I agree that the Republicans simply MUST find better candidates - ones that are likeable across-the-board, with crossover appeal, if they truly want to win another presidential election. Focusing on the far-right is simply not going to work. The far-right voters are going to vote for anyone that has an R next to his name anyway - it’s the moderates that they need to try to appeal to.
Who are these candidates? I truly do not know. I think a lot of the aformentioned ones are very likely to try, but I don’t think any of them could possibly win.
Colin Powell/Condoleezza Rice? That would bring out some voters, maybe. (If nothing else, it would be a truly interesting campaign, LOL) .
George P. Bush might have a shot a few elections down the road, if he doesn’t foul things up around here in Texas. Not for 2016, though. He’s got a strong draw from Florida and Texas, he’s a Catholic and bilingual, to boot - and that could very well take him a long way, once the GWB scent has faded from the trail in about 10 years. The Bush name might very well be weighted more as name-recognition rather than the negative connotations that are so obvious right now.
I suppose we’ll have a better idea of him after he’s actually gotten himself elected to something. Which looks likely to happen sooner rather than later.
In another thread someone recently suggested Obama might nominate Powell for another term at the state department. I don’t understand why people are still hanging on to this positive image of Powell or see him as a candidate for president or a cabinet position, although I realize Obama used his endorsement in ads. Neither Powell nor Rice ever expressed any real interest in running for office, they’re both inextricably associated with the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq (to say nothing of September 11th), and if that were not enough, Powell will turn 79 in 2016. It makes sense to consider the possibility that the Republicans will put at least one person with a minority background on their ticket in 2016 - I heard someone speculate that their may never again be a major-party ticket made up of two white men - but it won’t be Powell and Rice.
It’s not just likability. Republicans have become so multiple-pledge ideological that they have a very hard time finding and nominating someone who’s actually competent and professional–to any office, not just Prez.
If you choose the man who ticks seven ideological boxes over one who has experience, expertise, and credibility, you have a harder time running on your candidate’s merits, and a harder time governing competently.
Actually, the biggest problem for the GOP is that this is not entirely true. “Moderate” republicans will not excite the far right enough for them to actually get out and vote. But, certainly, if you just appeal to the fringe, you’ll lose the independents that Romney did get.
Until there is some kind of compromise within the party, they will have a difficult time winning state-wide or nation-wide elctions.
Regarding picking up the senate: There are only 10 Democratic seats up for re-election as compared to 24 Republican seats. So unless there is a big political shift away from the Democrats its unlikely that the Republicans will pick up many seats.
Just to clarify, those figures are for 2016. In 2014, it’s expected to be 20 Democratic seats and 13 Republican seats. On its own that would suggest the Republicans should gain some seats, but of course that’s also what people expected in 2012.
I said it in the other thread, but I think Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan might “peak” at just the right time to be a credible presidential candidate. He’s done a good job of turning around Michigan’s economy, he’s been successful at pushing back against special interests, and he could swing a traditionally blue state for the Republicans in the election.
This Briton thinks that’s a fantastic idea. You guys can show the world how hard you fought to throw off the shackles of hereditary monarchy, with a list of recent presidents that goes George Bush I, someone else, George Bush II, someone else, George Bush III.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.