2012 Presidential Campaign
 

It is that time again! I know there is some discussion of this in the Obama thread, but I think it is time for a dedicated thread since the canidates have started their official announcements, and I am really interested in the breakdown from some of our political commentators/experts on this board. At this point, it is discussion of mostly the Republican field, unless there is some nut that is going to come out of nowhere to try act as spoiler for the Obama corination on the Democratic side.

For all of the Trump press for the last couple of months, it looks like he has dropped down in the field right now, with Huckabee and Romney in the front seats. Huckabee is a maybe to run (annoucing tonight), but looks to have an inside track if he does. Romney has the money, but looks weak and will be attacked heavy by the tea-party wing of the party. I just don't think he can survive.

Who else looks like they have a chance? Who is most likely to take Obama down? Who is least likely? Inquiring minds wants to know!

538 always a great place to start

I think he pretty fairly concludes that we really have no idea right now.

I don't like Huckabee and still think his pardon is going to be a big issue, if he manages to gain some traction I think he's the best politician of those running. He's great at making far right ideas sound like folk wisdom.

Trump seemed like a one-issue guy, and he shot that wad already.

A lot of his other current stances are in drastic opposition to things he said even 10-15 years ago, and he'd get beat upside the head with them in any Republican primary. I don't think he's running.

Huntsman and Romney I think are both solid candidates, but I don't think they can win the nomination in the current environment. The areas where they show moderation are areas that would make the South and the Tea Party in general hiss and recoil.

Ron Paul is a guy who has had a strong Internet following in the past, and may be able to translate that into additional success with the Tea Party movement, but I'm not sure if he fits that demographic beyond "government is bad, mmkay?"

Huckabee scares me, a little. If he runs, the evangelical background and the way he translates those to ideas about governance will play well in certain parts of the country (though likely not the Atlantic Seaboard or the West Coast), and the folksy "have a beer/BBQ with me" charm that he exudes plays well with the people who think the President should be an everyman.

I don't know much about Mitch Daniels.

It wouldn't shock me to see Scott Walker declare if the GOP manages to survive the upcoming WI recall elections. I can't imagine he declares if the GOP lose control of the WI Senate, but I could see him doing so if they retain control.

The WI Democratic Party is going to be coming after Walker in January either way, but if they're coming after him with some scalps in the belt already, it would be a major distraction in terms of media cycles just as the primaries would be getting underway.

Sarah Palin is going to amount to fuck-all this time around, if she even bothers to run. She's more interested in making money off of her name and visibility than being President.

If the economy improves, I'm not sure any of those candidates are likely to beat President Obama.

I'm not sure any of them would beat him if the election were held today.

But the candidates I think have the most challenge potential for him are, depending on events, Huckabee, Walker and Romney.

I say 'depending on events,' because all three of those folks need something to break right for them. Huckabee would have to declare and hope that the momentum he showed in 2008 was pro-Huck and not "McCain protest vote".

Walker needs to emerge from the upcoming recall elections with his party still in control of the state apparatus. Losing the Senate would show weakness for his own position in January, and getting recalled as Governor would be a potentially damaging blow just as primaries got underway.

Romney needs to be able to articulate a position that gets people to look past "Mormon" and "I implemented ObamaCare when it was RomneyCare." Both of those things would pose difficulties for him with the evangelicals and Tea Party folks.

Dola: what does it say that I went through all of that and completely ignored Newt Gingrich?

That you are well reasoned and logical. I don't think he can even win his own states primary. Honestly, even as a non-Republican, I like Newt. He is smarter than you might think (a professor, who has championed foward thinking causes in the past), but he is not trustworthy. I don't give him a snow-balls chance to get out of the early stages of the election processes.

I was surprised at the beating Romeny got from former supporters like National Review.

They all (and everyone always will) have baggage to carry, but I agree with you that he has the best ability to overcome it with his "aw-shucks" salesman ability. I think he is right-wing with moderate-type sale-ability. He could win it all. The thing is, he might not want to leave behind the comfy life and the stacks of money he is making right now. He and Palin are the most interesting of figures. They have made a fortune off of losing a national campaign, and playing like they might take on another. They both might not want to stop the money train by actually running again.

Hm.

I wouldn't say 'not trustworthy,' although his ex-wives might disagree. I mean, I completely believe that he'd pursue the agenda he's said he would. I think we can take him at his word on issues that pertain to what he would do as President.

