As mentioned it applies to McCain in 2008, Dole in 1996, HW Bush in 1988 and Reagan in 1980. Clearly Republicans like to nominate candiates who lost the nomination earlier and that would make Romney a logical choice. I think the field is fairly open but Romney definitely has the advantage. I guess the issue is whether he can make himself acceptable to the Tea Party. My sense is the Tea Party doesn't have enough clout to get their first choice but will be able to veto someone they consider unacceptable. Does Romney fall in that category? Perhaps he is on the borderline and his biggest challenge will be to cosy up to the Tea Party over the next year without alienating too many of the moderates he will need in the general election. If it isn't Romney my guess is it will be someone relatively unknown like Pawlenty. Palin is a very long shot IMO and while Huckabee has an appealing campaign persona I somehow don't see him as a Presidential nominee.
In the general, if the economy is bad and Obama is beatable, Romney has the best chance of doing it. If, as I expect, the economy is OK I think Obama will win quite easily against anyone.
Romney’s core problem (in primaries) is that he is perceived as being a phony masquerading as a conservative.
At this particular juncture he’s also saddled with having passed a HCR bill in MA that resembles the national one, and as long as HCR continues to be a hot button issue he’ll have that issue over his head. What’s worse is that this ties in to the phony issue above.
It was a major mistake but it was not made by Chris Christie personally. Someone who prepared a thousand page application had one page wrong. Not something the governor would be personally checking.
You need to fall back on the “he appointed (the people who appointed) these incompetant people” argument, but I think you might need more than one mistake before that gets traction.
Raising truckloads of money, and trying to lock up the New Hampshire primary way in advance.
I’m not enthusiastic about Romney- no conservative is. But I think he’ll have the nomination sewn up well before the Southern states become a factor.
As for George W. Bush in 2000, it’s true that he met neither of my criteria. It wasn’t “his turn,” nor was he a veteran politician. He got the nomination because 2000 was a VERY weak year for the GOP, and there just wasn’t anybody who looked a whole lot better.
John McCain MIGHT well have been the guy had he spent as much time appealing to the conservatives who DO vote in Republican primaries as he did pandering to liberal journalists who DON’T.
Wrote a book, went on a book tour, raised money for the GOP and repeated over and over again to anyone that will listen that Romenycare is totally, absolutely in no way remotely similar to Obamacare. More or less prep for the 2012 election, as you say.
I think Regan did more or less the same sorta thing '76-'80, so apparently spending a couple years hanging out in the wings isn’t a deal breaker as far as winning GOP Presidential contests (though I can’t really think of any Democratic nominees who did this, they’re almost always current or very recent office holders).
But yeah, that’s exactly my point. Romney still wants to wage a twenteith century campaign. It simply won’t work. People’s minds are adapting. They expect all news and opinion to come in short bursts. Few people will bother reading a book to see what Romeny thinks. They will bother watching a YouTube video to see what Christie thinks.
The point of this thread is that the entire political process has changed. Results from the 80’s and 90’s and even the previous decade don’t tell us much. Instead look at the 2010 cycle and the Republican primaries that took place. The right wingers managed to knock an impressively huge number of Republican incumbents and mainstream candidates out of office. They did so by using the internet. They did online fundraising, online advertising, online organization and online media, much as the left has already been doing for several cycles. The old conservative organizations that got the nomination for various Bushes and Doles simply isn’t running the show anymore.
Wasn’t a good grasp of technology supposed to help put Howard Dean in the Whitehouse? And I think the Deaniacs had a better argument that online community building and fundraising was useful to a Presidential Campaign then Palins and Christies dicking around with Twitter and Youtube.
But the thing with IT is that the barriers to entry are really low. If some innovation is giving a candidate an advantage, its going to be adopted pretty quickly by other politicians, and the net advantage will be swallowed pretty quickly. Romney already has a twitter feed, facebook page, myspace page and of course, his own bullshit grassroots online community, “Planet Romney”.
And as I mentioned, the theory is nonsense. Reagan ran an excellent campaign in 1980, making his opponents look like chumps with his “I paid for this microphone!” comment in a debate. HW Bush won because he had the great advantage of being still popular Reagan’s incumbent VP and cloaking himself as Reagan’s heir. Dole won in 1996 because the R’s threw in the towel against Clinton after he’d faced down the Republican congress over the government shutdown. BushII won because he’d done the spadework necessary to raise huge amounts of money and get the support of Republican governors. McCain won because he was the last man standing as the R’s folded up after the failures of BushII.
I live here and I agree. My goddamned property taxes went up $800 a year while he waged war on the teachers. We have an 82% high school graduation rate and he’s berating the people responsible for it.
As a New Yorker, all I’m hearing is that he’s a classic bullying asshole, he berates people, he’s on a war against any and all unions, and he’s costing New Jersey hundreds of millions of dollars by effing up the tunnel that they actually need. Looks like the Feds are going to let them have half of it back, but they still have to pay 200+ mill back, and the 100 mill they get back is going to be in a very specific ‘congestion’ fund.
Oh, and property taxes in Jersey are going to probably go up again next year.
I’m not seeing him as a huge success. Just someone who can’t handle treating people as equals.
If you can stand sitting through a completely biased FOX News interview here is Chris Christie saying he will not run for president.
Of course he could change his mind and it wouldn’t even be held against him by his supporters. On the other hand, he does have a camera crew following him to promote national coverage which is kinda odd for someone not interested, maybe he’s just looking to cash in by securing a spot on FOX News.
In other words… the Far Right TOTALLY controls the GOP, but there’s ALWAYS some lame reason that they aren’t able to nominate anyone they actually like.
I stand with the far right more often than not, and I’d LOVE to believe my side is in the driver’s seat. It isn’t. The nominee is almost always an Establishment Republican, a country clubber and not a 700 Clubber.
I see no reason to expect anything different. Mitt Romney is the likeliest nominee. And to the extent that the Internet and new media change things, the beneficiary will be libertarian Gary Johnson, NOT Sarah Palin or anyone else beloved by the Right.
Eventually America will have to elect a president who will put up taxes and cut spending. When you need him, Christie will be ready, with the experience you need.
Yes, that is the logical consequence of a $10 billion deficit. Revenue (taxes) must be increased and expenses (services) need to be decreased.
You mean a tunnel that was going to cost BILLIONS of dollars and most likely be New Jersey’s answer to Boston’s Big Dig fiasco? The project is needed, but
we can’t afford it. If it’s so important, let New York and the Federal Government chip in.
