Who is likely to be the Republican candidate in 2016

[TimothyC]

Mind if I ask which CBO report you read? I thought the report(if we're thinking of the same CBO report, mind) said people were quitting jobs they didn't want because they didn't have to keep them now for insurance reasons. Didn't mean the jobs weren't still on the market. Did I miss something?

It's likely to be the same report. The point is, we're changing the employment calculus in a way that results in fewer hours worked. Now, there are people for whom that would represent an improvement in the quality of life, but it also represents a further reduction of the projected tax base. There have been other reports about shifts from full time employment to part time employment.

[Block]

Mind if I ask which CBO report you read? I thought the report(if we're thinking of the same CBO report, mind) said people were quitting jobs they didn't want because they didn't have to keep them now for insurance reasons. Didn't mean the jobs weren't still on the market. Did I miss something?

It's likely to be the same report. The point is, we're changing the employment calculus in a way that results in fewer hours worked. Now, there are people for whom that would represent an improvement in the quality of life, but it also represents a further reduction of the projected tax base. There have been other reports about shifts from full time employment to part time employment.

Or it opens up more employment for younger people who have been stuck in a lower position right?

[Slacker]

Mind if I ask which CBO report you read? I thought the report(if we're thinking of the same CBO report, mind) said people were quitting jobs they didn't want because they didn't have to keep them now for insurance reasons. Didn't mean the jobs weren't still on the market. Did I miss something?

Just the Fox News spin. What the CBO report *actually* means is that the labor pool is shrinking while the number of jobs is remaining the same, which in this economy means either reduced unemployment or increased wages. But Fox News.

*edit* Tim, it only shrinks the tax base if there aren't people to take those jobs in turn-they're not going away, they just need new people for them. In theory, an economy with full employment would have an issue with this. We, well, don't have full employment, so it's actually kind of a good thing for us.

[Gaidin]

I guess now it's a bad thing we're no longer a slave to our employers?

[Napoleon the Clown]

Tim, think of it this way: People will now feel more comfortable trying to start a business or become self employed. Aren't conservatives supposed to be massively in favor of entrepreneurs?

[Welf]

Isn't it pointless to try to predict the 2016 candidates before the US mid term elections have happened? The elections will be decided by how the economy develops and how the ACA is implemented. If the Democrats can keep at least one chamber and prevent destructive policies that hurt the economy it's likely that by 2015/16 the economy will grow with a decent rate. And the long term benefits of the ACA will become more apparent. And if the public accepts the ACA any candidate that runs on a platform against it will fail in a general elections, but any candidate who will focus on reforming it will have problems in the primaries. Then the nomination depends on how strong the Republican leadership can influence the primaries which is not apparent at the moment.
A victory of Republicans in the mid-terms will change that. I predict hard times for the economy and thus making a Republican victory in the election more likely. Even more conservative candidates have a chance then since they won't automatically fail in the general election,

[Simon_Jester]

A lot depends on WHY the economy struggles. If we have a recession triggered by a debt default, everyone's going to go "DAMMIT REPUBLICANS!" If things simply... get worse, for no easily explainable single reason, that probably does make the Republicans' path easier.

Hillary does legitimately have a weakness in her age; she'll be 68 when the election rolls around. The number of presidents who hit their 70th birthday in office can be counted on the fingers of one hand. By my count, only four presidential elections were ever won by a man who would be a septuagenarian before the end of that term.

That was when the life expectancy was much lower, though, and women usually tend to live longer and in better health than men, too.

You're absolutely right, and she might not be worried. It's still a legitimate political question- please remember that 'legitimate question' is not the same thing as 'damning conviction of why this person should not be elected.' I think TimothyC's exaggerating the importance of Hillary's age, but it's an issue, and if she does win in 2016 it'll be a victory for old people as well as women in public office.

[Although Ronald Reagan pretty much won the 'battle of insanely old presidents' already...]

The governors in question are also getting stuff done - and have generally high approval ratings (showing that the people that elected them have faith in what they are doing).