But with respect to his character in general, I'd say 'disingenuous.' This is a guy who has essentially called the President a liar with respect to faith, calling his Administration "anti-Christian," while at the same time playing the faith card with his own candidacy, which is a little amusing when you look at his personal background.

I guess I just consider it a loser to be playing the faith card against the sitting President and calling him 'anti-Christian' when you've got two affairs and subsequent divorces in your own background. Saying "that guy isn't what he claims to be, but trust me, I'm not the man I used to be" just...doesn't fly for me.

If you're gonna nominate a candidate who makes faith a big deal, you might as well go for Huckabee. Gingrich just strikes me as too cynical on the matter, and I think maybe subconsciously I suspect the electorate would get the same vibe.

I call him "untrustworthy" because I remember the "contract with America." His brain-child that gave him the power as speaker of the House, which he immediately ignored every power-control element of once he had power. He was not a trust-worthy speaker of the House, so how could he be a trust-worthy President?

He only had affairs because he loved America too much.

On the issue of trustworthiness...

I'm trying to remember the last President who could be considered trustworthy based on their words and their subsequent actions. I'm having trouble finding one. Maybe I've just grown completely cynical at this stage in my life (honestly, I'm not excited by any of the potential candidates on either side of the aisle).

Newts your stereotypical politician, something I think people are not looking for. His negatives are far too high to win a general. He'll be able to dictate some of the discussion during the campaign, but I don't think he stands a reasonable shot at swaying any new voters to his side.

Romney seems like a safe pick. Conservatives probably don't trust him fully because of his past, but they can probably bite their tongue and hope what he says now is what he'll pursue. His business background will play strong if the economy plays a role moving forward. I think he'd be the frontrunner at the moment.

Huckabee is a bit of a wildcard. He's one of those guys who can attack but come across likeable when doing it. He's got some of the social conservative chops although fiscally he's been bad for them. He seems like a guy who could gain momentum and win it since he comes across so well to people.

Trump was looking for ratings for his TV show. I doubt he's ever been serious about running. And the establishment would destroy him before he put his boots on the ground.

Palin is just too polarizing. Has a core but that's it. She'd be better off making a shitload of money giving speeches.

The other people who are around don't seem to be serious contenders. Pawlenty is just boring. Daniels is too unknown. And Bachmann is only a Representative (and crazy). Still far too early but I really don't think this election will be like the last. Republicans have typically been in favor of going with safe picks, so I think Romney would be the guy I think has the best chance to win.

Newt is not only genuinely smart, he's also the most charismatic person one-on-one I've ever met, almost to the point of being frightening how good he is (or was back in the day) in very small groups.

edit to add: FTR, I'm a good distance away from even having Newt as a top 5 choice for me personally, so don't anyone mistake my comment for an endorsement or whatever. Just making an observation based on some experiences with him back in my media days.

Well, it doesn't matter what we think of Huckabee. He staying out and keeping the money. Not a surprise since he told staffers in South Carolina over a month ago to go ahead and find new jobs with other campaigns. He would have made things interesting at least.

Jimmy Carter

If you replaced the name "Newt" with "Bill Clinton," this sentence would also be true. Very similar guys in many respects.

In the modern presidential primary era, I think it's noteworthy that we're on a run of 20 years of presidents who had never before run for the office before.

While some candidates have earned their party's nomination on a second bid, none of them have won. I think there is something to be said for the fact that running once and failing hurts your reputation. But I think the bigger factor is that the more voters know you, the higher your negatives are.

If past failure continues to a barometer for presidential success, Romney and Gingrich could theoretically get the nomination but would appear to have little chance to win. I'd include Palin in that group, since I think at this point she's been vetted like a presidential candidate, even if she only ran for VP. Given the choice of Romney, Gingrich, Palin or the field, I'd take the field.

The GOP field is just ... odd. I've met Tim Pawlenty and while he seems like a nice guy, he seemed more like a next door neighbor who owns his own insurance agency than president. I've seen Hermain Cain speak, and he's a little crazy.

Is there any name who really excites anyone? Maybe someone who seems like a lightweight will emerge from the field. Obama started building buzz in 2004, and there's just no one that seems to excite anyone right now.

But if you zoom out a little it looks a bit different. For the Dems running and losing has been the kiss of death for future ambitions, but that isn't true for the GOP. Since 1968 only Bush2 has been elected president without having run and lost previously and only Ford, who is an historical oddity, has been nominated by the GOP without having lost previously.

I don't have any theory on why this is so, and it's still a small sample size, but losing almost seems a prerequisite for the GOP nominee.

