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Elections
Bad signs for the GOP in 2012
Jeb Golinkin
writes at FrumForum.com that a quick glance at the 2012 GOP contenders reveals that the overwhelming majority of these candidates would have no chance of defeating an incumbent president, much less the Obama campaign machine, in a general election.
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Newt Gingrich: Gingrich is too old, too polarizing, and too Washington to have a fighting chance at winning the presidency.
Sarah Palin: 55% of Americans view her unfavorably. That’s pretty much game over, but even if it wasn’t, the fact that the number holds among independents (55% of them view her unfavorably and 40% of that group said they view her in a “strongly unfavorable” light) also would be a knockout. 41% of all polled view her as strongly unfavorable. In short, that means she can write off 40% of the electorate before the race even starts. Her chances of beating Barack Obama are slim.
Mitt Romney: Deemed the “frontrunner” by many, Romney would get destroyed in a general election. Flip-flop. Flip-flop. Flip-flop. The label destroyed John Kerry, and Romney’s propensity to change his mind makes Kerry’s switches look tame to the point of irrelevance. And did I mention that Obamacare looks like Romneycare on steroids? No chance.
Mike Huckabee: Christians heart Huckabee. Independents do not. Next.
Gary Johnson: Who is Gary Johnson?
Rick Santorum: Staunch social conservatives need not apply for the presidency. Santorum tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design nationwide in 2001. Not a single Latino in America is going to vote for this guy. Neither are independents, moderate Democrats or a lot of moderate Republicans. If he is lucky and Obama does a lot of things very, very wrong between now and 2012, Santorum might… just might lose 65-35 to Obama.
Ron Paul: The man is a fringe lunatic. The answer is no.
Mike Pence: Who is Mike Pence?
Tim Pawlenty: The only candidate of the batch that I am not 100% confident would get absolutely mauled by Barack Obama in 2012. A smart, competent, seemingly likeable candidate. Relatively moderate. But he is from Minnesota and not really popular there anymore. In March, a poll of 500 Minnesotans pegged his approval at 42%. If his own voters don’t like him, it will be hard for him to beat an incumbent in a general election for the presidency.
And if you think this is meaningless because the Republican savior just hasn’t shown themselves yet, think again…
The GOP’s star is not coming. Obama became a superstar at the Democratic Convention in 2004 and by 2006 (two years before the election….), every single person that followed politics knew who Barack Obama was. We have neither a Hillary Clinton (a powerhouse presumed nominee) or a rising star who captured the nation’s attention. Paul Ryan is a darling amongst conservatives but about ten mainstream Americans have ever heard of him. Jindal was supposed to be the rising star, but he blew his “national unveiling” with an awkward response to Obama’s State of the Union.
But FrumForum commenter MaxTwain puts this analysis into context with a historical record of GOP candidates:
Let’s review the GOP fields from the past few elections. I think after you see where we’ve been and what we had running in the past you will realize just how much better the 2012 field can be.
1996: Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm, Richard Lugar, Robert Dornan, Pete Wilson, Arlen Specter, Alan Keyes
2000: George W. Bush, John McCain, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Lamar Alexander, Dan Quayle, Elizabeth Dole
2008: John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, Ton Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Tommy Thompson, Jim Gilmore
2012: Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, John Thune, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Mike Pence, George Pataki, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson
If you look at our primaries in the recent past you begin to realize our field is deeper then in the past. In fact, without George W. Bush in 2000, you could argue 2012 will have the best potential field of candidates. Sure, no one is the next Reagan, and no one will have the media drooling quite like Obama did, but we have a solid list of credible candidates, far more credible then Dole or McCain were when they got the nomination.
I think the problem you are having is that for decades the GOP nomination has been a orderly process, and now, just as in 2008, we are starting to have primary campaigns that are more like Democrats, where the next in line might not be the next in line, and where someone new could emerge from the pack and upset the established order just as Carter and Obama did.
Is Romney too nerdy to be President?
A blogger at the Secular Right blog who describes themselves as “positively predisposed toward Romney” says the former Governor can’t get the 2012 nomination because he just comes off as too “wonky and brainy”.
