Now that the 2008 Herald of Change has brought us a giant step closer to ACA national health care
and one baby step closer to Big Brother government, let’s catch our breath and take stock of some
of the “second termer” epigrams that have filled the air waves:
“Washington’s number one lame duck”
“Drone warrior with an American hit list”
“America’s Neville Chamberlain at the Taliban Emirates conference”
“The Man without a Plan for Guantanamo”
But the Senate’s Lindsey Graham is on a roll to break through his party’s isolationist bloc by pushing his “ Border Control Surge” bill into the House. Senator Graham of South Carolina has the support of Arizona’s John McCain and the Gang of Eight… both democrats and republicans. If the Immigration Reform bill passes the House, Graham is on his way to presidential aspirations
In 2016. A Lindsey Graham/Chris Christy ticket in 2016 may be unbeatable.
[source: Matthew Kaminski, WALL STREET JOURNAL. June 22-23, 2013]
I will bet you anything you care to lose that Lindsay Graham (one of my own Senators, by the way) is NOT only not the 2016 presidential nominee, but not even a serious contender for the job.
This is just idle nattering by a writer looking to fill column-inches. God knows I’ve done that from time-to-time.
In all honesty, with the roiling of the republican party, it’s difficult to predict who will be the nominee. The party has a history of going with the candidate who is ‘next in line’, but I think that’s blowing up these days. Rubio’s having trouble with the Tea Party, Christie’s seen as too friendly with Obama, and so forth. Best bet is some governor. But who? That’s an unknown right now.
As a Democrat I pray that Lindsay Graham runs and is the “moderate” contrast to Bachmann and Ted Cruz. On the issues Graham isn’t crazy- but his personal weirdness factor is so high that he’d get steamrolled.
Having Lindsay Graham run would be a great way to follow-up the historic election of a black president. What better way to bring in the the left than by having the GOP nominate a gay candidate.
David H Singanas, we expect people starting threads to provide their own commentary and questions, not just cut and paste a quote from elsewhere. Please do so in the future.
Well, I for one think Lindsey Graham is awesome and the heir to John McCain’s reformist mantle. But he’s also hated by the base for compromising too much and criticizing the base, so to REpublicans he’s Joe Lieberman. So he’ll be staying in the Senate, although you can’t rule him out as a VP if a Tea Party candidate needs some moderate cred.
So maybe Paul/Graham? Still very unlikely though.
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the 2016 ticket for the GOP will be Jindal/Rubio.
BTW, the “bull” is mostly directed to the “far more consequential” the reality is that fracking has not stopped, it is one of the main reason why coal is falling off, and serious groups point that the problems have to be taken care of and Natural gas can be a plus, not a minus regarding the environment.
I have seen some possible democratic moves to make a moratorium on all fracking but most democrats are not in favor of that as even California can tell you. Most indeed do look at the Environmental Defense Fund and the criticism is concentrated on the incidental pollution around fracking. Something that the evidence shows is still an issue with fracking.
As for the consequential part: anyone that ignores the costs that we will have for not controlling global warming or preparing properly for the effects are the ones that are doing more harm to the economy of America and the world.
I have trouble taking someone seriously whose post complains about drones and Gitmo and then suggests the person they’d want to vote for for the next Prez is…Lindsey Graham? I’m not sure the OP knows who Lindsey Graham is aside from his stance on immigration reform.
If we’re just talking about the Republican ticket, the dream ticket is basically Christie headlining and anyone not completely Palin-level terrible as the running mate. Despite my serious reservations about his extreme obesity, Christie’s national numbers have polled strongly for a long time now and he has broad cross-party appeal.
Hardcore Democrats will never vote for him because of his anti-union activity, but of the full Republican slate I don’t know who else will put moderate voters back in play. I guess some think Rubio will recapture the Hispanic vote just by virtue of being Hispanic, but there is a very long article in the New Yorker about Tejanos running for office in Texas and what makes a successful/unsuccessful Tejanos politician. While Texas doesn’t extrapolate to the rest of the country, when talking about Hispanics they have a large population of basically all Hispanic groups aside from Cuban-Americans.
A key thing from the New Yorker article is Tejanos Republicans in Texas sometimes win a majority of the Hispanic vote in their district, but only when they are specifically addressing issues that earn those votes. They don’t win them just by “being Hispanic.” In fact, unlike the African American community, the 13% of the country that is Hispanic come from many different countries, cultures, and ethnic backgrounds. A Cuban American would feel no innate love for a Mexican American candidate or a Panamanian or a Puerto Rican.
Given his present behavior, if Rubio was nominated he would probably win Florida due to being popular there and because I think he’d be embraced by the Cuban-Americans as their favorite son. But he can’t even commit to immigration reform or other important Hispanic issues and thus he’d probably do a bit better than Romney outside of Florida with Hispanic voters. Whoever runs in 2016 for the GOP will almost certainly do better with minorities than Romney regardless, though, simply because the Romney campaign ran almost entirely focused on middle class whites, and won that demographic, but foolishly did very little outreach with anyone else. I don’t think he could have won, but he could have had a much less embarrassing showing among Asian Americans and Hispanics if they had actually tried for those votes.
If you check the “source” you will find that my post is about 70% my own material
and 30% from the WSJ. Also I like to paraphrase statements from the “source”.
The point of my posts is not to expose the “truth” and the “lies” but to
generate discussion. If I generate 30 to 50 comments, then I usually leave the
thread. I hope this posting policy will not exclude me from starting threads in
your bailiwick.
I can’t speak for the mods, but most posters do not appreciate OPs that just type something provocative and run away without bothering to clarify their position or answer questions. Especially if the poster’s own views on the topic are not clear: in that case, how do the posters know if the thread was started in good faith or in a Just Asking Questions mode?