I wonder how that will pan out in the primaries. IIRC, Bush cultivated a very different demeanor than the Hollywood presidential archetype. Not wholly divergent, but there are videos comparing his speaking style in Texas and on the national campaign trail/presidency. Much more folksy, much more comrade-like (I don’t mean that in the Soviet sense), much more accessible. It’s a style that seems to come naturally to Palin and Bachmann.
I guess he doesn’t really care how much attention the announcement gets, since he’s not running. But still, 1:30am on a Sunday? Thats usually when you announce your Chief of Staff was caught running a cock-fighting ring or something.
Has Romney even announced yet? If so, I must have missed it. If not, what happens if he doesn’t?
If I were Romney, I’d consider waiting until 2016 when, perhaps, the Tea Party’s power has waned. Let one of the loonies go against Obama now and lose. The party will be more amenable to voting for a moderate by next election.
Please give instances where it has. Other than Ross Perot, I’m drawing a blank.
Well what I was talking about was your claim that “Romney…has more experience and gravitas and is therefore more electable.” (Actually, I was originally pointing out that Pawlenty has a lot more experience than Romney.) That requires votes.
Now this is just crazy talk. The money wing of the party has already taken this into account, and is still on the fence. (Remember at this point in 1999, they were all-in with George W. Bush.) They’re looking for something else - a combination of nominatability (if that’s a word, or even if it isn’t), electability and fealty, I expect.
Note that the money wing of the GOP was firmly behind business failure and general dim bulb GWB coming out the gate in 1999, and was gettinig behind the truly dumb-as-a-post George Allen for President in 2008 until he committed macacacide in the fall of 2006.
Daniels getting out is a big boost to Pawlenty. Daniels is a former governor of a medium sized, midwestern state who has positioned himself as a fiscal conservative. He would have been fighting with Pawlenty over many of the same voters.
Now we will wait to see what Rick Perry does as he seems to be the last wild card left in the deck. If he fails to jump in we have Bachmann, T-Paw and Romney as the big 3 candidates. And Bachmann would really have no chance of winning the nomination although she could make some waves in Iowa.
Weird thing about Bachmann is her official website mentions nothing about her law degrees. I guess being a lawyer does not play well with her fans.
She was an IRS lawyer!
What if they had a primary and nobody came?
The legitimacy of her law degrees is also somewhat murky. From page 6 of this thread:
Interesting take from the new Pew Political Typology (Thread here):
Indeed, and Obama’s election. I give Romney very little chance to beat Obama; Daniels would have had an excellent shot.
Look for a lot of pressure on Paul Ryan to get into it.
Paul Ryan already passed up on the Senate seat opened up by Kohl’s retirement. If he’s not ready to run for Senate, what makes you think he’s ready to run for President? I think lots of people underestimate the level of planning and groundwork required for a full-scale presidential run - look at Fred Thompson’s campaign to see what a “drafted” candidate looks like.
Of the undeclared candidates only Romney (if you consider him undeclared) and Palin have any legitimate shot of winning, IMO. Maybe Perry, but I’m not sure he gets any play in IA or NH, and he doesn’t seem to have any sort of national team in place (see the “drafted” comment above).
The last couple of weeks couldn’t have been any better for Tim Pawlenty, as far as I can tell. I might go so far as to declare him the favorite, or perhaps co-favorite with Romney.
Well, it’s a big opportunity for Pawlenty. He’s still got to convince people to actually, you know, vote for him, or even say in polls that they prefer him to the other candidates.
But yeah, the door’s wide open for Pawlenty; all he’s got to do is show he can walk through it.
Speaking of guys with a wide-open door in front of them: if he has any aspiration to be President, he’ll never have a better opportunity. I agree with Nate Silver that he could pretty much sweep to the nomination, given the quality of the field. And as long as the battle for the nomination didn’t reveal serious concerns about him, he’d probably be a stronger opponent to Obama in 2012 than anyone currently in the game. And if the job situation hasn’t improved much by 2012, the GOP nominee will have a tailwind.
I’m thinking that the best analogy to Bachmann’s potential role in this primary season is Gene McCarthy in 1968. Too far left to win the nomination, but still won a bunch of primaries.
Bachmann could do that from the right side. And in the process, she could KO Pawlenty, who needs Iowa or South Carolina, both of which Bachmann should run well in.
Daniels’ decision not to run creates another problem for Romney: now that the field has shrunk considerably, he no longer has much excuse for doing a low-profile campaign in Iowa. He’s unlikely to win there, but he needs to show up and play anyway.
From a couple Texas liberals, I’ve heard that the reason he isn’t running is because there’s another door he doesn’t want wide open. (Or more bluntly, that he’s a closeted gay guy.)
Pure Glenn Beck-level rumor, but there it is.
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Because being President is just an eensy bit more influential than being Junior Senator from Wisconsin. If he lost his seniority in the house, it might well make the senate a step down for him.
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I didn’t say he will run; I said there will be people pressuring him to do it (media types, party leaders, etc.). I suspect he won’t, and in the end the GOP will be stuck with a stiff like Pawlenty or Romney.
Rick Perry would have a hard time running against a $25 Billion budget deficit that occurred during his administration from his own policies.
He also has zero personality which would not repsond well to normal (ie, non-Texan) voters.
I also hope that once people hear “Republican Governor from Texas” they will run for the shelters and realize what a losing proposition that has been in the past and will be in the future.
And I don’t think there’s any doubt that Texas is going to go Republican, anyway, no matter who the party runs. Why run a Texan if you can run someone from a swingy state (or at least a swingy region of the country) and maybe pull it solidly into your column?
Gotcha.
I’m a bit curious why you consider him “not a stiff” when compared to Pawlenty and Romney. They all seem to have pretty much the same level of personality (Pawlenty perhaps a bit less, although Ryan was pretty damn flat in his SOTU response) and the same basic appearance (upper-middle-age white guys with TV hair).
MPR: Pawlenty accepts campaign finance violation ruling T- Paw is a dirty little politician who works for big money. he is a user of situation ethics. he makes them up as he goes along.
The midwest has some over the top right wingers in charge. He is like the others. I don’t believe he ever got 50 percent of the vote. But once they are in charge they act like they have a mandate to make wholesale changes.
No, he’s not dynamic or exciting (though he’s certainly younger and fresher than Romney), but none of the current GOP candidates are. But that’s fine because the GOP trying to out-cool Obama would be a horrible mistake. Obama appeals to the idealist in people, and it’ll be very hard to beat him at his own game. They need a credible realist.
Their best political approach in 2012 is to say that electing the idealist hasn’t helped the economy, and the arrogant young guy instead has just driven our deficit through the roof because he spent a zillion dollars on giveaways chasing those starry ideals.
To sell that message, you need
- a sober, responsible, humble guy with fiscal credibility, but
- not so lethargic as to look like corpse when put next to Obama , and
- not someone who fits into the easily-dismissed tropes of Republicans as rednecks, fundamentalists and/or Big Business.
Romney loses on all three (old, CEO guy who created a health plan just like Obama’s in Massachusetts). Pawlenty is better, but he just seems dull and has too much whiff of fundamentalism to me.
Ryan to me projects the air of the accountant who’s breaking the bad news to you. He’s not trying to inspire you – just the opposite – and he’s not on some messiah kick. Not saying he’d beat Obama, but someone like him is their best chance.