…say the Birthers.
Bush spends most of his time in Dallas, not at the ranch. He didn’t want to go into politics but, since he had failed at everything else, he did what Daddy asked. Now he’s done with it. His health was probably not up to a flight to DC & a long day in public. Bush the Smarter is truly in fragile health.
I hadn’t heard that Jeb was invited to the ceremony. He’s supposedly in the running for the nomination & would not want to alienate his base. Doubt he’s a racist–but he knows the Republican voter…
No reason he should be at the ranch, all the brush has been cleared! Can’t even *buy *any brush within fifty miles of Waco! Tell you what, my man GeeDubya is a brush clearing mother…(Shut your mouth!)…but I’m talking about GeeDubya!..(Well, we can dig it)…(Cue guitar riff from Beach Boys)…
I don’t know about that. The rumor is that George was his mother’s favorite and Jeb was his father’s favorite. Dubya didn’t get into politics because his father insisted. He did it to prove something to his father.
Based not only on no facts, but against the known facts.
I’m sure you can see the difference.
Chris Christie withdraws same sex marriage appeal.
We’re winning him over, I think.
Please. He knew he was going to lose the appeal. If he did this right, he gets points from conservatives for his opposition to same-sex marriage and points from liberals for dropping a malicious and totally unsuccessful appeal. This is what passes for being a moderate today.
To quote Hillary, what difference does it make? There is no way in hell he’s going to win over the GOP primary voters. They like to choose between far right wing, really far right wing, and off the bird altogether. He may appeal to what are left of moderate Republicans. He may appeal to centrist Democrats. But these groups don’t decide the nomination, the party faithful do. These folks feel burned that McCain and Romney got the nomination and lost because “they weren’t conservative enough”. 2016 is going to be 1964 all over again, nominate the extremist and get a big loss out of the system. Maybe they’ll come to their senses in 2020, but don’t bet on it.
If that was true we would have had Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008. I don’t think Christie has much of a shot but we are not going to end up with a super far right candidate either. We keep thinking eventually they’ll go with a nutjob and throw him to the wolves so the far right wing calms down, but their best chance at that was this last election.
BobLibDem is right, though: these people believe the Republican Party is losing because it is nominating moderates. They are not going to change their minds, so it’s just a question of which candidate can build a modest consensus between those voters and non-Tea Party voters.
That still doesn’t mean there are enough of them to gift us a far right candidate to slaughter in the general.
You make a fine point, but I think times have changed. There is a segment of the Republican base that thinks that Obamacare is the Apocalypse and that anyone who doesn’t devote every ounce of his energy in undoing it is heathen. They’re going to take out McConnell over this and also lose the House in 2014. These people are nuts, they’re upset, and every single one of them is going to vote in the primary.
They came pretty close in 2012 and all of their candidates were totally incompetent. They haven’t lost power since then as far as I can tell. Unless everybody else tells them to go to hell and rallies behind a different candidate, they may get what they want this time.
Don’t forget the power of money. Romney spent six years running for president and accumulated a ton of money. He was able to carpet-bomb the airwaves with negative ads every time an un-Romney jumped out of the clown car. I don’t think Christie can come close to having that kind of cash. Unless the Wall Street types can unify behind someone and bankroll them, 2016 could just be the year that whoever can throw the red meat out to the base is going to get the prize.
For all their faults, the GOP keeps nominating fairly moderate (by their standards) candidates. Romney, McCain, Bush x2, Dole, Bush in the last 20 years. While its true that the extremists have been getting worse and holding more power, until I see a Cain or Santorum as their nominee, I’ll continue to believe that a moderate (by their standards) will win.
I can definitely see Christie being the nominee in 2016. Hell, even White Witch Coulter thought he should have been the guy instead of Romney
Yes, that’s the pattern. To my eyes, this part of their base is stronger and better funded than ever, and while I don’t think it’s a bright group of people, they are correct to note that the Republican Party has promised them a ton of things over the last couple of decades and has delivered almost none of them. So I think they’re done trusting moderates who make token promises to win their support. I don’t know if they can win because it depends on what the field looks like, and Christie could be a strong candidate. But I’m not sure they will ever believe he is one of them.
Well, they never really believed Romney was one of them either and they still nominated him. As much as I would LOVE to see a far right nutjob like Santorum get pasted in the general election, I think if either Christie or Jeb runs, the nomination is theirs to lose. Sure, they’ll pivot to the right like all primary candidates do, and will say some fodder sound bites for the 11 o’ clock news, but ultimately they’ll come out ahead by promising to be “severe conservatives” or banking on their “electability”
What I do expect to happen is a continuous slew of extremists forcing these guys to buck rightward. Those guys did more damage to Romney than Obama ever had to. Romney was already damaged goods by the time he officially won the nomination. Is Christie or Jeb similarly vulnerable?
Yes, after each and every member of the moron squad failed to overcome his bigger pile of money. They were always ready to turn on him when he lost.
Nobody believed Romney about that, and the lesson this group has learned is that if it compromises, it loses. They think the more conservative you are, the more electable you are.
I don’t think Jeb is running, but yes, that’s going to be a problem. It hurt both Romney and McCain a lot. They couldn’t placate these voters and sound like centrists because they are far, far to the right and didn’t trust them.