David Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste on why candidates should use campaign money to produce promotional materials.

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Do we really think that most Republican primary voters are more likely to nominate a woman for president than Democratic voters were two years ago? Do we really think that Republicans would prefer the less qualified candidate because she is a woman? Wouldn’t many Republicans want Romney to succeed to prove that the GOP is not dominated by religious conservatives who will not support a Mormon candidate? Wouldn’t that impulse to show religious tolerance overwhelm any impulse to promote Palin beyond her ability just to get credit for nominating the first woman nominee? If the 2012 nomination contest comes down to a head-to-head fight between Romney and Palin, there appears to be every reason to think that Romney prevails.

Scott Gallupo responds:

Does he beat her in New Hampshire? Let’s assume, given his New England ties, that he does. Throw in Michigan for identical reasons. Then comes South Carolina. And then Super Tuesday. Assuming Huckabee doesn’t run, Palin will crush Romney in Dixie, and she has obvious “Mama Grizzly” appeal in the Mountain states.

The Midwest and the Northeast will be competitive. There will be an anyone-but-Palin factor—but, in an open contest, this vote will split in any number of directions. Maybe that, plus the “It’s his turn” default thinking that seems to dominate Republican primaries, is enough to lift Romney in 2012.

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Top Democratic strategists are abandoning their party’s frontrunner in the Florida Senate race in favor of Independent Charlie Crist, who bolted the Republican party over the state party’s rightward lurch toward the Tea Party.

SKDKnickerbocker, a leading Democratic political strategy and communications firm, has agreed to work on Crist’s up-hill campaign as an independent for the U.S. Senate.

Ed Morrisey from HotAir explains why this analysis is exactly wrong:

First, the party didn’t “lurch to the right.” Crist lurched towards Barack Obama when the President was popular, backing Obama’s profligate spending agenda. Second, the party continued to back Crist, with the NRSC issuing its endorsement of Crist as soon as he entered the race and keeping their support in place until the moment Crist abandoned the GOP. Crist lost the voters, which is an entirely different thing than the party.

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Someone with the username IheartSarah on the Conservatives4Palin blog had the following reaction:

This is my feeling about the whole thing. The primary is a month away and Devore is only polling at 13%. If he were within striking distance to actually pull off the upset, then Sarah would have either stayed out of it or endorsed him. However, he is not within striking distance. But Carly is within striking distance of Campbell, who, from everything I am hearing and reading is a really poor choice. Sarah’s endorsement could put Carly over the top to beat Campbell and she would have a much better chance at beating Boxer, nobody can argue with that. If Sarah had stayed out of it, Campbell had a pretty good chance of winning and he is definitely not acceptable. So, I believe she had to get involved.

I also trust Sarah’s instincts. From what I have seen, she is carefully weighing each endorsement she is making and does not take the responsibility she has lightly. She may not endorse the person I would like for her to endorse, but that is okay. I know she knows what she is doing. She has my full support in 2012, no matter who she endorses in 2010. She has the bigger picture in mind, whereas I might be looking at the smaller picture. This is a fight for our country, but the same way that Progressives have taken almost 100 years to reach the point they are at now, we are not going to be able to win back the soul of our country in one or two elections, we have to be willing to be in this for the long haul. While I believe these next two election cycles are very important in putting a stop to Progressives, I do not believe they are enough to turn the country around, it will be a much longer battle because it is not only a battle for the heart of soul of America but for the minds of its citizens. We have just begun this fight and I believe Sarah is looking at the battles that are winnable for now and the future.

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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.
.

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.

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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:

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“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!

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When Carly Fiorina speaks on the campaign trail here in California, running to be the Republican nominee to unseat Barbara Boxer, she tries to prohibit recording of her speeches. However somebody snuck in an audio recorder to an event yesterday, and these clips seem to show why she would do that. The real, private Carly seems to be a bit different from the public, ‘conservative’ Carly.

Radical feminist and supporter of Jesse Jackson. That’s a two-fer of reasons to doubt her so-called conservative credentials and instead support Chuck DeVore for Senate.

The evidence for this alleged Jackson love and radical feminism however, is…rather lame.

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