Christie’s big appeal seems to be that he yells at people. But once the novelty of that wears off, what do you have left? A guy who has called the tea party radical (more or less) and who is willing to work with Obama to achieve goals. So I don’t think he could win a primary.
How many candidates in 2012 collapsed because they are too insane? I can’t remember if it was Paul Krugman who coined the concept, but someone mentioned that in 2012 there were 2 kinds of republicans running. The rational one (which could just mean putting self interest above ideology, but can also mean willing to compromise and work with others to achieve fairly mainstream goals) and the zealots. The rational ones had a history of compromise and supporting relatively non-controversial opinions (Romney, Pawlentey, Huntsman) so in a primary they had problems.
The true believers truly buy into the ideology, but the kind of person who does that tends to have some serious personality defects that eventually come to light that either destroys their candidacy or makes it hard to take them seriously as a potential president (Bachmann, Paul, Perry, Cain, Santorum, Palin despite her not running in 2012).
At the same time in the last 2 GOP primaries the ‘moderate’ republican won the primary, only to have to pull to the right in the general. The VP picks in 2008 and 2012 were calculated to pick up support among the GOP base.
Will 2016 be the same, or will the GOP primary voters assume that the reason they lost in 08 and 12 was because they picked the moderate candidate in the primary? No idea.
I don’t know and it’s impossible to predict now. There’s a good chance someone not yet known to be considering a run will be the choice. By the time primary season starts the current crowd will be too well known and locked into their image to gain nationwide support. The GOP would love to have their candidate selected in the southern red states, but the winner is likely to be the one gaining support across the blue and purple states. The current divisions in the party make it difficult for any candidate to solidify a base in most states. The winner will more likely be a result of primary voter fatique than genuine broad based appeal.
Well at least he doesn’t have negative charisma like Romney. I would put my money on Rubio also, he might even win depending on how immigration reform goes.
I think you have that the wrong way around. He’s not actually moderate: On any issue you care to name with an actual left-right split, he’s on the conservative side. What’s getting him criticized by other Republicans is that he’s not partisan enough, being willing (for instance) to work with Obama to get his state the help it needed.
That was as a senator, going for VP or president he is running now into the birther component of the crazy Tea Party (yes, it is more crazy). And Jindal is also in their sights; interestingly, in a “pulling a lawn chair and passing the popcorn” way, I do expect to finally see the crushing of that idiotic component by the Republicans themselves, but it has to be noticed that the birthers have been active (and mostly useless) in the lawsuit against the Dreamers and the birthers have connections with the climate change deniers.
This “out of nowhere candidate” has never happened in my lifetime. The Nominees are always people that are being talked about as serious possibilities at least four years ahead of time. And in the case of the GOP, its always someone from the top three spots in early polls three years out.
I wouldn’t say out of nowhere, but someone not given serious consideration four years prior. Both Obama and Bush would be examples. The results of recent elections indicate that early birds don’t do well in presidential elections. We might be kept waiting for a while to find out if Hillary is even running on the Democratic side.
McCain managed to get the nomination despite being a front man for campaign finance reform, cap-and-trade laws and immigration reform. Romney got the nomination despite being arguably more active in the creation of Obamacare then Obama was.
GOP primary voters seem willing (almost bizarrely so) to forgive candidates who’ve championed programs GOP voters claim to hate, so long as said candidate is willing to tack to the right a year or two before the actual primary.
(I think Christie has more of a problem here. I can see Rubio happily finding a bunch of meaningless nits to pick with immigration reform and promising to repeal it “on day one” a la Romney. It’s harder to see Christie knuckling under like that, even though his actual apostasies aren’t as meaningful.)
How far in advance was Bill Clinton talked about? He might have been on a few peoples’ lists in 1988, but only if they were very exhaustive lists.
Heck, for that matter, how seriously was Obama talked about in 2004? I remember people saying that he might be President eventually, but I don’t think anyone at the time anticipated that it would be so soon.
People were already speculating “the boy governor” would run in 1988. So he was indeed on the shortlist for '92 pretty quickly.
No they wouldn’t. Nate Silver did an average of pre-midterm polling for Presidential Candidates. Bush was in the number two spot for the GOP pre-2000 (after Colin Powell), and Obama was in the same for the Dems pre-2008 (after Hillary). Both men were being considered among the top contenders for the nomination pretty quickly after the previous election cycle.
Right about the time he delivered the nominating speech for Mike Dukakis that year. He was chosen for the spot because he was *already *one of the bright, rising stars of the party.
That doesn’t change anything. They weren’t the top newmakers at the time and not considered top contenders or shoe-ins. *Out of nowhere *is your phrase, I don’t have to argue for or against it. Bush and Obama weren’t perceived by the public or presented by the media as leading contenders that early in the race because the races were too fractured at that point. It’s polling like Silver’s followed by primary wins that get these candidates the push they need to overcome public perceptions that lag behind the political insiders’ view.
I just realized it’s still 2013. Why are we even talking about the 2016 presidential race? It’s pointless to talk about it until after the 2014 midterms; they will shape the context. And it’s too soon to talk about the 2014 midterms. November, maybe.
I was thinking about the same thing when I wrote that, but McCain and Romney were also “next”, which in the GOP can overcome a lot. In a primary with no “next”(unless Jeb runs), I think it will come down to the most ideologically pure, yet still electable, candidate. Which could be Rubio, but GOP voters also seem to like governors who get things done. Walker and Christie would seem to me to have the advantage, with Walker getting the nod because he’s more conservative and more confrontational, while still being effective. Plus he has a national profile due to the Democrats’ working so hard to oppose him.
My own preference though would be for Christie, because we need to end the partisan warfare. I’m not a kumbayah guy, I don’t think the parties should be always reaching across to compromise on everything, but it’s been out of hand for awhile. Christie has the best chance to accomplish that.
and I still like Jindal. The great thing about governors is that you can actually judge them by their governing record. Jindal has gone a long way to fixing a dysfunctional political culture and a corrupt state government. Just what we need right now. I don’t think the government is corrupt under Obama, but he has zero interest in making sure any of it actually works, which has allowed incompetence to thrive at unheard of levels in nearly every department. Despite what many say here, that is actually part of his job and something he has to be held accountable for. Otherwise the state is just an unaccountable goliath that no one can control. And if anyone truly believes that, then we might as well elect Rand Paul and start dismantling it.
Yeah, but Clinton didn’t start getting real traction until after Tsongas backed out because of his poor health. Then the field opened again and a broader audience really started to notice him.