You mean, like certain Mitt Romney, and then Romneycare and abortion stance came back to bite him in the ass in elections?

Yes; this is one of the reasons I'm less sanguine about Republican governors than he is. It's not that they'd make bad presidents (or at least not worse presidents than, say, Paul Ryan). It's that they have to fight a lot of different factions of their own party to get into the White House. Which is why several people are saying they have to do too much tacking from right to center to win.

Romney was kind of relying on that 'Etch-a-Sketch' effect... and it didn't happen that way.

[Elheru Aran]

Governors who run for office tend to have to step up to the broader Republican national stump. How close they get depends on the strength of their convictions. Mittens basically went "hey I'll do anything to get into office, what the hell" and then started trying to back off from that once he realized he had jumped firmly into crazy-land.

One thing that's going to make any candidates'-- liberal as well as conservative, but probably more conservative right now-- lives' hell is the prevalence of freelance news media, i.e. a dude with an iPhone in the corner who can't believe what he's hearing coming out of the mouth of this guy. A few quiet swipes across the screen, a upload to Mother Jones or Huffington Post later, and someone's saying crazy stuff to what they think is a private audience. In the long run it's going to make people a lot more cautious about what they say at fund-raiser dinners and private conferences and such. In the short term the older white males-- the Republican core, in other words-- are going to be fairly oblivious to such, and I foresee some quite fun little videos coming up around this year's midterm elections and 2016... "someone should kill Obama", "I'm gonna do everything in my power to obstruct Obamacare in my state and I don't care who it harms", et cetera.

[Simon_Jester]

Governors who run for office tend to have to step up to the broader Republican national stump. How close they get depends on the strength of their convictions. Mittens basically went "hey I'll do anything to get into office, what the hell" and then started trying to back off from that once he realized he had jumped firmly into crazy-land.

One thing that's going to make any candidates'-- liberal as well as conservative, but probably more conservative right now-- lives' hell is the prevalence of freelance news media, i.e. a dude with an iPhone in the corner who can't believe what he's hearing coming out of the mouth of this guy. A few quiet swipes across the screen, a upload to Mother Jones or Huffington Post later, and someone's saying crazy stuff to what they think is a private audience. In the long run it's going to make people a lot more cautious about what they say at fund-raiser dinners and private conferences and such...

Ideally, this will result in Darwinian selection against politicians with the 'Nixon-like' profile of being vindictive, hateful bastards in private who have contempt for large sectors of the electorate. They're the guys who will say the most horrible things that show up later, and say them the most frequently.

Or so I'd hope, though it may not happen.

[I gave the example of the fake-Koch call with Scott Walker. Although to be fair Walker managed to come out of that one without saying anything really damning like "I wish I could call out the National Guard to shoot those stupid protestors." Despite the prankster-impersonator kind of... fishing for such statements by generally sounding like the caricature of a horrible far-right-wing billionaire with secret plans to take over America.]

[xerex]

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/


Tier 1 : Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Chris Christie

Tier 2 : Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich

Wild Cards : Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mike Huckabee

Also Rans : Rick Santorum, Rick Perry.



Odd spot : if the ticket is Rand Paul and Scott Walker then the ticket will be Paul Walker 2016 .

[Raw Shark]

In the short term the older white males-- the Republican core, in other words-- are going to be fairly oblivious to such, and I foresee some quite fun little videos coming up around this year's midterm elections and 2016... "someone should kill Obama", "I'm gonna do everything in my power to obstruct Obamacare in my state and I don't care who it harms", et cetera.

Speaking as a walking, talking informal poll of the general public because I drive a taxi (who has often suspected that installing a video camera in my cab would provide a fascinating window on humanity to many), I can confirm that it's pretty rare for me to have a night go by without some dipshit expressing a sentiment along the lines of, "Somebody [ed: who is definitely not me, but you know, some other right-wing lunatic who has nothing to lose] should kill Obama." Not vote against him. Not protest his decisions. Straight-up murder the guy. Granted, most of the people I drive are anywhere from kind-of-tipsy to fucking-hammered, but that just makes me doubt their sincerity less...