In many ways I think Mitt Romney is like Michael Dukakis. Both governors of Massachusetts, and nerds. Romney is physically robust and handsome, but for some reason he seems to come off as a nerd on testosterone to many people. I think this is why he was so detested in the 2008 primaries by his rivals. He’s smart, rich and handsome. These should be traits which make him an object of admiration and envy, but instead he is perceived as a striving overachiever, and elicits resentment from his peers. And I think that’s partly because he can’t mask his management consultant affect (I now suspect his flip-flopping and Mormonism come into higher profile because people want to give him a wedgie).
Romney appeared on the Today Show to talk about his new book and the current political climate:
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and later on Letterman:
Will Hillary Challenge Obama in 2012?
No. and Hotair explains why:
“Absolutely no interest” in running again, she says, which in fairness is the same answer she gave back in October. Ace is skeptical about her denials, but come on: How exactly is Her Majesty going to reposition herself to Obama’s left in time for 2012? Between her hawkishness and her marriage to the man who Betrayed The Cause by governing from the center after his own health-care implosion, her liberal cred is shot. Remember, the nutroots treated her as more or less a de facto Republican during the primaries. Plus, if she challenged The One, all the nastiness — racial and otherwise — that was dredged up in “Game Change” about her campaign’s tactics would be revisited. And if she lost again, which she almost certainly would, she could be staring at so many burned bridges that a run in 2016 would be impossible. Besides, given the “dark valley” of unemployment that Democrats will be forced to defend in 2012, why would she even want the nomination? Having beaten Obama in the primary by painting herself as the “true liberal” in the race, she’d be a sitting duck in the general when the GOP inevitably ran to the center. It ain’t happening. Although it would be awesome if it did!
Lou Dobbs for President?
Could this be a signal that he is running for president?
Lou Dobbs for President? Don’t laugh. After months of telling reporters that he “absolutely” would not consider leaving his highly-rated CNN show in which he crusades against free trade and illegal immigration, Mr. Dobbs posted a commentary on his Web site last week predicting a surprise new presidential candidate in 2008. The mystery candidate is an “independent populist . . . who understands the genius of this country lies in the hearts and minds of its people and not in the prerogatives and power of its elites.”
Friends of Mr. Dobbs say he is seriously contemplating a race for the first time, although it’s still unlikely. They spin a scenario under which the acerbic commentator would parachute into the race if Michael Bloomberg, the New York billionaire and favorite of East Coast elites, enters the field as an independent. With Hillary Clinton continuing to score badly in polls in the categories of honesty and integrity, and with the public’s many doubts about Rudy Giuliani and other GOP contenders, Mr. Bloomberg may well see an opportunity to roil the political waters by entering the race late. If so, Mr. Dobbs then sees a niche for a “fourth-party” candidate who could paint the three other contenders as completely out of touch.
His playbook would be similar to that of Ross Perot in 1992, who didn’t enter the presidential race until the major parties began holding their primaries but quickly shot up to 25% in many polls.
How the Obama campaign reacted to the Palin pick
Time has some interesting revelations about the choice for Vice President when Tim Kaine was considered but ultimately passed over:
There was no great way to explain putting someone with no foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. If we chose him, we would need to rely on some of the same language we had used on this issue as it related to Obama — judgment vs. Washington experience, a new foreign policy vision vs. the status quo — but doubling down would make it twice as tough for us to roll this boulder uphill.
Later that night, we held a conference call with Obama to brief him on our day. “Well, it sounds like you both are for Biden, but barely,” he said. “I really haven’t settled this yet in my own mind. It’s a coin toss now between Bayh and Biden, but Kaine is still a distinct possibility. I know the experience attack people will make if we pick him. But if that really concerned me, I wouldn’t have run in the first place. My sense is — and you tell me if the research backs this up — that Barack Hussein Obama is change enough for people. I don’t have to convince people with my VP selection that I am serious about change.” (Read “Obama and Biden’s Chemistry Test.”)
