Guiliani? When he ran in '08 the better people knew him the less they wanted to vote for him. Even if his personality were appealing to voters, was he rabidly anti-abortion enough to get the nomination?
Mittens is merely a slavishly loyal minion of the Party and Big Money.
None of the other fit that bill better than he.
T-Paw might have been the darling of the more conservative aspects of the party, but I thought he was utterly boring, same with McCain.
Emphasis mine. Considering the money that’s been spent on Romney to date, any semi-decent, likable person would be nominated for ruler of the universe with hoards of people fainting at his feet where ever he goes. OTOH, Romney is floating just below the 50% mark and being called the American Borat.
The only good things about Romney is that he’s drawing a lot of money out of the banks and back into the economy and he’s providing fodder to Comedy Central.
As opposed to Romney who’s portrait now graces every living room so families can swoon over the thought of him as President?
Romney was next in line and he had the finances to ensure that anyone who would challenge that was thoroughly destroyed. Just ask Newt.
This part perfectly describes John McCain, as long as he’s not actually running for president. At least not being in the race this time allowed him to make his principled denunciation of Bachmann’s Muslim witch hunt. When he was a candidate, he had to suppress those views for the most part, as would any Republican candidate.
During the primaries, it was often pointed out that “Any Republican” could beat Obama, but no specific Republican could. The same principle operates here. The idea of a Romney alternative sounds good, but the reality doesn’t exist.
Romney ran as the most electable candidate, and because of his 2008 run he had legitimacy and name recognition. Back in the 2008 primary I could tell Romney was just staying in because he wanted to build himself up for 2012.
I think those two things (his name recognition and him running as the most electable person up there) did it for him.
But to be fair, the GOP tried picking almost anyone but him. Trump, Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Christie, etc Each one was a leader for a while, or people begged them to enter the race, until they collapsed back down in the polls and Romney came back. There was a pretty funny SNL skit once about the GOP debates, and Romney was talking about how he was like Forrest Gump with the GOP voters being Jenny. ‘Go ahead and run around with tons of guys, I’ll be here waiting for you when you get home’.
I once heard that there are 2 kinds of bad GOP leaders, manipulators and true believers. The manipulators (Gingrich, Romney, Giuliani, Pawlentey) pretend to believe in some of the things they have to believe in to win elections, but people see through them and can tell it is a hypocritical farce. They say one thing but their records show them supporting what they rail against. Then they lose credibility because people don’t believe them and shrink in the polls. The true believers on the other hands, because they believe a lot of contradictory, unpopular and irrational things, have their candidacies fall apart because that kind of sloppy thinking spills over into other areas or they never get the support of anything more than a small base (Bachmann, Paul, Perry, etc)
Giuliani’s political career has been dead ever since he announced on Good Morning America that there were no terrorist attacks while W. Bush was in office. It’d be nearly impossible for any politician to take back that comment, but for him it was like committing suicide.
Mitch Daniels has a resume that sounds like he should be a Republican darling both with the moderates and the far right: Director of the Management and Budget Office under Bush, former Senior VP of Eli Lily Company, and popular governor. Too bad he hates the Tea Party with a passion. He’s basically going to hide out at Purdue in hopes they start to die off before the 2016 election.
Has everyone in this thread forgot about your fav’rit sweater vest wearing homophobe Rick Santorum?
Almost 30 posts in and not a single mention about his role in the primary…
How pathetic that the only thing I can come up with is that Spreading Santorum is now ranked back up to third, higher than his official website.
I bet if you asked 100 random Americans… it wouldn’t be a large enough sample for one of them to remember Giuliani saying that.
And I bet you if he ever ran for office that clip would be airing constantly. :rolleyes:
The only reason nobody remembers is because he’s completely disappeared since it happened. It’s not like the interview was destroyed and can’t be replayed. He knows he’s done.
Sorry I guess that was too subtle. My point is you’re wrong. For one thing it happened in 2010, two years after he lost any chance at the presidency when he ran that disastrous 2008 primary campaign. The only reason nobody remembers is because nobody cared when it happened. He was already a non-issue.
Let’s be clear about one thing: Romney’s money didn’t win him the nomination. Every other plausible candidate led in the polls despite Romney’s money, and every one of them self-destructed. Romney’s money didn’t win, his electability won. And his money isn’t keeping him even with Obama either, since he’s been vastly outspent so far. He’s staying even because his opponent, while less self destructive than a Bachmann or Cain, is still shooting himself in the foot with a relentlessly negative campaign that is doing more to bring his own favorability numbers down than hurt Romney.
Let’s be clear about one thing: Suggesting that money does not have a substantial impact on elections should be included in Brainglutten’s Attention: Any EARNEST use in political discussion of the following terms brands the user an idiot thread. It’s not a dispositive factor, but dismissing it as a negligible influence on electoral outcomes is only marginally less absurd than saying that television or the Internet didn’t win an election.
I have not said that money doesn’t have an impact on elections, only that it was not the most important factor in the 2012 GOP primary campaign, and so far has not been decisive in the general election either.
The Romney campaign’s money, and the organization Romney was able to build with it, were an important part of his perceived electability - or at least part of his position as nominee presumptive.
That much is true, yet Republican voters still didn’t want him, and only settled when every other candidate got to be frontrunner and failed.
Even people with pretty much no money got to lead in the polls for awhile. Debate performances were what were driving the polls, and personally, I think that speaks well of Republican voters that they responded to debates rather than ads and media coverage.
So nice of you to keep dropping us a line from your planet. Romney bought the nomination. Every time some other candidate made a surge, Romney parked the Death Star over the next primary state and flooded the airwaves with negaive ads. Even though Newt Gingrich is a prime USDA select asshole, you almost felt sorry for him when he got incinerated in Iowa by negative ads Rick Santorum gets a surge, all of a sudden the negative ads slamming him for (gasp) voting to increast the debt ceiling. The Republican voter is an imbecile and can be manipulated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh. To give them credit for watching the debates is just silly.
(Emphasis added) Sane and rational Tea Party leaders? I believe that’s an oxymoron.