Yeah, I guess I was unclear. He has some kind of appeal as a moderate–at least, that’s how he seems to play in the media–but he really is a hard righty. I think he might get away with it because he’s not as outspoken as the other nutcase righties.
He has a bland personality and doesn’t hit the social issues hard in his rhetoric, so gives himself the illusion of being more moderate than the Palins and Bachmanns, but on actually policy, he is down the line conservative, socially and fiscally, and is especially mean on fiscal issues.
He’s also polling 10 points behind Obama in Minnesota, even with Obama’s approval rating hovering below 50 per cent. The Republican leadership aren’t going to put up a candidate who can’t even win his own state.
Quite right. Pawlenty is definitely going to run in 2012, but he has no hope of getting the nomination. He might land the VP slot on the Republican ticket, for what that’s worth. I don’t see 2012 as a good year for the Republicans in presidential politics. This activity might help Pawlenty to stay politically relevant, and maybe position him for a Senate run in the future. I think Klobuchar would clobber him. Franken, on the other hand… we’ll see. I’ve been very happy with Franken as a senator (though not my senator,) but it remains to be seen how he’ll perform when he’s up again in 2014. I’d love to see him reëlected, but it’s too soon to say how Minnesotans will feel about that.
I think that has something to do with why he got cut from McCain’s VP shortlist too. He wouldn’t have been able to deliver his own state. He’s not popular here. He was never exactly beloved to begin with, but his support has shrunk even more, year by year. He won re-election only by a plurality in a three-way race, and I’m not sure he could even do that anymore.
He’s not viscerally hated, though either. He’s too bland to really inspire passionate hostility. More like tired dislike.
Sounds like lutefisk.
Nice diaresis.
Thanks! That New Yorker subscription is really paying off!
I mentioned it as a joke in another thread, but how about Jesse Ventura? The Republicans don’t seem to have anyone of sufficient calibre to beat Obama, so how about if they put their weight behind an independent whose views they can stomach? He’ll likely lose, of course, but it will allow those interested to lay down markers for 2016. And if he were to win, there’d be a Republican VP ready for 2016.
Jesse Ventura moved to Mexico in 2006. Don’t think that would play too well with voters.
He’s also pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights, called W the worst President in his lifetime, said he’d prosecute anyone engaged in torture of detainees, called organized religion “a sham and crutch for the weak-minded”, met with Fidel Castro, and supports legalization of medicinal marijuana.
You’re more likely to see the Republican Party endorse Barack Obama.
Ventura, like Pawlenty and Norm Coleman, overstayed his welcome in Minn. politics. I just can’t see him running for President and getting very far at all. He’s too much of a loose cannon, and too lefty/libertarian on some issues for establishment GOPers, to win.
Petraeus has said just about as clearly and as often as he can that he won’t be running for President in 2012. Four years after that, or eight, maybe, but I wonder if he has the shelf-life for that.
RNATB, but for Lyndon LaRouche (who polled only about 5%), Clinton was unopposed in the 1996 Dem primaries.
I suspect either Pawlenty or Romney will end up getting the GOP nomination, but both would very likely lose to Obama. It’s a looooooong time until Election Day '12, though, and anything could happen between now and then.
The more I think about it, the more I think I’d vote for Ventura. Well, if he wasn’t a Truther.
I don’t think he’s really a Truther (and he denies that he is, he couches it as “just asking questions”). I think he just likes to provoke reaction.
In a lot of ways, he’s exactly what the teabaggers say they want, a real political outsider and iconoclast, small-government budget hawk and tax cutter, and civil libertarian (including on guns). He’s also got military cred as an ex Navy SEAL and Vietnam vet.
But the fact that he’s a genuine libertarian, including on gay rights, abortion rights and drug laws would turn them right off, as well as the fact that he has no use for religion and says so out loud.
I do have to wonder how he would have dealt with these BP suits.
Nitpick: he’s not an ex-SEAL or a Vietnam vet. He’s an ex-underwater demolition team member (they were integrated into the SEALs 12 years after Ventura’s discharge) and a Vietnam-era veteran.
He was in Southeast Asia during the war. He is a veteran of the Vietnam War even if he was technically in Cambodia instead of Vietnam.
The SEAL name is too pedantic to matter. He was UDA before they were called SEALS. So what?
Of course, what the teabaggers say they want doesn’t bear any particular relationship to what they want. Keep in mind, these are the same people who protest Obama lowering their taxes.
Mitch Daniels. I’d guess he’ll make some noise in 2012, but a more tea party friendly candidate will emerge who will get beat by Obama in the election worse than McCain did in 2008. IMHO, if there’s a republican president in 2016, it will be Daniels.
He floated a trial balloon by being quoted in a National Review piece that he’d like to set social disputes aside for a while to concentrate on real problems. He was promptly blasted by Huckabee and the rest of the God crowd. But he’s doing his best to signal that he’s a non-crazy Republican. If the GO(B)P gets trounced badly enough next time, they’ll come around to him.
And Indiana. Just saying…
Tea Partiers. They are supposed to be the dues who have little sense, let us not descend to their level.
I’m not descending; I’m calling them by a label they chose for themselves.
Long Time First Time, poking about a bit online, I can see that. Governor of a midwestern swing state, high popularity… Yeah, he’s got the basics covered. Of course, if he starts moving more into the national spotlight, then his negatives are going to get a lot more attention. And he was part of the Bush administration; that’s going to taint him a bit.