GOP and 2012

[schaabdl]

Financial Times weighs in - don't know if I agree with the headline because some have chosen not to participate doesn't make them "Top" tier candidates. You might note a name missing in the article (she's not there!). What I did find of interest came in two places:

Republican strategists and campaign experts say the remaining potential candidates, including Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels and Newt Gingrich, have learnt from mistakes made by those in the last presidential election, who jumped into the race too quickly, squandering campaign cash for little discernible advantage.

This is a "new" trend - front runners burn out; too much exposure (e.g. Palin) becomes a hindrance (might explain her really being in the background and yet tops Townhall straw poll last month).
Then toward the end:

Mr DuHaime said any candidate could emerge as a frontrunner if they could edge out others on two critical elements that were not at play in the 2008 election.

First, he said, the candidate with the most endorsements from Republican governors, the most influential politicians in individual states, would gain a distinct advantage.

Second, the candidate who can win the support of the network of financial donors that backed George W. Bush for president but never coalesced behind Mr McCain could also edge out the competition.

“It there was one person who could get one or both, that person will rise to the frontrunner status,” he said.

Governors and money - who can draw both - and this is the area that a dark horse may have issues. I think the tea party / conservative movement will say plenty which is why I don't think Romney has a prayer with them. Who can draw into these areas - neither Huckabee nor Palin wins the money from the "big donors" as they are entrenched old-style GOP but both can win governors. Where will the old-GOP money go - surely not to four more years of BHO and surely not on the sideline. The governors are seeing first hand what the people want (WI, OH, IN, TX - to name a few) - and they will follow a candidate that promises similar leadership in DC - smaller government, fiscal constraints, and willingness to tackle the issues now rather than kicking them down the road. Of the top three (each former governors) - who comes closer to the governors working today? The money - if a candidate emerges from the group (and I think dark horse is not happening at this time), I think the money will follow based on how well this leader does early in the process.

[schaabdl]

And it will be policies in 2012 that prevail - 2008 was the "rock star" and substance be damned - not the same election in 2012. This is key for any GOP hopeful. I also think it hurts Romney and anyone who pushes government policies as the solution (Huckabee and even Gingrich may be in that boat.) BTW, Quinnipiac is often left of center in its polling.
SOURCE

[David]

Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon - Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.

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[dcannady]

Originally Posted by David

Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon - Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.

SOURCE

George Will lives among the cannibals and does so with great caution. To be taken seriously as a pet "Conservative" on the network where he appears on Sunday, he must do a certain amount of fawning. Whether or not Obama's papers are in order remains to be seen. It may be like a Saddam Hussein maneuver where he is behaving suspiciously, but there's nothing there. The entire handling of the Obama birth certificate has been screwy. What American can't or won't just slap that birth certificate down on the table? The absence of it is beyond perplexing and the msm is waaaaay too anxious to get everyone to agree how silly it is to question Obama's birthplace. C'mon! This could've been dismissed in a matter of minutes simply by producing a commonplace document which every American must present at some point.

Have you ever seen George Will on Fox? He doesn't want to endanger his "insider" creds. He'll be alright, after the Democrats are soundly and roundly defeated.

[schaabdl]

Five names that would not have won in November - yes, I include Mr. Barbour although he may have survived. This tells me Mr. Will and many others still don't understand what happened In November - and we are seeing it today in the lack of announcements. None of these have announced either - to include the supposed "next choice" of Romney - the politics of the nomination changed and I believe that that these vaunted candidates are equally unsure of what step to take. Mr. Will is offering words that would work well, circa 2008 and earlier but the game is different now.

[David]

The Cook Report: It’s Nobody’s Turn
Richard A. Bloom



Who will be the Republican presidential nominee? Even political professionals don’t have a clue.

SOURCE

[schaabdl]

Cook is reporting what we should be seeing - the game is different. 2008 and 2010 changed the political spectrum. We may not see any formal announcements until late summer. This is not the past which is why I put little credence to the inside the beltway pundits (ahem, Will).

