Replies

” conservatives don’t have the luxury of dropping Perry. We have no place else to go. He is the only available port in a storm.”

Not true. Any one of those other candidates on that platform last night would be 1000% better than BHO.

By Nov 2012 Obama will likely not even be on the Democratic ticket as his own party in a state of desparation may well force him to resign or announce he is not running in 2012. If he does actually manage to stay in the race the GOP could run a corpse and win.

At this point I am waiting to see Newt’s new Contract For America which he will unveil in Iowa next week. I think a Gingrich/Cain ticket would win handily in 2012.

Perry is committing suicide with this immigration stance. If he keeps it up he’s toast.

The idea that any Republican candidate would be better than Obama is one of the many idiocies Gingrich has perpetrated lately. Mitt Romney would be worse than Obama, much worse. A Romney presidency would mean both parties were committed to maintaining the progessive status quo. Romney would be Obama without the escape hatch of an opposition party agitating or a change of direction. He would be Obama with no prospect that the next election might bring relief.

Newt Gingrich is not going to be on the Republican ticket and neither is Herman Cain. They certainly aren't going to be on a ticket together since they're both from Georgia and can't both get Georgia's electoral votes. Newt is utterly undisciplined. He's good at spinning off ideas but he has no capacity for separating the good ones from the bad ones. “Right-wing social engineering” alone is disqualifying, and lets not even talk about Dede Scozzafava or Nancy Pelosi and global warming. Newt is a valuable member of the chattering class, but he has no business running for President and he won't get very far. Herman Cain just doesn't have a presidential resume. That may not be fair. It doesn't matter. He will never break out of single digits.

You just aren't grappling with reality here in a number of respects. There is no alternative to Perry and the immigration issue is both substantively and politically immaterial.

Immigration is substantively immaterial because it doesn't distinguish Perry from any other candidate. Perry has a soft spot for illegals. So does every other member of the political class. This is one thing all the players agree on. Nobody with a shot at the White House in either party would deal with our illegal immigration problem more aggressively than Rick Perry would. You won't see serious action from any of them.

Politically, immigration is immaterial because it doesn't move enough votes to count. How many times to the immigration zealots have to be disappointed at the polls before they get the message. Almost nobody cares.

Those of us expecting this issue to hamper Perry are going to be disappointed, yet again.

Let's deal with reality. We either have to find a serious alternative or reconcile ourselves to Perry. There is no third option.