I don't know if that's the question so much as "is there any name that excites enough people"?

I mean, yeah, there's at least one candidate I find especially appealing at this point despite at least one major flaw but if I'm part of only 10% (of primary voters) who has that reaction then that's not enough to matter.

The real issue will be whether there's a candidate that, at the end of the process, can excite enough people to matter. Some seem to be obvious failures on that count (yeah Mitt, I'm looking at you) while others might not be option 1 for many people at the moment but still be not only supportable but eventually supportable with enthusiasm if they lack the baggage or negatives that'll hamstring others. It's that group that I figure will produce the eventual nominee.

Who the heck do you like JIMGA? Palin or Bachmann?

My thoughts on Palin are fairly well established here I think, or should be since I've discussed them several times. She's an interesting character I see some positives in but have never quite been able to put my finger on why she seems to connect to so many people. My taking her as a serious contender is not to be confused with being a big supporter.

But you did good in spotting exactly who I meant. If I had to vote in a primary tomorrow I'd take Bachmann over anyone else in the field with very little hesitation, in spite of our dramatically different views on abortion.

I think Michelle Bachmann is the only potential GOP candidate I think would be a *worse* President than Sarah Palin.

Jeepers creepers. I'd vote for the reanimated corpse ticket of Mao and Stalin before I'd vote for either one of those jokers.

I'm glad Huckabee's not running. The idea of Palin or Bachmann frightens me also, but mostly because I think they're a pair of incompetent lunatics. Huckabee strikes me as a competent lunatic, and I find that far more frightening.

Republican Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2012 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's a pretty exhaustive list of everybody who's either formally announced, considering a run, or been talked about.

General Petraeus would've been an interesting possibility, but the rest of the names I see there run the gamut from "not all that excited about" to "oh fuck me sideways no".

/threadjack

{shrug} Then don't vote for her. So far, in terms of earning my vote & enthusiastic support she's got the best plus/minus ratio of any candidate I've run across. Electability is a different equation but once you start playing that game then the enthusiasm diminishes for most candidates. The more apoplectic a candidate can make the left, the more likely they are to earn my enthusiastic support ... not because of the apoplexy itself but rather for what creating it likely means in terms of meaning their positions match my own.


I think you must be confusing them with Ron Paul, who is actually lunatic enough to be a pair all by himself.

Ron Paul's an...interesting guy. If you've read "Supreme Courtship," he's kind of what I pictured in my head for the President Vanderkamp character. The fact that "Supreme Courtship" is a satire probably says it all.

But I mean, seriously. Half the shit that comes out of Bachmann's mouth would make the Texas Board of Education blush. It's that ignorant.

Palin actually looks *good* next to her, and part of me wonders if that isn't Bachmann's intent in running in the first place. Kind of like the old saw about how the "white establishment" dealt with MLK Jr because they *didn't* want to deal with Malcolm X.

/too easy

I'll admit I'm far too moderate-to-liberal to say anything nice about Bachmann. But in political reality, she has Democratic equivalents -- Dennis Kucinich comes immediately to mind. Both have small but vocal bases and generate enough heat to get votes and get on TV. But both are far too extreme and (dare I say) crazy to get widespread support.

What's striking me as amazing right now are the similarities of the 2012 field to the 2004 Democratic field. It's a similar political environment with a beatable incumbent and a slew of niche candidates that don't seem to excite multiple blocs of voters. There's a Kerry (Romney), Lieberman (Palin), Dean (Pawlenty), Sharpton (Cain). Heck, if Patraeus decided to jump in, you'd even have a Wesley Clark.

I was reading somewhere that the GOP has just had a bad set of dice rolls this cycle. As a society we've decided that there's maybe thirty or forty people that could become the President (Governors, Senators, VPs) and that narrow pool means that some years you'll come up with no appealing candidates.

Heh, like the Democrats in 2004.

Yep.

I have been thinking the same thing. Obama is very beatable, but there is no one in this crop that makes it a clear win. Romney/Kerry is dead on.

I think Huntsman could be the best challenger to Obama and is the the only GOP candidate that has any of my interest (in terms of voting). Mitch Daniels might be a strong contender as well, but I don't know too much about him other than a few things he's done on the business side for Indiana.

Is Michelle really taken seriously by her own party? They seem like they try to separate themselves from her.

I don't think she is, but calling her on her bullshit is a good way to piss off the Tea Party folks, which no prospective candidate really wants to do.