[David]

Republicans looking for the anti-Romney

SOURCE

[schaabdl]

The media is fluxomed and maybe so are many in this forum - the game is different - even the Iowa faith coalition drew a scant 5 "candidates" meaning no one is committing early. As stated elsewhere, the November election and the current state events are impacts that just don't fit the past models. I think I will also throw in the current budgetary climate within Congress. Come out too early with a stance that doesn't quite fit these new models and you will be on the trash heap of also rans. Romney continues to struggle with health care. Palin perception, from the left, has done some damage but has she kept sufficiently quiet and working in background enough to emerge say in the summer? Why else does she go to India and a business conference - this is not the action of a private individual who is not currently involved in a business venture (IMO). The GOP has a very good chance of doing well in 2012 and I think we are seeing a new caution - why give the DIMS and BHO early targets.
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[schaabdl]

This article is about what BHO needs but by extension means what the GOP needs to do - and Ohio is one of those states that McCain lost. November 2010 was good for the GOP and Kasich should be a good resource.
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[David]

Krauthammer agreed with Will. There are five potential GOP candidates.

Romney
Huntsman
Pawlenty
Barbour
Daniels

[schaabdl]

None of those five are what the conservatives want - even Barbour doesn't interest the conservatives. These five guarantee people will stay home - just what is it about them that will make people want to vote for them. I don't think Will and Krauthammer are viewing the mood correctly and using old models. They are still looking at the old GOP acceptable.
***
Amateur analysis follows:
The top three remain roughly even at 20% each (Romney, Palin, Huckabee). Gingrich gets 12% and the rest of the field gets 28%. The top three remain the key and things change with announcements.
a) Romney IN announcement - won't be earth shattering and doesn't change the top three. He probably can announce at anytime but probably best before Palin / Huckabee.
b) Newt IN announcement - alone does nothing, maybe a small bump but he is stuck at 10-12.
c) Huckabee IN annoucement - probably a small bump but doesn't change the top three by much. Probably moves ahead of Romney however. Huckabee OUT announcement - a shift to Palin as the obvious choice for the tea party but not enough to label her the front runner. I think his OUT announcement may be more powerful than being IN.
e) Palin announcement - the more I look at the game, her announcement in either direction will paint the the field. She can probably wait longer than anyone as well. If she's OUT, then she goes away (does she even keep a Fox gig?) and opens up the conservative field. If she's IN - the lower tier candidates don't have the time and resources to gain what she already has. I think she is the reason you have heard no announcements - she has that much influence.
***
I am also beginning to change back to her entering with recent statements the past couple of days. She attacked BHO on oil/energy - no one better than her on that topic. She is attacking the DIMS in the Senate that offered up a measley $4.5B in cuts from a $1.4T deficit. She is becoming vocal again and spot on. She is the lynchpin in the GOP direction at this time.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by schaabdl

c) Huckabee IN annoucement - probably a small bump but doesn't change the top three by much. Probably moves ahead of Romney however. Huckabee OUT announcement - a shift to Palin as the obvious choice for the tea party but not enough to label her the front runner. I think his OUT announcement may be more powerful than being IN.
e) Palin announcement - the more I look at the game, her announcement in either direction will paint the the field. She can probably wait longer than anyone as well. If she's OUT, then she goes away (does she even keep a Fox gig?) and opens up the conservative field.

Huckabee would also lose his FOX gig if he in IN. With Sarah, in your scenario she will lose he FOX gig either way.

[schaabdl]

She loses if she announces IN, that's a given. I think she loses if she announces OUT as well - her contribution worth would plummet is what I was saying in a very poor fashion.

[schaabdl]

A little history concerning Will and Krauthammer - 1980
Will supported Baker and GHW Bush ahead of Reagan and Krauthammer worked for Mondale. Not a very good track record when it comes to conservative candidates.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by schaabdl

She loses if she announces IN, that's a given. I think she loses if she announces OUT as well - her contribution worth would plummet is what I was saying in a very poor fashion.

