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Or years, for that matter.
And frankly, his current 45% approval rating does worry me. Why is it so high? As a lame duck, he should be spending political capital, not saving it up.
Can we please swing the thread back to the Republican candidates?
Back before fatherhood (2008 and earlier), when I had more time for this sort of thing, I tried to find such forums. Most well-known conservative blogs didn’t have comment sections. (National Review Online and Glenn Reynolds’ blog come to mind immediately.) The only one of note that did, RedState, was overtly partisan in nature (as its name would suggest), and I quickly got tossed off the board for polite but pointed comments that wouldn’t raise a moderator’s eyebrow here.
Nowadays, I rarely have the time to engage in full-fledged political debates here, as evidenced by my near-complete absence from GD and the Pit, so if you have suggestions to make regarding ‘less friendly forums’ that would be open to an actively participating liberal minority, please direct those suggestions to others.
But it sure seemed to me based on that experience, at a time when Republicans and conservatives in general weren’t as radical as they are now, that it was that side that shrank from open debate.
Besides, I’ve been here since 1999, and this place may have leaned left even then, but it was definitely a lean; things were close to equilibrium then. What changed things was the presidency of George W. Bush, and Republicans’/conservatives’ largely unyielding defense of him and his record.
Conservatives on this board could either join in that defense, and defend the largely indefensible, or shut up in the political debates, or switch sides, or leave altogether. But people get tired of defending indefensible positions, and so there was considerable attrition in the conservative ranks around here.
Actually, there was a fifth option: conservatives could declare that GWB wasn’t really a true Republican or true conservative. But out in the real world, the Republicans in Congress defended Bush wholeheartedly, as did numerous independent organizations. So such a stance amounted to a claim that the vast majority of persons self-identifying as conservatives, and practically all those persons elected to Congress as Republicans, really weren’t what they claimed to be. So it wasn’t much of an option.
No, this board has become liberal-dominated because most conservative positions aren’t really defensible on an evidence-based board like this.
I can’t claim to have deep insights into the other four states, but I know something about Virginia, having spent nearly 30 years of my life there, and another nearly two decades next door in Maryland. And Terry McAuliffe and the rest of his ticket were able to win with that coalition in 2013, an off-off-year. (After a long season of endlessly repeating “vote for the faceless, soulless hack - it’s important,” I’ve got to admit that T-Mac hasn’t been a half-bad governor, and I sold him short. But I digress.) If it’s possible for Dems to win a statewide race in Virginia in 2013 with that coalition, then it’s a likelihood in 2016.
Sure!
I’m going to actually agree with adaher on one thing: the GOP candidates this time are likely to be MUCH better than in 2012. Remember, Herman f’in Cain was the leader in the polls for a period. The man with no qualifications whatsoever and a platform that was, if not insane, at least politically unworkable. Then he was replaced by Newt Gingrich. Before him was Rick Perry, who literally forgot what cabinet departments he wanted to eliminate completely. After Newt was Rick Santorum.
I will hazard a bet that there will be at least 3 GOP candidates this time around that even liberal observers will agree would make better presidents than those 4 men who were frontrunners at one point in the last cycle.
Airbeck, his 45% approval rating in the RCP average lasted all of a few hours. As other daily polls were posted, he dropped back below, to 44.7%.
That’s why making a big deal of me not checking it for a few hours was dumb.
People seemed to forget that after he picked Palin, he pulled ahead in some polls and even in the others. It was only after the public found out that she wasn’t so smart, wasn’t very articulate, and actually pretty abrasive did the pick tank for him.
If Palin turned out to be a little smarter and have a more likable personality, McCain could very well have won.
Also the fact that Bristol Palin was pregnant at the time should have been a red flag for team McCain. It immediately thrust the abortion/adoption/“do the right thing and get married” debate into the spotlight. McCain didn’t need this turn to the right. An articulate Palin who could speak on economic issues would have been a huge boost.
McCain drew to an inside straight and lost.
