Posted on 05/15/2011 10:21:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I took a much needed break this weekend with friends and family and so I wasn’t around to blog the big news. Mike Huckabee is out of the running for the Presidential nomination.
Now, I said as early as February 22nd that I was betting Huckabee wouldn’t run. So I’m happy to have a winning prediction under my belt. But besides that, this really shakes up the calculus for 2012.
Iowa is now going to be wide open, and it leaves the “not Mitt Romneycare” position as one much easier to fill. The question is, who does this benefit? Palin? Bachmann? Someone else? Personally, I’ll be bold and say that Sarah Palin jumps in later in the year and consolidates that large chunk of the far right base that is, for all intents and purposes, the majority of the Republican Party. It will be her and Romney clashing state to state, right up to the end. Of course I reserve the right to be wrong, but after calling Huckabee’s non run for what it was I’m feeling lucky.
This also makes things easier for Dems in Arkansas. 2012 may end up being rough, but it’s starting to look, potentially, better than last year. Sure Obama isn’t going to help Democrats in Arkansas out, but Mike Huckabee would have come to the table with very real, and long, coattails in this state. As unpopular as Obama has been here in this state, I can’t see someone like Romney, Palin, or Gingrich getting Arkansans fired up for the Republicans. And while it may not make things a great deal easier, there is a big difference between a fired up base and a base that is holding its nose, especially if things continue to get worse for Republicans across the board as seems to be happening.
As for the Mike Huckabee Presidential Fan Club in Arkansas? To them I say get over it. Your man was a con-artist who was using you. All he cares about is himself and making money. So much for that “Godly preacher” business. Oh, and you get so very few chances in politics. This was probably Huckabee’s last, best shot to be President. It will not come around again.
Ronald Reagan was behind in the polls into October, 1980 - and proceeded to blow away Jimmy Carter when we actually voted in the general election.John McCain was the nominee in '08, and he showed how not to run agains Obama. Romney would make no effective attacks on Obamacare, at a time when defeating Obama will be critical to any hope of saving medical choice.McCain used to joke about the media being "my base." How did that work out in a race for the presidency against a liberal Democrat?? We know that "objective" journalism is interested only in its own importance, and that "liberals" get that positive labeling simply because they agree with "objective" journalism that "objective" journalism is more important than food, clothing, and shelter.
Since the Democrats are in symbiosis with "objective" journalists, it should - if your take is valid - be impossible for be impossible for any Republican to be elected president, ever. But that is not the case. In fact, Reagan won big, even with a Republican running as an independent in a three-way race. Landslides occur when things line up in a perfect storm - a weak incumbent, a bad economy, a charismatic challenger. There was nothing the media could do to save Nancy Pelosi's majority last year, and the way things are headed at the checkout register and the gas pump, there won't be anything the media can do about a Republican victory next November, either.
“Personally, I have no problem with Sarah Palin. I think she would probably make a good President. I just doubt that she can get there after the degree to which the media has poisoned her image.”
Actually I think you do have a problem with Palin....And that’s okay....If she does run we know the coverage of any debates she would participate in will be major....And then hearts and minds can be swayed by her performance firsthand, and not the corrupt media.....
That’s how I feel. Let her in. Let’s see her in the debates. Let’s see all of them in the debates.
I’d really like to be given a chance to make up my own mind.
and my response is that the polls show every GOPer getting beat by Obama. EVERYONE. If we go by polls we might as will hang it up now and just give Obama the election.
If and when she decides to jump in the game, I want to see a few debates before my decision is made. Not that I don't think she could do the job, I just want to see if she's learned to take care of herself better when faced with a hostile media and Democrat Party. She will be facing hostilities from half her own party as well so I hope she's been training hard.
I don't if you are old enough to remember the Johnson/Goldwater election in which after the election polls showed a majority of the public held views more closely to Goldwater than Johnson. Which goes to show how powerful images created by the media are and how these images influence the outcome of elections.
If we can’t get the most popular Governor in America, one of the two top candidates, a proven phenomenal campaigner, a whirlwind that delivered one of the greatest conservative elections in American history in 2010, and the true fighter of the 2008 Presidential election cycle into the White House because of media problems, then we may as well give up entirely and never try to break out of the Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, HW Bush, John McCain list of media approved GOP candidates ever again.
Governor Palin is something that we never expected, a second Reagan conservative that is an Alpha politician, the reality is that we never have that in a front tier candidate, ever, Palin is a rare fluke, we have no choice but to give this all we have, or else freerepublic may as well give up on Presidential politics and concentrate on lessor elections only.
Of your list, the only one who might challenge her if she runs is Pawlenty. He's a bit boring, but he's got some staying power.
If she runs, I think she's got the capacity to outdo the media. A major part of her campaign would likely be showing the lies and bias of the media. If anyone can run a campaign on the falsehoods of the media to the American public, it would be her. Whoever runs will have to take them head on for all their in the tank for Bambi corruption, and she's got the best chance of doing that correctly.
Right. I'm not saying it can't be done. But if Palin is to win the nomination and get the Presidency, she's got an uphill battle ahead of her, more so than a lot of others in the GOP field.
