Lets talk about the Republican campaign to date

[Mr Bean]

Lets have a little speculation about the Republican campaign and not just because we have another Republican debate scheduled for tomorrow evening (9PM EST on ABC, check your local listings)
If only because of this frankly amazing graphic from Huffingpost which itself is from their Election Dashboard which You can find here detailing all the polls they averaged to come up with this.



Is that not frankly amazing exactly how in retrospect steady things have been with the three big jumps only. The first jump being Bachmann after the Iowa Straw poll and no real follow through for her. Then the Perry surge and the Perry flop. And then the Cain trains arrives and keeps right on going into self destruction. Then all of a sudden here we are with Newt Gingrich who started this race by having to get down on his knees and kowtow to Rush for criticizing the Paul Ryan budget way back in the spring and having his entire staff quit on him, to leading the pack. And not just leading the pack by a little but by the highest margin to date.

Have the Republicans in fact settled for Newt Gingrich? Has the "anyone but Romney crowd" decided it that fuck it if we can't have a bad GW Bush impersonator or the pizza guy we will take the Newt because it sure as hell is not going to be the damn Mormon... or the other damn Mormon. Bachmann, Santorum have been kept around for sympathy's sake and the fab three (Buddy Roemer, Gary Johnson, Fred Karger) where never allowed to the debates to begin with so no one knows who there are so that leaves....

No one really since the media dismisses Paul, and paint Santorum and Bachmann as crazy (When they are not busy doing it themselves). That leaves only Huntsman (Like Romney but more liberal so he's out) and... Newt Gringrich and Rick Perry. Except everyone despise Rick Perry and the more we get to know him the less everyone likes him. But Newt Gingrich is in the exactly the same boat and he's pushing 33%+ of the vote so what the heck is going on here?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Because Gingrich, unlike Perry, can combine two words into a coherent sentence. I still think Romney has a better chance to get nominated, though. I don't think the Gingrich surge will last.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Unless there's a real game-changer, I'm expecting a Romney/Gingrich ticket. Gingrich is enough of a washington creature that he can help round out Romney.

[D.Turtle]

Then all of a sudden here we are with Newt Gingrich who started this race by having to get down on his knees and kowtow to Rush for criticizing the Paul Ryan budget way back in the spring and having his entire staff quit on him, to leading the pack. And not just leading the pack by a little but by the highest margin to date.

Actually, that last bit isn't true. It's just a result of the smoothing reflecting their downturn after their respective peaks. If you look at the polls at (or just before) their peak, then both Perry and Cain had just as big leads over Romney as Gingrich now has. Bachmann peaked about 10% lower. So, Gingrich is currently in exactly the same position as Perry and Cain before their fall from Grace.

Edit: If you look at the other people peaking, then they each lasted roughly a month at the top before dropping down again. So, thats at least the amount of time you'd have to wait. Of course, the first primaries are coming up anyways, at which point nobody knows what will happen, and the situation can change daily.

[Skgoa]

It's telling that they turned to Gingrich only AFTER Bachmann, Perry, and even the guy who is getting his policy from Simcity and his inspirational quotes from the pokemon movie. THAT is how much nobody wants to nominate him. I really doubt romney will have to fear anyone when the actual primaries start.


Also, I am going to call it right now: Obama will win this election, unless something truely unforseeable and game-changing happens. No repblican candidate currently in the race could win in the actual election.

[DarkArk]

Also, I am going to call it right now: Obama will win this election, unless something truely unforseeable and game-changing happens. No repblican candidate currently in the race could win in the actual election.

Quite likely at this point. Incumbents usually hold their seats unless they've royally screwed up somehow. The economic troubles doesn't seem to be sticking to him at the moment, and there really isn't any other issue that's that big of a problem. Depending on who does get the nomination he might even win by more than he did in 2008. McCain was not that bad a candidate.

Perry and Cain before their fall from Grace.

But the brilliance of it is that there's nothing to cause Gingrich having a fall from grace. All of his baggage is old news. I think it's quite likely he'll defeat Romney in the early primaries.

[Skgoa]

Yeah, everybody knows he is an abhorable slimebag, yet they still favor him over Romney. (Well, Romney isn't much better.)

[Mr Bean]

Yeah, everybody knows he is an abhorable slimebag, yet they still favor him over Romney. (Well, Romney isn't much better.)

The problem as pointed out on Politico and elsewhere all of Gingrich faults are Romney's faults save one and that the material issue. He can't be accused of much of anything that does not also stain Romney in some way. In many ways Romney gets the worse of those attacks because he was more liberal that Newt in the past on those issues.

[Simon_Jester]

What, Romney's venal, erratic, self-aggrandizing, and untrustworthy?