If McCain hadn’t had to succeed GWB, but instead a more popular politician like Reagan, he would have picked Tim Pawlenty.
The very good behind-the-scenes 2008 campaign book Game Change discussed McCain’s VP selection process at length. Pawlenty was definitely in the mix and had a lot going for him, including governing experience and Midwestern cred, but wasn’t considered splashy enough to shake things up and make a difference at a time when McCain was already badly trailing Obama. Hence… Palin.
Yes. I read Game Change too(gonna read the sequel soon). It was another Hail Mary attempt. The reason I think Clinton is even less likely to succeed if she is facing the kinds of headwinds McCain faced is that she’s just too conservative by nature to ever take such chances. Her only recourse when Obama was beating her was to dig up dirt on him, which surprisingly no one holds against her, even though a lot of that dirt got used against him by Republicans. She saved them a heck of a lot of trouble due to the efforts of her staff to destroy Obama.
From what I’ve seen, conservatives treat George W. Bush as persona non grata. I don’t recall any of them outright condemning him, they just don’t ever talk about him at all. But I think there’s also an odd disconnect happening. Conservatives’ disdain for Bush is motivated by the disastrous economy (among other things) at the end of his second term, but they can’t bring themselves to admit that there was any failure of Republican policies. So they dismiss Bush the man, but would happily go down the exact same road (with, I fear, the same consequences) all over again.
It was McCain’s job to vet her before making his choice. He may have been drawing to an inside straight, but the cards were face up.
WSJ is just mild about Romney 3.0: Romney Recycled - WSJ
adaher, the second Game Change book (Double Down) is also very good. Catnip for political junkies like me.
Robot Arm, the vetting process was truncated and cursory for Palin. McCain wanted to run with his pal Joe Lieberman for the longest time, as a bipartisan gesture and because he genuinely liked and trusted Lieberman, but his advisors talked him out of it, warning of a rebellion by conservatives at the GOP convention. Pawlenty and others were in the mix for a relatively short time, but Team McCain turned to Palin as a game-changer and were chagrined to later realize just how little they knew about her - and how unprepared she was for The Show.
I think you’re exactly right as to conservatives and Dubya.
That’s to her advantage. Part of the reason McCain ended up so far behind was because of a propensity for throwing Hail Marys when he should have just been trying to make a few yards at a time and get the first down. Anyone else remember him “suspending his campaign” to deal with the economy, for instance?
So, you agree that the list of Republican hopefuls is not worth discussing. I don’t blame you. It must suck to be a Republican nowadays…
Ah, yes, the timid, humble adaher, who:
-says that anyone with the temerity to describe Obama’s approval going from 41% to 45% as a ‘rise’ lacks intellectual integrity
-responded to having one of his favorite factoids (Strom Thurmond was the only D-to-R conversion in the wake of the civil rights movement) being shown to be utter b.s. by declaring factual accuracy to be “revisionist history”
-was fooled into repeating utter nonsense gleaned from the Birthers (and before that from the Benghazi scandalistas [and before that from the unskewed polls people]), yet believes his uniformed natterings constitute a valuable contribution to the political discourse.
My mind reels at the contemplation of what a hubristic **adaher **would be.
But you’re forgetting: according to **adaher’**s even more inscrutable than usual analysis of that election, the Democrats’ ability to sweep Virginia’s three statewide offices in an off-year election with a bland carpetbagger heading the ticket was actually good news for the Republicans.
Or in other words, he got the traditional post-convention bounce.
I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. I was thinking of the period during Bush’s second term (post-Katrina, especially) when it was clear that his policies had failed. Even after the Dems took control of Congress in 2007, the GOP Congressional delegation stood by Bush, as evidenced by their votes at the time. It’s true, as you say, that once Bush was out of office, their approach was simply to talk about him as little as possible, but while he was still there, they backed him to the hilt.
Well said.
I’ll second this, about T-Mac. I really didn’t want to vote for him (I did anyway, considering his opponent), but so far he’s been a very solid governor. I can’t think of a major decision of his that I’ve disliked so far.