Huckabee would be a regional and ideological counterweight to Rudy. Being the VP candidate could bring more people into the fold for Guiliani.
However…I think that most people have already chosen sides. The difference Huckabee would make as the GOP VP nominee would be small. I think most people…including the vast majority of people reading this post…already know which party they will vote for 13 months from now.
Well, yes, barring some improbability like the entire Republican party finding a conscience and actually starting to listen to it in the next 13 months…
To me, the main question is whether Rudy Giuliani will self-destruct before or after he becomes the GOP nominee.
One of Giuliani’s strong character traits, painfully apparent in his second term as Mayor, is that he is extremely thin-skinned. When attacked, he would lash out bitterly at whoever was attacking. More disturbingly, he would try to settle scores through government policy.
Right now, in both primaries the candidates have pretty much refrained from attacking each other, particularly avoiding personal attacks. When the inevitable attacks happen, particularly the below the belt ones, I have no doubt that Giuliani will react particularly badly.
Whatever you can say about it, the “Swiftboat Veterans for the Truth” campaign was effective at neutralizing John Kerry’s status as decorated veteran as an element of the 2004 campaign. Giuliani is basing a significant portion of his campaign on his response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and he has already been the subject of a negative advertisement from some New York firefighters, a great many of whom have strong objections to his actions then.
Most New Yorkers see him as an ambiguous Mayor, triumphant in some areas, dreadful in others. As the campaign goes on, he will start being attacked for some of the things he did, both pre- and post-9/11. Although he will try to dismiss much of it as “swiftboating”, there is enough there that some of the criticism will stick. When he reacts to his attackers in a whiny and petulant manner, he will both lose support and draw further attack, leading to a spiraling decline.
If this happens early, hello Mitt Romney. If it happens late, he’s the Republican Michael Dukakis.
McCain did have long-term success out of NH; he just didn’t win. But if he had lost NH, would his 2000 campaign have been more than a footnote? I doubt it.
For the past 40 years, the GOP has had a curious dynamic: there’s always been a candidate who’s had the backing of the party power brokers, and any opposing candidacy has always been a bit like swimming uphill. This time, I don’t see the GOP power structure united behind anyone the way they were behind Bush in 2000, or behind his father in 1988. If Romney wins a few early primaries, there’s probably not going to be an ‘Empire Strikes Back’ primary this time, a la SC in 2000.
So it’s likely to look more like the Democratic primary season has historically looked like, where winning early primaries boosts your visibility and, along with it, your standing in the national polls. Meanwhile, the candidates losing the early primaries lose some of their support, and of course start hurting for money, which you need for visibility and credibility in later primary states: if you aren’t running ads, people aren’t sure if you’re still in the game.
I wish to express scepticism that Giuliani will use the term “swiftboating”.
I’m not so sure. Admittedly I’m on the other side of the world and so am not really in touch with the mindset of today’s American voter, but last election I thought that to be Bush was to lose. Not so.
I smell a Lincoln-Kennedy-style glurge coming on.
I’m not so sure about that about that.
I don’t recall any successful ticket where the two candidates had such differing philosophies of keys issues. How would the “counterweight” thing work out if there were a tied Senate and the VP/President differed on the issue?
I think that is true in every election. It is the voters in the middle, that swing most elections.
If Mitt or Huckabee gets the nom, I am voting Dem. If Rudy gets it, I will probably vote for Rudy, though Rudy vs. Clinton will make me indesive longer than usual.
If Rudy vs Obama, I am still leaning to Rudy.
Then Huckabee as VP would have to decide between personal conviction and loyalty to the boss.
The VP selection has been a basic piece of political chess for decades. It’s not as important now as it was one hundred or even fifty years ago, but the basic ideas are still there.
I think the religious right will give their collective nod to Romney despite his Mormonism. Rudy’s relatively liberal stance re: abortion and gay rights will make him anathema to the fire-breathers, and while he may be a Mormon, the LDS Church and its members are a very conservative bunch and they’ll see a kindred spirit in Romney. They’ll just have to collectively pray a little harder for his soul.
