A possible, or even likely, scenario (crosses fingers) is that Obama defeats Romney in November. If this happens, what strategy does the GOP take next time?
It seems like there is something of a fracture in the party where there are still some pushing for a more moderate candidate, for either political or policy reasons. Romney is widely viewed as a moderate Republican, despite a pretty obvious shift to the right on many issues. This shift to the right can, cynically, be viewed as a response to the other side of the party that wants to see a more hardcore “real” Republican run. The majority of the other candidates (at least the ones who had any chance at any time) were more of this flavor.
So, if Romney loses, does that become evidence to the moderate side that they have to distance themselves from the far right and run someone with more mass appeal to the center without having to pander to the right? Or will the rightwing faction gain traction on the premise that they ran a moderate in Romney and (McCain before him) and since that didn’t work, it’s time to run someone further to the right?
A Romney loss will only make the Republicans more rigid ideologues than they already are. The far right will clamor “See! We KNEW we should have nominated one of our own!”. Any remaining Republicans who even mention bipartisanship will be thrown to the wolves. If you’re Republican and aren’t batshit crazy, you WILL be primaried by someone who IS batshit crazy. Santorum wins the 2016 nomination in a walk and gets clobbered by Hillary in the general election.
Probably the only circumstances under which Hillary could win.
And I confidently expect the circumstances you are desribing to arise, and I confidently expect Hillary will win, if she’s not too burned-out on the whole business to run in 2016.
While I agree the base will go batshit, let’s not forget that the moneyed interests in the GOP have so far been somewhat successful at channeling their outrage. My guess it they’ll be deluded into supporting Paul Ryan.
That could very well happen. However, if memory serves me correct, the only time since Ford in 1976 that the Republicans nominated a guy that had never run before was Bush in 2000.
Following their recent tradition of anointing the deserving successor, the next in line who’s paid his dues on the campaign trail, and come in just behind the last nominee, would be Santorum.
The tension between “Next time, do we move more to the center or stake out a greater contrast” confronts the losing party after every election. It will arise this time too, whichever side loses.
I agree that the conservatives are going to claim a Romney loss is evidence that the GOP needs to run a more conservative candidate. And Santorum will probably be the Republican front runner in 2016.
2016 is going to be an entirely different election than this one is. The big factor is the Republicans won’t be running against an incumbent. The Democrats will probably be just as split up as the Republicans. So you’re going to see some major figures who sat out this election because they didn’t want to run against an incumbent
Kinda curious who you have in mind. Paul Ryan? Jeb Bush? Chris Christie? Tim Pawlenty? Mike Huckabee? Any of those guys inspire you, or are you thinking of somebody else?
I think they already know that Romney isn’t all that great, and that it’s not a matter of strategy other than picking a more viable candidate next time. Also, I would bet that mid-term elections will have more of a bearing on 2016 than this race.
I don’t know if any of them inspire me personally but I think they’ll all be possibilities. Add in Eric Cantor, Mitch Daniels, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, Bob McDonnell, Mike Pence, Marc Rubio, and John Thune.
That’s a lot of names obviously. So I’ll pick my top three: Christie, Rubio, and Santorum - I’ll go on record that I think one of those three will be the 2016 Republican nominee.
I’ll be even more daring and predict one name for the Democratic nominee: Andrew Coumo. I think it’s clear he’s going to run and I think he’s in the best position to get the nomination.
Not Jindal. He’s too brown to ever be a serious nominee at the same time people like Santorum are drawing support. If 2016 is the last gasp of ideological purists anyone who doesn’t look like they stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting is toast.
Besides, he’s still never recovered from the 2009 State of the Union rebuttal. In a rare show of bipartisanship everyone agreed he sucked balls. Maybe if he kept his name out there after that he could have pushed passed it but he was too quiet too long. It was a career killer for advancement onto the national stage.
Who actually ran in the primaries this year who had a better chance of beating Obama than Romney? I supported Romney in the primaries because there was no one else I could support, but I never once felt he was a strong candidate.
Guys like Rick Perry and Rick Santorum had more of that “politicians flare” that I’ve seen in people who win the Presidency, but their positions on the issues are so polarizing that they would get massive turnout in states the GOP was going to win anyway and get fucking drubbed in the rest of the country.
I think Huntsman would probably make the best President of the entire GOP slate this year, but he was essentially unelectable in this year’s primaries and probably 2016 as well. As long as guys like Santorum get big pushes and almost derail more moderate candidates you won’t be able to produce a more nationally electable person.
Most people on these boards can’t speak without foaming about George W. Bush, but if you actually look at his 2000 campaign he did a pretty impressive thing–he managed to get extremely high levels of support from the right wing fundamentalist Christians, but without scaring off the upper middle class whites. He even received pretty good Hispanic and woman support for a GOP candidate. He did that by having impeccable Christian fundamentalist credentials that “stood on their own” to such a degree he didn’t have to painfully try to exaggerate them, instead he spent more time talking about fairly mild political positions.