But the money quotes are all about Sarah Palin:
We always knew this day was going to be a pain in the ass. Coming right off the exhaustion and exhilaration of our convention week and VP pick, we would have to jump right in and deal with theirs. But [Sarah] Palin was a bolt of lightning, a true surprise. She was such a long shot, I didn’t even have her research file on my computer, as I did for the likely McCain picks. I started Googling her, refreshing my memory while I waited for our research to be sent.
…
But here she was, joining our real-life drama. And given her life story, coupled with the surprise nature of her selection, her entrance to the race would be nothing short of a phenomenon. But I also thought it was a downright bizarre, ill-considered and deeply puzzling choice. The one thing every voter knew about John McCain’s campaign at this point was that it had been shouting from the rooftops that Barack Obama lacked the experience to be President.
Summoning the wisdom from “the philosopher she turns to most”, besides Mother Theresa, then campaign adviser Anita Dunn offered advice on Palin, whom she had worked against unsuccessfully in Alaska’s 2006 governor’s race:
…warned us that she was a formidable political talent — clearly not up to this moment, she assured us, but bound to be a compelling player and a real headliner in the weeks ahead. (Read about where Sarah Palin is going next.)
“All of you on this call should watch video of her debates and speeches,” Dunn counseled. “The substance is thin, but she’s a very able performer. And her story is out of Hollywood. She’ll be a phenomenon for a while.”
The Obama campaign was mostly annoyed that McCain had chosen a VP nominee that, they claim, had less experience than Obama:
Our strategy with the other potential picks would’ve been to start by saying that choice X subscribed to the same failed George Bush policies as John McCain; all they were doing was doubling down on the same out-of-touch economic policies that had hurt American families. We should have gone the same way with Palin. But McCain had been haranguing us for months about experience, and we were incredulous that he had picked someone with zero foreign policy experience who had been a governor for less time than Obama had been a Senator. Galled by the hypocrisy, we moved in a more aggressive direction.
We decided to call McCain on the experience card directly. The value was in making him look political — essentially, calling him full of shit — and we sent out a release making that clear. “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” it read. “Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need; it’s just more of the same.”
Rasmussen: Obama 45, Romney 45; Obama 48, Palin 42
For some reason, the poll speculates about Palin running under a 3rd party:
Just 21% of voters nationwide say Palin should run as an independent if she loses the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Sixty-three percent (63%) say the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee should not run as an independent. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure.
If Romney secured the GOP nomination and Palin chose to run as an independent candidate, Obama would win the resulting three-way race with 44% of the vote. Romney is the choice of 33% of the voters under that scenario, with Palin a distant third with 16% support. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided…
When Romney is the Republican nominee, he beats Obama among unaffiliated voters 48% to 41%. But when Palin is the GOP candidate, unaffiliated voters prefer Obama by a 47% to 41% margin…
In a three-way race, Palin hurts Romney by drawing 28% Republican support. Romney captures 52% of the GOP vote in that scenario.
Obama won’t recognize Armenian genocide
Campaigner Obama: “As president I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.” President Obama: “Ixnay on the EnocideJay”
President Obama on Monday declined to repeat his claim that the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I was a “genocide,” stepping back from his campaign pledge to Armenian Americans that the “widely documented fact” would be fully commemorated during his presidency.
During a joint news conference alongside Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Obama said he did not want to “focus on my views” or in any way interfere with delicate negotiations between Turks and Armenians on what the president called “a whole host of issues.”
Obama sidestepped the issue — a key tension point between Turks and Armenians and a rallying cry among Armenian-Americans — saying he was trying to be as “encouraging as possible.”“I want to be as encouraging as possible around those negotiations, which are moving forward and could bear fruit very quickly, very soon,” Obama said. “What I want to do is not focus on my views right now but focus on the views of the Turkish and Armenian people. What I told the (Turkish) president is I want to be as constructive as possible in moving these issues forward quickly. My sense is that they are moving quickly. I don’t want to, as the president of the United States, want to preempt any possible arrangements, announcements that might be made in the near future.”
When asked if his views had changed or he was tempering them in light of the fragile Turkish-Armenian talks, Obama said he is not interested in “tilting these negotiations one way or another while they are having useful discussions.”