No wonder he's disillusioned.
Again, Fred Barnes has a firm understanding of the situation.
Giuliani has sufficient name recognition and liberal enough politics to bring in lots of otherwise Rat voters, even without hard nosed campaigning. And that deeply saddens me.
As the only antidote to the horror of Hillary, Condi WILL run (and win).
History shows that governors have better odds of getting into the Presidency than do other politicians. How does Barbour sound out on the issue? The press puns will be endless of course ("Hillary just had a close shave with Barbour").
So how well known was George W. Bush in September 1997?
Congressional republicans seem to think they can just buy votes like democrats. Personally I'm prepared to vote for a democratic presidential candidate just to see an occasional veto.
4 of our 5 last presidents had little to no experience on the national level of politics.
Beltway insiders rarely win elections, at least in recent times, case in point, John Kerry, Algore, Walter Mondale, et al.
The analysis is facile. The list is incomplete. And it's only 2005.
Just because Hillary! has been running for President since 1993 does not mean the Republicans should be following suit. The public will tire of The Beast long before 2008. No Republican wants to suffer a similar fate.
First things first. The 2006 mid-terms loom large. If the Donks want to expend all their time and money worrying about the next election, I say we let them. Further Republican gains in 2006 will make them even more shrill, more desperate, more beholden to the moonbat wing of the party, and push them farther from the main-stream. If somebody had said that George Bush was going to run for President in 1997, 99.9% of people would have wondered why Poppy was going to jump back into that meat-grinder at his advanced age. The only people who are thinking about 2008 now are the Clintonistas, but that will come back to haunt them.
The rough-and-tumble of the Primary process will select the next 'Pubbie candidate. Contrary to the MSM's belief, candidates who emerge from bruising primaries do much better than candidates who are "coronated". A contested primary is one long campaign commercial, with lots of free media and public interest. Sure it costs money, but it raises a lot of money too.
If a candidate wins the nomination early, there are months and months between the end of campaigning and the nominating conventions. Think of how John F'n Kerry languished between the time he sewed up the Democratic nod and the Donk convention in Boston. He was old news by July.
But the candidates who have done well in the last thirty years -- LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Dukakis (who did far better than he should have), Clinton, and George W. Bush -- all faced tough primary challenges that they beat back in the later stages. OTOH, candidates who had it sewed up early -- Ford, Mondale, GHWB, Dole, Kerry -- flamed out in the Fall. The one candidate in this group who actually won an election, GHWB, won on the strength of Reagan. All the other candidacies were completely devoid of interest and irreversibly stigmatized by the opposition campaign by the time the Fall campaign even got started.
The extreme example of this will be Hillary! 2008!!!. She will be such a known quantity by the Summer of 2008, she will be so negatively painted by all Republicans and the disaffected Donks as well, that nobody will even bother to give her a look. Meanwhile, the young and dynamic forces in the Democrat Party will be relegated to running for the VEEP spot on her losing ticket. It will have been 16 years since a genuine contender was allowed to emerge from the Donk field, and I don't think that party will benefit from the stagnation.
He has a point in that it'll take a good candidate to win in 2008. Bill Clinton won 2 terms because we ran 2 tired old men against him.
He speaks the truth.
So the Republicans have a weak bench eh?
That must mean ipsofacto that the Dems have a powerhouse line up.
And just who are these giants the dems have lined up?
In 1990, did anybody outside of Arkansas know who the heck Bill Clinton was, except as the guy who gave the worst nominating speech ever at the 1988 Democratic convention?
The Rats had a "weak" field in 1992, and look what happened.
}:-)4
Hillary? I've seen a number of 'Dean/Obama 2008' stickers around Vermont over the past few months.
And the media,------, will be more pro-Democratic than ever.
LOL! Sorry, that's just not possible unless they come right out and announce they are the prpoganda arm of the Dem party.
Giuliani?
Giuliani would crush all Dem candidates...yes, even Shrillary. Everyone likes Rudy... even the conservatives like me who disagree with him on social issues. The libs of course would dredge up all of Rudy's private peccadilloes, but after Clinton, who are they whine about private lives?
The media keeps trying to push McCain down our throats--wishful thinking I guess.