I think that in a world with high unemployment and high gas prices, the GOP's best bet to win is to just attack, attack, attack. In that vein, a '''do no harm" candidate seems like the best bet. My guess is Pawlenty, though I could see Daniels or Huntsman also fitting that bill. Even though Romney fits that description, I just don't see that anyone likes him.

If the economy were doing gangbusters, then I would see more logic in the GOP trying to run an unconventional candidate--Gingrich, Palin, Cain, etc.

But, for 2012, you try to make this about jobs, and hope that people vote for you b/c you are not the President.

Huntsman is a great general election candidate who would appear on paper to have absolutely zero chance of making it through a GOP primary field. The rest of the GOP field is ready to run as many photos of Huntsman with Obama, letters praising Obama and photoshopped direct mail showing Huntsman officiating over a marriage between Nancy Pelosi and a horse as part of his pro-civil unions stance.

Mitch Daniels is charitably 5'6". Short candidates don't win. At least since James Madison.

If he did run and got the GOP nod, I think he could give the Obama campaign a lot of problems. It would be tough to run against the same guy who you've appointed to be the Ambassador to China, the big fish in the sea.

Individual mandate. Romney will be scorched in the GOP primary for that.

Obama inherited unemployment of 8.5%. If unemployment goes below 8.5 then I don't see any way the GOP beats him whoever they field. Right now, unemployment is 8.7%.

Having said that, I think Mitch Daniels is the most promising candidate they have.

But isn't the opposite also true? It would be awfully hard to say the guy you worked for and repeatedly praised should be replaced by yourself.

I think that Huntsman might be playing the long game here and looking for 2016. If he comes out of this primary season with the narrative "Huntsman looked good, but was too moderate to win the primary," that has a lot of advantages for him.

If, by 2016, the GOP is looking for someone "to appeal to moderates" or "with a chance to win some Democratic and independent voters in the general," he'll be the obvious go-to guy.

If, by 2016, the GOP is still driven by its more right-wing base, then he has no chance whatsoever. So there really is no point in him even trying to win in a world like that.

Basically, the only way that Huntsman wins the nomination is in a world in which the GOP is looking for someone with more crossover appeal than base appeal. That being the case, he might as well start positioning himself to be that candidate now, so he can jump on the chance when/if it ever happens.

Obviously Ron Paul will not win the nomination but heres hoping he runs as an independent and either gets the Republican candidate to make some consessions to the Libertarian viewpoint or possibly exposes that there is a viewpoint outside of the two major parties. You have to admit the debates would be fun. (I know he doesn't want to control people's personal lives and kill brown people so people like JiMGa think he's a nut and not a true Republican)

Hasn't Paul repeatedly said he won't run as an independent?

Ya, I don't think Paul really thinks he can win, but that maybe he can influence the Republican party more as a member of it, rather than running against it.

Well, those things and the whole legalize drugs thing.

He may not want to control people's personal lives, but he has no problem with states doing it.

Appreciate you catching that, that's a primary reason I consider Paul at best equally unappealing to the current occupant (and one of two reasons that Gingrich has no chance of getting my vote either).

Telling people how to govern themselves isn't controlling their lives?

Edit: Everybody wants to control in some way, there's just different flavors of doing so. Some want to control their sex lives, some want to control their money. The biggest threat to liberty is controlling the means by which those decisions are made. The constitution provided one approach be combat that. Ron Paul likes that approach. There could be others, but I'm not sure about the "let's just have everyone do what I personally think is good" approach.

That doesn't make any sense, because that still happens on the state level. I'm sure if Atlanta voted on its own, they would legalize gay marriage, but Georgia won't let them do that.

But I'm not telling anyone to do anything. If you believe marriage is only one women, one man, then fine. That's how y our marriage can be. I'm not forcing you to do anything. The reverse position is preventing people from doing something that does not negatively affect others in any way.

And I don't base my argument here on what I "personally think is good". There are many things I don't think are "good" that I believe should be constitutionally protected. Fred Phelps, for example.

The more centralization, the less liberty, but obviously there's practical realities too you have to balance with that. But surely - one world government dictating everyone's values would be bad wouldn't it? There's room for reasonable disagreement between those extremes of course. I just don't think it's fair to take a view that would support more decentralization and attack it as being "anti-" the issue we're talking about. it's a strawman. If someone thinks the states should decide something, that doesn't necessarily mean that that person has any particular view on the merits of that "something". It is possible to believe in someone's right to have a view, and govern, in a way different than you would.