Maybe. But then there is always 2016. Some here have set that as a more likely contest. However, since Obama's approval seems to still be plummeting, he may be such damaged goods by 2012 that then will be the contest. So maybe you inadvertently were right.

[David]

Call it the "Yes...but" field. There are good things to say about each of them, followed by a pretty substantial caveat. Is this historically unusual?

SOURCE

[Rafael]

Carter Country

By Alan W. Dowd On March 4, 2011 @ 12:35 am

“Sen. Obama says that I’m running for Bush’s third term,” John McCain quipped in June 2008. “It seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.” Less than three years later, Sen. McCain’s bleak forecast is coming true.

Let’s start with how Americans felt about America under President Carter and how they feel about America under President Obama.

Today, as in the late 1970s, there is a pervasive sense of decline. Obama has even mentioned it in a State of the Union and in his inaugural address.

This sense of decline is a function of many factors: China’s rapid rise, Washington’s self-imposed constraint overseas but especially America’s faltering economy.

Unemployment has remained stubbornly above 9 percent throughout the Obama presidency. Some 15 percent of homeowners are either facing foreclosure or at least a month behind on their mortgage. Inflation is creeping up. And the Misery Index is back.

It was invented during the Carter administration as a way to gauge how bad things are for the American people. In simplest terms, it’s the unemployment rate plus the inflation rate. The Misery Index was 19.72 at the end of Carter’s term, up seven points from four years earlier. Under Obama, it’s 10.63, up three points from when he entered office. (By the way, the Misery Index went down under George W. Bush.)

The bad news for American consumers—and for Obama’s 2012 prospects—is that if energy prices continue to rise, the economy will not be able to create new jobs, which means the Misery Index will live up to its name.

Today, as in the 1970s, gas prices are exploding, spurred by rising demand in developing economies and volatile supply lines in the Middle East. Oil has rocketed past $100 per barrel, translating into $3.36-per-gallon gas, up from $2.70 per gallon this time last year (national averages). That’s a 25-percent rise.

Inflationdata.com points out that between 1976 and 1980 gas prices increased by about 65 percent. According to one energy expert, “It would not be inconceivable to see $150- or $200-barrel oil this year.” In other words, it seems gas prices are headed in the same direction as in the late 1970s.

Obama’s solution is restraint and constraint. “We can’t drive our SUVs and…keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times,” he lectured us in 2008, before pushing a cap-and-trade scheme to tax and thus ration energy.

That’s straight out of Carter’s playbook: turn down the thermostat, wear sweaters, install solar panels, etc.

Even when Obama tried to go against his own tendencies and promote a modest opening of “new offshore areas for oil and gas,” events in the Gulf of Mexico intervened to stymie him. It was almost as if the ghost of Carter was haunting him. Recall that Carter promoted nuclear energy, describing the benefits of nuclear power as “very real and practical,” until Three Mile Island intervened.

Finally, we come to foreign policy. To be sure, there are subtle differences between Carter and Obama: Carter championed human rights, while Obama, from Iran and China in 2009 to Egypt and Libya in 2011, has embraced a kind of agnosticism on human rights and democracy. But both men seem to view the world through the prism of moral relativism. For Carter, that meant explaining away the behavior of America’s enemies and condemning the behavior of America’s allies; for Obama, it means lacing his speeches with qualifiers about America’s problems and flaws, while refusing to use the bully pulpit to promote freedom.

Today, as in 1979, the Middle East is in turmoil. Carter was not to blame for the Iranian mob’s assault on the U.S. embassy, and Obama is not to blame for the cascading chaos across the northern tier of Africa. But they are to blame for how their administrations reacted to these events.

For months, Carter did nothing of substance in response to the embassy takeover, and when he tried to do something it proved worse than nothing.

