Forget for the nonce how evil or idiotic they all are, and what the consequences might be if the winner of the GOP Presidential nomination were to win the 2008 election: this is strictly a horse-race thread, with a distinct subtext of the GOP nomination contest as prop-your-feet-up, pass-the-popcorn entertainment.
What’s gonna happen? Who’s still got a chance to win, and who’s fooling themselves? Can Fred Thompson wake up long enough to run a viable campaign? Can Rudy win despite the increasing visibility of the split between him and the fundie wing of the party? Does McCain have any chance, given that he’s polling no higher than third in any of the pre-Feb. 5 states? Will the fundies learn to love Mittster the Mormon, or will they decide to rally behind Huckabee? If so, can Huckabee run a viable campaign, despite an apparent lack of love from the big-money boys? (Is America ready for a President named Huckabee?) Could there be a brokered convention? (Can any of these clowns win the nomination? The rules say someone has to, but I’m starting to wonder.) If Rudy gets the nomination, will the fundies make good on their third-party threat, and who would be their candidate? (Wasn’t that the problem in the first place?)
I tell ya, it’s gonna be more fun than a barrel of elephants.
Now that I’ve gotten the OP out of the way, my initial contributions: McCain and Thompson are both dead candidates walking. McCain, for the reason I cited in the OP - despite the fact that he still polls decently at the national level, he doesn’t poll better than third in any of the pre-Feb. 5 states (including fifth in Iowa), and doesn’t have much money. So it’s hard to see just how and where he’s going to re-ignite his candidacy, before life gets expensive in the run-up to Feb. 5.
Thompson has proved to be such a singularly poor campaigner so far (you say this guy used to act professionally?? You’d think he could at least play the part of a Presidential candidate), and the time horizon to Iowa and New Hampshire is getting so tight, that it’s hard to see him shaking off the cobwebs in time to save himself.
That leaves Rudy, Mitt, and possibly Huckabee, in the real running.
The man who is best at distancing himself from Georgie W shall win the nomination.
Mc Cain is the joker in that deck, though. Slavishly loyal to W, he still has a strong insider advantage. But, if the Repubs go with him, they seal their fate. To admire Bush is to lose.
Thonpson hasn’t exactly been greeted with the glad cries and falling on shoulders that everyone expected, has he? I find that surprising. I guess at this late date, there were not enough uncommitted left to help him at all.
I think Giuliani will get the nod, and most of the religious right will hold their noses and get in line. McCain’s window of opportunity has passed, and Romney’s was never there.
Now that I got that out of the way, I think you hit the nail on the head when you wrote, “The rules say someone has to win, but …”
The problem is that when it boils down to two candidates who are the clear leaders, the candidate who is coming in second in all the polls is going to find it irresistible to drag shit out of the other’s closets … and they ALL have shit in their closets.
Romney is probably the least vulnerable in this regard, but I just don’t know if the fundie base will vote for a Mormon. Hell, they don’t like liberal Protestants.
I think the race will be won by the candidate that most social conservatives are most willing to hold their nose and vote for. I think that might be Thompson. But he’s suspect on the abortion plank.
Whoever does win will have to turn the race into an “Anyone but Hillary” campaign just as Kerry did in 2004. Not many people really liked Kerry, but they would vote for anyone but Bush.
I think the same thing happens for the Pubs in 2008.
I think the early dropouts will be Huckabee and Thompson, and maybe Glenn, but the others are going to fight tooth and nail. In a couple of months, I predict they are going to going to go all-out with the airing of each other’s dirty laundry, because I don’t see the Republican “loyalty to the Party” that used to exist. By the time the candidate is finally picked, that candidate might be damaged beyond repair.
Romney’s leading in the first three caucus/primary states - Iowa, NH, and Michigan. And trailing only slightly in SC and (to the best that anyone can tell) NV. He could easily run the table of those five, which would of course make him the frontrunner headed into FL and Feb. 5.
And barring a drastic change in the landscape, he’ll win at least two of them, which (along with piles of his own money) will make him look like a real candidate going into Feb. 5.
I see it as a two-man race - Rudy and Mitt - unless Huckabee can make it interesting.
Romney. Boring and reliable, but the same machine that can make a pampered yuppie scum into the guy you most want to have a beer with is at hand. Sure, the Mormon thing bothers some of them, but not as much as Hillary’s secular satanism. He is a man carved out of mayonaisse, and he’ll do.
The fact that Rudy has held on this long, gives me hope he can pull this off. His only serious challenger at this point is Romney.
For all the negatives about Rudy, Romney has as many. Last I checked Fundies dislike Mormons more than Roman Catholics. Romney’s record as Governor will not win over the religious right. Rudy’s biggest problem might be the NRA part of the party, but part of that wing is all about “Law and Order”* and no one has a better reputation than Rudy for Law and Order. He is credited[sup]2[/sup] with reigning in the criminal chaos that was NYC pre-Rudy.
I think Rudy can get the nomination and I doubt the Fundies will split off in the end, that will guarantee President Clinton. I am reasonably sure they would rather have Rudy then HRC.
If both win the nominations, I think Rudy will change his campaigning to appeal more towards the center where he really is and he will distance himself further from Bush/Cheney and make a good fight of it.
I also think that if those two win the nominations, it is not too bad, both are centrist and both are better candidates than Kerry or Bush.
Jim
I know ironic, Thompson is on a show by that name. I hope you know what I mean.
[sup]2[/sup] Whether you agree he deserves the credit or not, he gets it.
I know lots of Candidates lose their home state, and I’m no political theorician, but couldn’t a Rudy/Mitt (or vice versa) ticket be a strategy to try and win the otherwise heavily Demecratic New England states? Even if they only won their home states of NY & Mass. that’s still 43 electoral votes that the Republicans haven’t gotten since, what? 1984? That might be enough to cover the lose of swing states like Ohio and Florida.
I won’t vote for either of them in the primary or general election, but I think it’s going to boil down to them, probably Rudy over Mitt as the Presidential nominee.
Of course, I may not know what the hell I’m talking about, seeing I still think the Dems are going to reject Hillary AND Obama come primary election day(s).
Huckabee is going to catch fire soon. The question is how much fire. He is a perfect VP candidate for Rudy, in my opinion. However…if he catches too much fire, he may not want to take the job. He’ll be considered top tier along with Romney and Giuliani within a month or so, and he will be the beneficiary of the flameouts of Thompson and McCain.
Honestly, I wouldn’t bet a dollar on who’s going to be the Republican nominee at this point. Nobody seems to be in the lead. So the field’s wide open for any of the candidates to move into first place.
If you held a gun to my head and told me I had to pick a winner, I guess I’d go with Romney. In a mess like this, there’ll be pressure to go with a compromise candidate who offends the fewest people and I’d pick Romney as the second choice of the most people.
Something to remember, for both parties’ candidates and their supporters is that Howard Dean was the strong front-runner going into the Iowa caucuses in 2004, and came in 3rd. That, combined with the media tarting up “the scream” and playing it over and over again, sunk him completely. There is no possible way that there’s any such thing as inevitability on either side until the treads actually hit the tarmac.