[Mr Bean]

What, Romney's venal, erratic, self-aggrandizing, and untrustworthy?

No, yes, yes and yes
I've never heard Romney called venal but erratic, self promoting and untrustworthy all fit as a man desperate to say whatever people wants to here when he goes before them.

[Zinegata]

It's really too bad Huntsman has no chance. He gave an excellent interview in Zakaria's GPS last night that showed how much saner he is compared to the MOAR CONSERVATIVE crowd without having to resort to nastiness.

Here's to him winning New Hampshire (not likely, but still) so that everyone will go "Oh fuck!" and maybe think for a second about how stupid this race has become.

[TimothyC]

It's really too bad Huntsman has no chance. He gave an excellent interview in Zakaria's GPS last night that showed how much saner he is compared to the MOAR CONSERVATIVE crowd without having to resort to nastiness.

Here's to him winning New Hampshire (not likely, but still) so that everyone will go "Oh fuck!" and maybe think for a second about how stupid this race has become.

As much as I would like Huntsman to win, I'm not sure that if he wins in New Hampshire that it doesn't fatally injure the Romney campaign.

[Zinegata]

It's really too bad Huntsman has no chance. He gave an excellent interview in Zakaria's GPS last night that showed how much saner he is compared to the MOAR CONSERVATIVE crowd without having to resort to nastiness.

Here's to him winning New Hampshire (not likely, but still) so that everyone will go "Oh fuck!" and maybe think for a second about how stupid this race has become.

As much as I would like Huntsman to win, I'm not sure that if he wins in New Hampshire that it doesn't fatally injure the Romney campaign.

Possibly, but if Obama doesn't face Romney then chances are good that Obama will win. Gingrich has too many skeletons in his closet that the "Anybody but Romney!" and "MOAR CONSERVATIVE" crowd are ignoring that will come to bite them back in the general elections.

[The Romulan Republic]

Why would Romney be likely to win? The man is a notorious flip-flopper without much charisma, and is disliked by much of his party's base.

[Eframepilot]

Why would Romney be likely to win? The man is a notorious flip-flopper without much charisma, and is disliked by much of his party's base.

It's not that Romney is a particularly strong candidate, it's that he is the strongest candidate in comparison to the rest of the field who are all laughably unelectable. The thinking is that Obama is very weak due to the economy and any Republican who is electable at all could beat him... which is Romney and no one else.

In a sane world, Newt would not have one chance in a million at getting the nomination. But unfortunately for the Republicans, they've created their own parallel reality for conservatives to inhabit that is sanity-free.

[The Romulan Republic]

Romney might be stronger than, say, Bachman. That doesn't mean he'll be able to win. He still has all the drawbacks I described above.

[Zinegata]

Why would Romney be likely to win? The man is a notorious flip-flopper without much charisma, and is disliked by much of his party's base.

It's not that Romney is a particularly strong candidate, it's that he is the strongest candidate in comparison to the rest of the field who are all laughably unelectable.

Yep. Romney has flaws, but he's actually electable and won't turn off everyone who isn't in the MOAR CONSERVATIVE camp.

[Count Chocula]

I really, really hate to write this, but if he's the Republican candidate he'll lock up the "Anyone But Obama" vote. Possibly including some OWSers if the tweets can be believed.

[Simon_Jester]

Romney's explicit support for corporate citizenship and so on will probably turn most OWSers off.

[Skgoa]

Yeah, Obama's problems seem to be that he has gone more to the right than people had hoped. I don't see how Romney is supposed to convince those voters that he would do a better job.

[Pelranius]

Not to mention that Romney's little $10,000 bet probably wasn't a very smart idea.

And companies like Bain Capital might not be too popular in the current employment-scarce environment, either.

[BrooklynRedLeg]

Ron Paul Holds Crucial Card in GOP Race
CAPITAL JOURNAL DECEMBER 12, 2011, 1:17 P.M. ET.
By GERALD F. SEIB

Ron Paul is the wild card in the Republican presidential deck—and that makes him one of the most important cards of all right now.

It was possible earlier this year to write off the libertarian Texas congressman as an eccentric simply looking, as he did four years ago, for a place on a debate stage to proclaim his gospel of small government and hard money. But now Mr. Paul appears to be the man who could shape the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, which could go a long way toward shaping the overall race.

Nationally, Mr. Paul's support runs a modest 10% or so in most polls, putting him well behind front-runners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. But in Iowa, four polls in the past two weeks or so have put him at an average of 18%—high enough to compete for second place.

Indeed, to watch Saturday night's Iowa debate, and hear the audience reaction to Rep. Paul, was to sense how well he is striking chords with voters. A strong Paul performance in Iowa would go a long way toward determining not just the outcome of the Jan. 3 caucuses there, but the path of the crucial phase of the race that immediately follows Iowa.