Similarly, in response to Iran’s failed Twitter Revolution of 2009, Obama sat silent. No one was calling on him to send in the 82nd Airborne to support the Iranian protestors. But freedom-loving people—and their enemies—look to America for signals. And Obama’s signals were loud and clear in the summer of 2009.

His administration made the same mistake but in a different way in Egypt, as his secretary of state and vice president initially mouthed support for Egypt’s autocrat. In Libya, the administration has regressed, failing in the first two weeks of Libya’s revolution to do or say anything of substance in response to Khadafy’s brutality. As Elliot Abrams observes, “When…the Arab League is ahead of you in denouncing human rights violations, you are reacting a bit slowly.”

But the Arab League, the EU and the UN secretary general are going to be ahead of Obama because he is more interested in the international community “speaking with one voice” and “bearing witness” than in America leading. In this regard, it pays to recall what historian William Pfaff observed in The Wrath of Nations: When nations don’t want to act, let alone lead, international organizations actually become “an obstacle to action, by inhibiting individual national action and rationalizing the refusal to act nationally.”

Blessedly, there has been no Desert One debacle under Obama, though one gets the sense that something like that is looming, perhaps in Libya or Yemen, perhaps in Saudi Arabia or Oman.

What we do know is that there already have been diplomatic debacles: Obama has “reset,” apologized, and gripped and grinned to accommodate America’s foes, averting his gaze from government thuggery in Russia in order to get an arms control treaty of questionable merit, ditching the Dalai Lama in order to save a photo-op summit in Beijing, literally bowing to the emperor of Japan, monarch of Saudi Arabia and dictator of China.

Similar things happened under Carter. A 1979 Washington Post article captures the strange and sad symbolism of Washington’s interactions with Moscow in those gray days of self-doubt and malaise. “Carter,” the Post reported, “seems to have developed a protectiveness, almost a fondness, for the older man, especially after he saved Brezhnev from falling on Sunday morning…Brezhnev seemed to welcome Carter’s assistance, as though he had come to depend on it.”

That was a bruising visual metaphor for Carter, and there are traces of this in Obama’s interactions with the world. Just consider how the Russias, Chinas, Irans and Venezuelas view the United States today.

[David]

Who chooses the GOP Presidential nominee? Obviously, not one person, one group or one State. But, this man in Iowa is the closest thing we have to a king maker.

SOURCE

[schaabdl]

Presidential Elections - ideas vs. emotions (personal studies - IMO - or whatever you want to call it - my notes since I was 8 - yeah, I was polical nerd then!)
1960 - two candidates, nearly equal on issues(!) - emotions of TV exposure (looks)
1964 - two competing camps - domestic vs foreign policy - emotions win, LBJ replaced the slain JFK
1968 - negative emotions prevailed against the left, issues predominate on the right - Nixon easily
1972 - emotions of anti-war couldn't win over the more or less steady handling of WH (ideas)
1976 - Ford by far the experienced candidate (ideas) but emotions (he won't lie to us) wins for Carter
1980 - easily the ideas defeated the candidate found wanting
1984 - cakewalk - the ideas still prevailed
1988 - continuing the ideas of the past 8 years
1992 - emotions - man from "Hope" (if ideas was the predominate we would be talking about a President Perot!)
1996 - negative emotions toward GOP (picking on the president) and no real issues for ideas to come forth
2000 - ideas again come forth but not in real strength, negative emotions (Gore was not really likeable but still won popular vote)
2004 - ideas (war time president) PLUS emotions (9/11) - a rarity to find both on the winning side (1960 maybe)
2008 - pure emotional win - "hope and change" are not ideas
2012? - 1976 redux maybe - the electorate is not supporting the president and "hope and change" just won't cut it.
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Pattern:
Ideas - GOP wins
Emotions - DIMS wins
Simplistic analysis but works well. If 2012 is an idea election as I suspect, then ignore F/UF polling. It will be the message.