GOP Nominee in 2016

[Skammer]

Santorum will not have the religious right sewn up if Huckabee decides to run. Huck is the more reasonable and likeable of the two, which could go a long way. I think he would have done very well in the primaries this year if he had decided to run.

On the other hand, I saw Huckabee on Jon Stewart the other night and holy cow, is his weight ballooning up again. Either he's decided he's never running for public office again or he figures that if it hasn't hurt Chris Christie, there's no reason to pass on that second donut.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Skammer

Santorum will not have the religious right sewn up if Huckabee decides to run. Huck is the more reasonable and likeable of the two, which could go a long way. I think he would have done very well in the primaries this year if he had decided to run.

He's deeply religious but he's not an anti-big-government conservative. He's a Bush-style compassionate conservative who talks about issues like poverty and green energy, and I don't think the Republican Party is going to go in that direction any time soon. Huckabee is never going to be embraced by the fiscal conservative crowd at all. Even if Republicans do decide they need a new direction, I don't think it'll be that one: it keeps the social issues alive and abandons a lot of the fiscal ones. I can't see them going that way in 2016 (and he was right to conclude they were not going that way at all in 2012). I also think there's no way he'd survive attacks from other Republicans over his pardon of Maurice Clemmons. The pardon wasn't entirely indefensible and Huckabee isn't solely responsible for what happened later, but still, he allowed for the release of a criminal who went on to murder four cops. He was kind of pardon-happy in general - his pardon of Wayne DuMond got some attention during the '08 primaries. I think he's just so strongly predisposed to believe in redemption stories (particularly religious ones) that it just got the better of his judgment at times. Republicans would be absolutely brutal in using the Clemmons commutation against him in a primary.

Either he's decided he's never running for public office again or he figures that if it hasn't hurt Chris Christie, there's no reason to pass on that second donut.

Or like most people with serious weight problems, he just can't keep it under control over the long term. His weight loss was a big part of his campaign in 2008, but he hasn't been able to sustain that.

[gamerunknown]

Originally Posted by BobLibDem

I'm having trouble digesting that phrase. "conservative intellectual"? You mean there are some?

Sure. Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas Sowell, Geoffrey Sampson, Charles Murray, Dinesh D'Souza, Ronald L. Conte Jr.

Edit: It's the left that is anti-intellectual.

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See sig.

[BobLibDem]

Originally Posted by gamerunknown

Sure. Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas Sowell, Geoffrey Sampson, Charles Murray, Dinesh D'Souza, Ronald L. Conte Jr.

Edit: It's the left that is anti-intellectual.

Dinesh D'Souza, writer of that schlockumentary film about Obama, they guy who blamed American liberals for 9/11, the guy who said that conditions in Abu Gharib are "comparable to the accommodations in midlevel Middle Eastern hotels". Tower of intellectualism, that one.

Ronald Conte Jr, the self-proclaimed prophet and theologian? Not sure what is intellectual about him.

Thomas Sowell, who compared Obama to Hitler for taking money from BP to give to victims of the oil spill? What an intellectual giant.

Thomas DiLorenzo, the secessionist anti-Lincoln zealot?

Geoffrey Sampson, author of There's Nothing Wrong With Racism (Except the Name), causing him to resign from the Conservative Party.

Charles Murray of The Bell Curve fame? Puh-leeze.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by gamerunknown

Sure. Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas Sowell, Geoffrey Sampson, Charles Murray, Dinesh D'Souza, Ronald L. Conte Jr.

Edit: It's the left that is anti-intellectual.

-

See sig.

gamerunknown, I am starting to think you need to find an alternative way to resolve your wager. I know you added this reference to your sig, but this is confusing too many posters and becoming a distraction. Maybe you can start a thread and do all of your wager-related posting there. I don't remember if anyone else agreed to do the kind of posting you are doing, but they could join you.

[WillFarnaby]

Originally Posted by BobLibDem

Thomas DiLorenzo, the secessionist anti-Lincoln zealot?

So you find the imperialist pro-Lincoln line to be "intellectual". Which church do you attend Leftist or Neoconservative?

[Larry Borgia]

n/m, missed Marley modding above.

[BigAppleBucky]

Originally Posted by Fear Itself

Rick Santorum. It's his turn.

pleasepleaseplease

"Seniority" seems to be the Republican way. McCain lost to Dubya in '00 so he got it in '08. Romney lost to McCain in '08 and won in '12, edging out Santorum.

We can hope that over the next two or three years someone more reasonable emerges than Ricky Nutcase, but I'm not sanguine.

[The Second Stone]

Mitt won't quit. Romney is going to throw his turd in the punchbowl again.

Rubio or Haley or Jindal would be the smart picks. But they won't win the primaries. We are going to see the same crowd in the primaries in 2016 we saw this year and the same but narrower electorate.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

Mitt won't quit. Romney is going to throw his turd in the punchbowl again.

He's not running again. He's said so himself, not that you'll take his word for it, and the idea that he'd do it a third time is kind of ridiculous. This year he won as the electable candidate and then he lost the general election, which kind of kills that theory.

[Chronos]

Even if Romney is egotistical enough to try again, there's no way the party would stand for it. He's been weighed in the balance and found wanting: His main virtue in the primaries this cycle was that he was the most electable, and then he went and got himself not elected. That leaves him with nothing at all to recommend him.