and Reagan couldn't win a primary in today's GOP.

Peace,

V-03

 

If Daniels is as much of a moderate as I hear he is, he should run as a Democrat in 2016. I don't care if he makes for the most conservative Blue Dog Democrat ever, people like him ought to be defecting.

 

Yes, what the Democratic party needs is more worthless blue dog political opportunists.

 

Turncoats have had a pretty awful record in the past few years. Primary voters don't want a defector, they want the real thing.

Daniels is still in limbo. He says he's thinking about it. Huckabee and Palin probably won't run; and Palin and Bachmann won't get the nomination, even if they were to win Iowa. Daniels would have a shot in Nevada and New Hampshire.

He's more of a longshot than some, but there isn't a really decisive frontrunner.

 

I am hard-pressed to disagree with anything LT has said so far in this thread. I appreciate your avoidance of hype, and I would bet that your analysis is pretty accurate throughout the campaign.

 

I don't necessarily disagree, but I think Romney has more of a shot. He has a New Hampshire residence and his Mormonism will play better in Nevada than it would in Iowa. If he got the nomination, both of those states (both of which Obama needs) may be in play in the general.

 

It all goes back to the independents.

Romney will be strongly demonized by certain elements of the GOP primary base, but if he can be seen as able to rise above it nationally, he will be a formidable challenger in the general election.

Of course, if he is the nominee, disaffected evangelicals may choose to stay home in 2012, and help Obama.

It's all so very hard to predict.

I still think it ultimately comes down to the unemployment rate.

Peace,

V-03

 

Do people really withhold their votes if their party's candidate isn't "extreme" enough for them? I mean when Obama won the Democratic nomination, a whole bunch of Clinton supporters said they would never vote for him....then when the election came around, they voted for him. Shouldn't that make appealing to independents the magical recipe for winning elections?

 

I was referring to his religious faith, which many evangelicals find offensive.

It more along the lines of "he's not MY nominee/President", much in the way the line was used against Bush and continues to be used against Obama.

Peace,

V-03

 

In 2008, that was arguably the case, and Huckabee was actively playing the Mormon card. However, four years is a long time, and a couple of things have changed:
1. Prop 8 happened. The Mormons clearly helped give it the funding to win, and they came under some particularly vicious attacks for it. They may very well view it as a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" - a view that the attacks on Mormons after Prop 8 will help fuel.

2. Romney has, in some past polling, held a slight lead over Obama in 2012 match-ups. There may be a desire to go for a sure winner in Romney over Obama. Pew Research also shows Romney drawing the most support among Tea Party supporters.

3. His biggest obstacle is the Massachusetts health care law, which will be a far bigger obstacle than his being Mormon. But even then, he is making the case that his plan was for Massachusetts, and was never to be a nationwide, one-size-fits-all solution. And that federalist approach is likely to work in a general election campaign.

"Romneycare" is going to be a bigger obstacle than his religion, but he seems to be weathering it among a GOP primary electorate, between his federalist approach and his promise to enact a waiver for all fifty states and to push for repeal.

 

Thanks, I really appreciate that. It's easy to stay dispassionate when none of the candidates are really inspirational.

Hype can easily be taken too far. People talked up Petraeus and Christie a lot, even though there was little evidence they would have been great candidates, and they repeatedly and forcefully denied they wanted to run. People talked up Marco Rubio and Scott Brown, even though the idea that someone first elected to Congress in 2010 could run in 2012 was utterly laughable. Granted, a lot of hype and speculation is driven by the media, not just by conservative wishful thinking. I don't think conservatives or anyone else wants to nominate Donald Trump, for example, but he still makes headlines. I suppose I shouldn't blame the media; you can't just print an article saying, "Yeah, it's probably gonna be one of these governors. Same as last month." But people should remember that the media cycles do not correspond to actual reality.

It was the same in 2010, when people paid more attention to Christine O'Donnell than to about ten of the people who actually became Republican senators. I don't blame anyone for following a very interesting person with no chance of victory, rather than a bunch of profoundly boring career politicians. But if you convince yourself flash-in-the pan candidates have huge, actual significance, than you are simply wrong.

 

It's easy to stay dispassionate when none of the candidates are really inspirational.

Very true, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the primaries, when a lack of exciting candidates is mixed into the normal process. For all the criticism of the hype around Obama, there was also a natural charisma that served a practical purpose. There must be a balance, but just as you can't have all hype and no substance, you can't have all substance and no hype/charisma/inspiration in today's world. Obama delivered substance, though to what degree is highly debatable, of course. The eventual Republican candidates must deliver some inspiration to more than just a small group of dedicated followers or they won't go anywhere (unless it's a case of a boring candidate winning because they are somewhat less boring than everyone else). Then again, intelligent boredom may yet be well received. We'll see.

 

It's interesting that Hillary Clinton stated this week that even if Obama wins the election, she will not stay on as SecState after this year. It's also rumored that Gates will move on as well, no matter what the results are, so Obama might be in the position of picking an entirely new cabinet again- at least the top tier positions- which would have both positives and negatives.

Clinton also nixed the VP slot, or running at all in 2016, so I'd imagine she's going to take a professor position somewhere, or take up consulting.