Of course, she's got a lot of fight in her. And she knows how to fight without looking like she's even breaking a sweat. That's one of Palin's best characteristics.
If she wins the nomination, she's got my vote. But as I say, rightly or wrongly (and I would argue wrongly) she's got a lot of KNOWN AND DEMONSTRATED negative public perception she'll need to overcome.
That's all.
No, I really don’t have a problem with Palin. I can only recall one occasion that she’s said something I really disagreed with, and I can’t actually remember now what it was, so it couldn’t have been that important.
As I’ve said elsewhere, if she wins the nomination, she’ll have my vote. Good luck to her.
I think she HAS to do this, and I think she would do it with gusto.
again the polls show Obama beating every candidate even the ones with low negatives. We need a fighter not a squish.
Chicago radio personality Roe Conn just speculated that Huck got out now because he was promised the v-p spot. He then predicted a Romney-Huckabee ticket. That Huck would bring in the Christian and conservative voters Romney would need. Excuse me, I have to go be sick.......
So a punch drunk sparring partner should run against the world’s heavy weigth champion?
Well, I only gave two examples - Reagan for a good candidate, and McCain for a bad one. Reagan was strong with conservatives, and McCain - to put it mildly - was not. I'm not certain what Reagan's negatives were, but Democrats always underestimated him, so they may not have pulled out all the stops going after him before the primary. They thought he was an easy mark. The difference between Reagan and Palin is that the Democrats could see at a glance when McCain introduced her to "the lower 48" that Palin was a mortal threat to their politics. And they have been firing for effect on her ever since.If we nominate Palin we have to take the long view, the same way that the coach of a pressing defense does in a basketball game. In the short run a press usually loses points - it's just that the press wears down the offense and induces a lot of turnovers late.
Palin would run a full court press on Obama, refusing to accept the administrations lame excuses and evasions. In the short run the media would be able to deflect and deny, but over the course of the campaign more and more people would pick up the good vibes from her and the bad ones which radiate so blatantly from this administration.The one thing that the Republican candidate must not do is accept the premise that Obama deserves "affirmative action." The people deserve wise leadership, and that is what we will never see from Obama. There is no reason to believe that in October 2012 the Obama economy will be acceptable to the electorate. Herman Cain is right - the Great Recession is no worse than a lot of recessions in American history. The Carter recession was far worse. It's just that the "recovery" from this recession has been the most anemic since the Great Depression. And that should surprise no one who understands that taxes and uncertainty are the enemies of business. Act like FDR, preside over an anemic economy like FDR.
Until Sarah Palin addresses her high negatives and sets a course of action to reverse her high negatives.(One thing she might consider is visiting a voice coach.) If Obama wins by a landslide, we stand a good chance of not taking over the Senate and losing our majority in the House. Furthermore, Obama would have free rein to recast the judiciary in a more liberal direction.
You have painted very vividly the scenario in which Palin loses - but negatives go both ways, and Obama can win only by running against his own economy. He has to follow the FDR strategy of making out that his predecessor was an evil genius at destroying the economy.In the depths of WWII, when good management was needed everywhere you looked, one of America's most renowned executives - when all that man was begging for was a chance to help the war effort. But Herbert Hoover was so valuable to FDR as a political boogie man that FDR could not give him any job at all.
Obama has followed the FDR path of subverting the economy, and Obama now owns 9% unemployment - and the college youth who voted for him are back living with their parents because they can't get a job. And gasoline is $4/gallon and rising. Inflation will, I very much fear, soon be rearing its ugly head everywhere except the housing market. Politically, Bush won't serve as Obama's Hoover; Bush polls better than Obama does, not drastically worse.The only thing Obama will have going for him is whatever extent he can demonize the Republican House - but Reed still owns the majority in the Senate, and Obama himself was in the majority in the Senate during the time when the Bush economy went south.
So the conclusion is that this will be an extremely negative election, with Obama blaming the world for not adoring him, and the one thing the Republicans can't afford to do is to nominate a McCain/Dole type willing to be passive while a black president complains. That, I'm confident, Palin will never do. The fact that she's not a white man liberates her in that regard, and I'm afraid I have no confidence in any other candidate in that respect. Congressman Bachman is - a congressman. No congressman has won the presidency since Lincoln was the first man to do it, winning less than 40% of the vote in a 4-way race. That is why I favor Palin's nomination.
Again, I have no illusions that the polls will ever show her in the lead until very late, any more than they did for Reagan.
We shouldn't have to count on egregious Obama mistakes for Palin to be able to win - but given incumbency and the symbiotic relationship between "objective" journalism and leftism, any Republican would need that. It's just that Obama had vulnerabilities in '08, too - but with McCain cooperating with the media to suppress any attempt to exploit them, they never seriously mattered.
Jack Kemp was a great man, and should have been a great campaigner for the Republicans in '96. But he allowed Gore to exploit Kemp's very uniqueness by drawing invidious comparisons against any voter who would vote Republican. As Lincoln said of Grant, "I can't spare the man - he fights!" I have no confidence in any of the rest of that bunch to not be McClellan instead of Grant.
worked for Rocky didn’t it?
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