Here's why.

If Mr. Paul does well in Iowa, he could so muddy the waters that there is no clear winner. An inconclusive outcome would be a boon for Mr. Romney, who hasn't done all that well in Iowa, and who is counting much more heavily on winning the New Hampshire primary a week later. A murky Iowa result would reduce any momentum the upstart Mr. Gingrich might enjoy heading into New Hampshire.

New Hampshire, in turn, is looking ever more important for Mr. Romney, because it's followed by South Carolina and Florida, where Mr. Gingrich is surging. So the way Iowa sets the table for New Hampshire is highly important, and the Paul factor will be central to the table-setting.

If Mr. Paul really exceeds expectations in Iowa, that also might set the stage for him to break away from the GOP down the road and mount an independent presidential run. After all, he ran once before as a Libertarian Party candidate, in 1988.

"If Paul wins Iowa, which is not out of the question, then you're going to see a lot of forces [within the Republican Party] try to denigrate him and cut him back," says Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "Then I could see Paul saying, 'I've been screwed by this party's establishment, so screw you, I'll run as an independent.' "

There are two particular reasons to take Mr. Paul particularly seriously in Iowa. One is the strange nature of caucuses, and the second is the resonance of his libertarian message in this year of evaporating faith in government.

Doing well in caucuses requires finding supporters who will go the extra mile for you. Voters aren't merely asked, as in a primary election, to show up at a local polling station and check a name on a ballot, but rather to venture out on a cold January night, in the case of Iowa, to a meeting and voice public support.

That assignment seems to fit Mr. Paul's followers, who carry a special degree of intensity into their political activity. Their passion "isn't about personality but philosophy," Mr. Ornstein notes.

That may be especially true this year, when the Paul message of radically scaling back the size and scope of government would appear to match a mood of public disgust at Washington and its seeming inability to come together to perform even the most basic of functions. To be the man identified with cutting down government at a time when everybody hates government may be the political equivalent of selling hot chocolate to a freezing crowd at a football game.

There are some significant soft spots that would seem to limit how far Mr. Paul can rise. His laissez-faire attitude toward social issues and his nearly isolationist views on foreign policy run into resistance among the GOP's social and religious conservatives and its national-security hawks.

In addition, a surprisingly large bloc of Paul support comes from young voters. A compilation of recent Gallup polls shows Mr. Paul runs 10 percentage points higher among Republicans aged 18 to 34 than among the population at large. That raises the question: Will young voters, particularly those still in college and on winter break, show up for caucuses in the same way older Paul backers will?

Still, there is that intensity, remarked even by one of Mr. Paul's foes at Saturday's debate. Mr. Romney noted admiringly that what "amazes me is, when I come to a debate like this, the only signs I see are the Ron Paul people out there."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 86756.html

Iowa could well take the election in a whole different direction....

[Mr Bean]

It's been pretty clear that Paul is going to over preform his polling in Iowa given the nature of Iowa's election method and the fact that he's spent the last six years building a massive ground game there of very enthusiastic supporters. The worse the weather the more die hard the voter and the more diehard are Paul supporters. Newt is polling well but he has nothing in Iowa for a ground game. So I'd not be surprised to see Paul winning Iowa with 40% of the vote at the end of the day with Newt and Co splitting the other 60%.

[UnderAGreySky]

According to a couple of polls today, Obama leads both Gingrich and Romney... in Florida and South Carolina. In South Carolina? What the fuck happened in the last month for this turnaround? Anyone have any idea?

[Sriad]

I really, really hate to write this, but if he's the Republican candidate he'll lock up the "Anyone But Obama" vote. Possibly including some OWSers if the tweets can be believed.

Those sound like high-profile-because-they're-outliers tweets. OWS has been trying to include as many people as possible so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the "I'm a veteran and I'm O-ing WS" folks broke Republican... Obama's concern with regard to the supermajority of OWS isn't having them go Republican though; it's that they'll stay home or put enough energy behind third party candidates to be a factor in swing states.

Huntsman and Ron Paul could pull a lot of mainstream (traditional protester types, that is) OWSers into the Republican camp; no one else has a chance. Honestly? Ron Paul might have the best chance of beating Obama. Almost all of the Right will close ranks behind whoever gets the nod, and he'd sew chaos among the most energetic groups that supported Obama last time around. Sure he's a crazy guy, but that lets him speak to the inner-crazy-guy in all of us: everybody has a few positions no mainstream politician is willing to touch, and when Paul speaks to those things the resonance covers up a lot of the crazy shit people DON'T agree with.