Not sure, but you take the good with the bad with the Paul name. Paul probably inherits that legion of young supporters but also the baggage of his dad’s nuttier antics.
One might say Ron Paul is Rand Paul’s Jeremiah Wright. Crazy Cruz has an even crazier father, too. It’ll be interesting to see how these guys handle their “crazy daddy” problems.
Terry McAuliffe won in Virginia in 2013 with that coalition. And at the time, he appeared to be as generic as a Democrat could be, just another party hack left over from the 1990s who worked in DC and incidentally lived in the Virginia burbs.
Actually, McCauliffe’s performance among young voters was lackluster:
Also, if you look at income, a whopping 40% of voters had an income over $100,000, presumably mostly DC metro voters dependent on government for their livelihoods. They went for MacCauliffe.
Needless to say, not only is winning 30-44s and the wealthy NOT the Obama coalition, it’s not a typical Democratic coalition either. It’s just how Democrats win in Virginia. Once the Republicans get through cutting DC, those wealthy professionals will disperse to other states and Virginia will turn red again.
Really? And I’m not talking about Wisconsin here; we’re not talking about his running for President of Wisconsin. Is he stronger with Republicans nationally? Or even in neighboring Iowa?
Jindal is not electable. He’d probably fail to win the primary (or caucus) of Louisiana, let alone any other state.
Huckabee is certainly very personally likable, and that’s definitely an advantage for him. But his policies are out there even by the standards of the Republican party (IIRC, last time he ran, he vowed to eliminate the IRS entirely), and if he were on the top of the ticket, there’s no way voters would fail to notice that. On the other hand, I’ve said last cycle and will repeat now that he’d be an asset as a vice presidential candidate: That makes his own policies much less significant than those of his running mate, but doesn’t hurt his likability one bit.
Ah yes, the fiscally responsible republicans. When was that? The 1950’s?
Tax cutting and deficit spending doesn’t shrink government. Gutting DC is just campaign rhetoric for the rubes.
I regard the break point to have been 1978, when tax cut fever hit the party, and never left.
No, it isn’t rhetoric anymore. They would gut DC if they could at this point. It may have been rhetoric as recently as the Bush years, but now they’re fucking serious.
They can’t actually save nearly enough money to pay for their tax cuts by gutting the bureaucracy, since moneywise, the government is a retirement program with an army. But they want to do it anyway, just because Washington is EEEVIIILLL. And of course they want their tax cuts whether they can pay for them or not.
Ben Carson (who supposedly is mulling entry into the presidential race) has just gotten a little burst of publicity, but not the flattering kind.
It turns out that he’s had a relationship with Mannatech, a “nutritional supplement” company that’s been under fire for claiming its products cure various diseases and for sleazy marketing tactics. Carson reportedly continued this association long after Mannatech paid millions to settle a lawsuit brought by the state of Texas.
“In November 2004, the mother of a child with Tay-Sachs disease who died after being treated with Mannatech products filed suit against the company in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent misrepresentation, and conspiracy to commit fraud. The suit alleged that the Mannatech sales associate who “treated” the three-year-old had shared naked photos of the boy — provided by his mother as evidence of weight gain, with an understanding that they’d be kept confidential — with hundreds of people at a Mannatech demonstration seminar. The sales associate was further accused of authoring an article, in the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association in August 1997, explicitly claiming that Mannatech’s supplements had improved the boy’s condition, even though the boy had, by that time, died. The suit also presented evidence that Mannatech was still using photographs of the boy in promotional materials on its website in March 2004, “with the clear inference that [the boy] was alive and doing well some seven years after his actual death.””
Classy stuff, Ben!
If Michael Jordan ran for President, would Nike’s labor conditions be an issue in the campaign?
BTW, it should be noted that Ronald Reagan endorsed cigarettes back in the day. This seems like the biggest non-story about Carson yet.
Somehow, Carson is literally a brain surgeon but not terribly bright. His over the top hyperbole would get him snickers of derision on a message board, yet he thinks he is a legitimate candidate for President of the United States. Likening the U.S. government to Nazi Germany, praising ISIS for their steely resolve, calling Obamacare the worst thing since slavery. A doctor, no less, thinking it’s awesome that less people have access to medical care.
I think it’s entirely possible he gave himself a lobotomy.
More like he just doesn’t understand politics. One of the nice things about being a politician is that you have handlers and speechwriters who can make it seem like you know things you don’t. Neurosurgeons don’t have those people and Carson doesn’t carry around a permanent skeleton campaign staff like most politicians and even many ex-politicians do.
Nearly any Doper would do worse than Carson is now.
Doesn’t understand politics yet wants to hold the highest political office in the land.
A guy who sounds like a belligerent drunk in a bar or crazy uncle Fred at Thanksgiving probably has the wrong temperament for the job.
I’m not sure of that.
Politics is as essential to governing as heartworm is to dogs.
Depends on what you mean. Sure, most of us would fail to gain the sort of public support that Carson has. There are really three ways there, two quick and one slow. The slow way is to spend a decade or two in politics. The fast ways are (1) start at the top by virtue of being rich, or (2) be a natural snake-oil salesman to a crowd that’s yearning for the right sort of snake oil.
Most Dopers aren’t rich, and if you’re into fact-based arguments, you’re just not gonna have what it takes for selling snake oil. So yeah, Carson has us all beat there.
But in terms of not saying stupid shit, I dare say that most of us would do way better than him, simply by virtue of not being stupid. But we’d lose an audience like his real fast.
“Back in the day” being the key phrase here.
If Reagan had given speeches at R.J. Reynolds conventions in the 1980s at which Reynolds’ execs had extolled the health benefits of their tobacco products, then you’d have had a situation more analogous to Carson and Mannatech.
Politics is as essential to governing as air is to dogs.
Politics is the means by which the citizenry express their will. Absent that, some elite would do the governing. Lately it seems we’re moving in that direction anyway, but the fact remains that the citizenry has the means to assert its will through the political process.
If you think that’s a Bad Thing, like heartworm, then please tell us what elite you’d like to see govern us.
So, is everyone here certain that the Tea Party won’t run their own presidential candidate as a third party candidate, independent of the GOP?
I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a Jeb presidency. Mostly because I’m uncomfortable with a Bush dynasty as POTUS.