It’s only a bad sign when you’re down in the polls, not when you’re up.
And, by the way, it’s the Republican side who is down on the quality of their candidate, not the Democrats.
Coming in second or third in the primaries is a good way to set yourself up for a future run. I don’t think coming in last, behind people like Cain and Newt, is.
Plus, assuming Romney looses, Huntsman will just look like a slight variation of the same type of candidate that lost last time. I can’t see the GOP getting behind another Romney.
Huntsman won’t be the GOP nominee in 2016
Can I just say that aldiboronti has pretty much scraped the bottom of the barrel with this one? I mean, he either did not actually read his link, or he does not understand what it said.
I disagree. If Romney looks foolish running for President, Perry would have been an order of magnitude worse. Romney can at least maintain some kind of equilibrium through all his flip-flopping and lying, whereas Perry doesn’t seem to fully understand his current positions. I think Perry would have been really, truly awful.
There is a good article about this in Salon. Here’s a good quote:
Only one swing state (Iowa) is doing early in-person voting and only two other states (Wyoming, Vermont) this month. I wish people would quit stating this around here; many states open their absentee voting in September, and so the media reports that absentee and early voting has started. Absentee voting is a small fraction of the total.
Funny. I read Little Nemo’s post as what Huntsman was “hoping to accomplish” not what he actually achieved (or more accurately, failed to).
Huntsman will be a persona non grata for many cycles to come, which is a loss for the GOP.
Picture Huntsman running against Obama. That premise had scared me as an Obama supporter. He actually has international relations cred. The prospect of him in charge of dealing with China’s emerging power and nationalism, dealing with circumstances such as the anti-American rioting in the ME, does not make one hyperventilate like the prospect of Romney in charge does. He is Right of my positions sure, not someone I’d want to win, but not extremely so and he actually sounds like he believes what he says even when it goes against the beliefs of the audience he is supposed to be pandering to. He has demonstrated an ability to compromise and work across the partisan divide.
The prospects for the Democratic party to hold onto the White House was based most of all in the fact that the GOP primary process gives a candidate like Huntsman no chance at all.
What Huntsman was hoping for was for someone like Santorum or Bachman to win the nomination this year, then get horribly trounced by Obama, so that the Republican party would look for a moderate in 2016. Yeah, it was a longshot, but it was a lot more plausible than any route to the Presidency you or I might hope for, and I’d say that it was a reasonable thing to try for. It didn’t work, of course, but there’s no way Huntsman could have know that in advance.
The Obama administration was most worried about him in June 2011. The beltway is enamored with bipartisanship. Now given that Tea Party tail is wagging the Republican dog in DC, it would be foolish to pin your hopes on a neuro-typical Republican President. But most independents won’t see it that way. And given Republican economic sabotage a candidate who performs at the average should be able to beat Obama.
Huntsman was extremely conservative: as Governor in an already conservative state he applied more tax cuts. But he was also sane: he stated that he believed in both evolution and the scientific consensus on global warming. This would play well in the general election, but doomed him in the Republican primary. He never received his day of sun in the polls. In fact, IIRC he ever even placed 3rd nationally.
I agree, but he failed at that. You need to lead in the polls for at least a short span of time and he never came close.
We Democrats really dodged a bullet. Check out this table. We owe the Republican primary voter a debt of gratitude: I extend thanks to all the crazies.
There’s still plenty of time for things to go another direction, but being so far behind at this point certainly puts Obama in a highly advantaged position. Personally I think romneys numbers are even weaker than they appear, a Bradley effect for people not used to saying they won’t vote for the republican candidate as a identity reflex. A lot of them are holding their breath for him to change into a credible candidate, if that never happens this could be a massive massive landslide.
On the other side if things do turn around republicans are cheating in most of the swing states and Romney wouldn’t even have to win fairly, he just has to get close enough for ballot stuffers, voter purges, and other major voter suppression and forgery to make the difference.
The thing is that the middle and the moderate left love compromise. There are a lot of ex-Republicans who can’t vote for Romney this year because the ‘no compromise’ people are leading the party. You give them a Republican who looks like he’d be willing to work with the Democrats, he’d have won handily.
The core of the conservative party really doesn’t do themselves any favors when they take such a hardline stance against the ‘commie socialists who are going to destroy the nation’ and manage to include most of the nation in that group.
Or…[can’t say that in this forum].
What, that he may have deliberately misrepresented the article? I dunno, I don’t think it’s against the board rules to suggest he may be a Fox News anchor.
Yes, I said this is what I think Huntsman’s plan was. But obviously if that was his plan, it didn’t work.
Of course, if he had some other plan, it doesn’t look like that plan worked either.
:smack:
I’ll agree with your conclusion that the game isn’t over.
Neil Newhouse memo: Romney camp dismisses Obama lead in polls
Edit: unintentional smiley
And what lesson can we learn about Republicans from that observation?
No, the campaign isn’t over, but seriously, as of now Obama is leading Romney in North Carolina. Who the fuck saw that coming?
I still think that NC is going to go to Romney, but Mittens will be seriously toast if he can’t even count on that state going his way in this election. NC is, after all, the one toss-up state that has long been assumed to have been trending towards Romney.
Saw an online joke about Romney’s next move. He’s going to drop Ryan and name Ed Hochuli as his running mate.
Besides the fact that Mr. Hochuli doesn’t have a whole lot to do these days anyway, why is that funny?
I suppose it’s a joke that Romney is seeking desperate means to raise his appeal and is latching on to a group with a current surge of popular support. The equivalent would be if Obama’s campaign was in trouble and somebody joked about him replacing Biden with Claire Danes after she won an Emmy this week.
I think it’s funny.
Oh. Haha!
Who’s Claire Danes? Does she do a voice on Family Guy? Or The Venture Bros.?