RTE Firefly did a good job and I agree. I would add that if Rudy hasn’t won anywhere but Florida and possibly Nevada come Super Tuesday he is in some amount of trouble – it will be a two man race - largely dependent on Southern Evangelicals. After Super Tuesday the race will be virtually over except for [likely] 2 or [maybe possibly] 3 candidates even though a bit less than 50% of the delegates will have been selected. The polls today indicate that Guiliani will be by himself, with plenty of money, trying to take out front runner Romney, with the Religious Right against him. Its not that he can’t, just that looking at him sitting at 22% in a National Gallup Poll of “Republicans” against a field of 8 doesn’t reflect his real situation
Yeah but …. Rudy is higher among all voters (where he is sometimes 3X as popular as Romney more like your Gallup poll) or “likely Republican voters” (where he leads almost everywhere) than he is among “likely Republican Primary voters” – especially in these first states where Romney has been organized since early summer (where Rudy is currently almost universally behind). I am not dissing Rudy -I just think the Media has kind of made him the republican front/runner man-to-beat & money wise/national prominence-wise maybe he is, but I don’t think the polls or likely positioning TODAY actually bears out Rudy as Republican leader to the extent that MSNBC/Fox/the Sunday talking heads would have us believe or that a national popularity poll leads one to believe
The GOP System is really complex and much more complicated than straight Proportional vs. Winner-take all
But to answer your question here is how the pre-Super Tuesday ones look (the clearest one page explanation was from 2004 so 1-2 might have changed)
Basically Proportional
New Hampshire slight Romney lead
Iowa (Mit leads a close one )
Wyoming (split - 12 of 28 delegates) (not a true Primary but Mitt leads)
Michigan Mitt leads
NV a toss-up Guiliani leads w/i margin of error
Basically Winner-Take-All
South Carolina Mitt Leads
Florida Rudy Cruisin’
Maine - Mit leads Rudy in fundraising (the only state this is so)
**RTEFIrefly **I take your point on polls and agree
Here’s the way I see the religious right voter thinking if Romney gets the nod:
“Hey, I thought the Republican Party was OUR party? So how is it we are being represented by this godforsaken Mormon with their multiparty marriages and their tablets and their latter day saints? THAT’S our candidate? That or HILLARY (or whoever the Dem candidate is). That’s no kind of choice for me. I’m sittin’ this one out.”
I think it’s Giuliani’s to lose. As long as he continually squawks “9/11, 9/11, 9/11” he’s playing to his strength which is the perceived toughness against terrorists. Should a terror attack occur in the next few months he can start writing his acceptance speech. The facts that he was married three times and knows his own bra size aren’t going to matter.
Romney is running a good campaign but I’m afraid many fundamentalists voters won’t be able to bring themselves to someone they consider to be a cult member. They won’t tell the pollsters that, but Mormonism is his achilles heel.
Thompson’s star is fading fast and I don’t see him lasting past Iowa.
McCain may be the most reliable conservative out there, but for some reason the right wing despises him and his war chest isn’t anywhere near adequate.
I give it Giuliani 80%, Romney 15%, McCain 4%, Thompson 1%.
GOP candidates just spent the weekend in Florida, each trying to prove that HE is the real conservative.
“We’re not going to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House by acting like Hillary Clinton” said Mitt Romney.
No, and you’re not going to keep her from winning by acting like Pat Robertson, either.
What a crew of dolts. You can’t handicap this race when they’re all handicapped.
I think the religious right will crawl over broken glass en masse to vote against Hillary Clinton. If the choice is between Romney and Hillary, they will overlook Romney’s religion.
To pursue this productive line of reasoning further, since by Feb. 6 (or possibly even earlier) much of the field will have been eliminated, the question becomes, where do the supporters of the dropouts go? McCain will almost surely be out by that point, and I expect the same will be true of Fred. My WAG is that McCain’s supporters will lean more towards Rudy than Mitt, and vice versa for Fred’s supporters. Or Fred’s people might go for Huckabee if he’s still viable.
That link is a bit out of date (its primary dates are clearly from another cycle, and its ‘modified’ date is Feb. 3, 2004), so specific bits of info there may not be current. But the general idea it conveys is still true, to the best of my understanding - thanks for finding this and bringing it into the discussion.
One other thing that’s worth mentioning is that the GOP allocates its delegates among the states, not in proportion to the states’ population, but roughly proportional to the number of Republican voters in each state, IIRC. Which is why, in the linked chart, New York has about as many delegates as Alabama and Indiana combined, despite having nearly twice the population of those two states combined.
There’s nothing wrong with that - the idea, AFAICT, is that the Republican primary system is supposed to represent Republicans, which makes complete sense to me - but it will tend to hinder Rudy, who figures to do best (during the primary season) in states such as NY and CA which are Democratic strongholds in the general election.
The Religious right will vote for the Republican candidate over the Democratic one.
However, they won’t have the same “God tells me to vote for Bush” type devotion that they had, especially in 2004. They won’t be willing to stand in the cold Ohio rain for 2 hours to vote. They won’t give the money or the volunteer hours they gave in 2004.
I agree. If I am Rudy I would peel off money to keep Huckabee in the race. In fact, I would see that scenerio as realistic one that could put Rudy’s en route to the WH … Super Tuesday makes Huckabee an almost contender with Romney, and in a 3-way race with two hard conservatives to split value voters, Rudy becomes inevitable.
Good point about the Republican proportional system. North Carolina with 62 delegates is “bigger” than Jersey’s 54.
And the Greens would rather have had Kerry than Bush in 2000 but they went ahead and put Bush in office anyway.
Actually that was Gore and as one of those Greens, we all lived to regret it. Regret it very much. My only defense is Gore won NJ with ease, so my voting for Nader did not actually hurt.
I think the fundies might have learned from our mistake. We’ll see if Rudy somehow wins the nomination.
Jim