Posted on 11/30/2008 2:59:10 PM PST by lewisglad
The Battle for the GOP Is On - Palin, Romney or JindalNovember 30th, 2008 By: Michael van der Galien | Tags: Leave a comment | Trackback The latest polls of Republican and all voters indicate that the conservative Republican base favors candidates voters in general do not think too highly of.
For instance, 24.4% Republican voters want Governor Sarah Palin to be the Republican candidate for president in 2012. Only 13.4% of all voters agree.
At the same time, Governor Mitt Romney ranks second among all voters, six points behind Palin, but leads among all voters (be it barely).
Among conservatives, both represent an entirely different faction: Palin is the Christian conservative while Romney is the darling of (elite and well educated) fiscal conservatives. These two battled it out earlier this year with fiscal conservatives favoring Romney, Christian conservatives supporting Governor Mike Huckabee, and the party ending up with Senator John McCain as the compromise candidate.
A compromise figure not able to make life truly difficult for now president-elect Barack Obama.
Most remarkable about the figures, however, is that there is a third candidate who does relatively better (meaning: smaller gap) among all voters than among Republicans: Governor Bobby Jindal. Jindal has quite a low profile nationally, yet he already ranks third in both categories. When all voters are included, the gap between him and Romney is only 1.2%, which is remarkable.
Huckabee fares less well; he is fourth with only 9.7% among Republicans and 8.0% among all voters.
This while Huckabee was the favorite of the Christian conservative base.
So what happened to Huckabee? Palin. Although Huckabee could count on the support of Christian conservatives during the primaries, they all flocked to Palin during the general election campaign. Palin became their candidate, their darling even. The defeat made her more not less popular among this group of conservative voters for they consider her a martyr.
The above means that the Republican Party could very well nominate a person who is deemed anti-intellectual, simple, naive and overly socially conservative in 2012 or that the war between the fiscal conservative and social conservative base will continue with at least one side staying home on election day, thereby ensuring Obama a second term.
That is, unless Palin can improve her image, studies hard and convince libertarian and fiscal conservatives that she is more than just a socon (unlikely). Or if Romney will succeed in courting Evangelicals and convincing them that either his Mormon faith should not be a problem to them (unlikely) or that his faith and their faith teach the same basic principles and values (less unlikely, but not altogether likely).
Of course there is a third option, an option I consider most likely and, especially, most in the interest of the Republican Party: that conservative voters will agree on a compromise candidate who endorses conservative views in most ways. In other words, a person who is a convinced social conservative (yet not overly so, for it would make it easy to destroy a candidate who is as socially conservative and as vocal about it as Palin and Huckabee are), who also has a track record of fiscal conservatism and who sympathizes with many libertarian policies.
At this moment, it seems to me that neither Huckabee nor Palin nor Romney fit the bill (although Romney would certainly be a better choice than the other two). Jindal, however, does.
For Jindal, 2008 and especially 2009 offer a tremendous opportunity to raise his profile nationally, to court conservatives of all stripes and to implement policies rooted in conservatism. He will have to use his time in Louisiana in order to show voters that conservative policies work and improve their daily lives. He he has already done so to a tremendous degree, but the most difficult times are ahead of him. The recession is likely to worsen in the coming months with Americans in all states suffering financially. Jindal will have to control the damage and improve his state at the same time.
That's an interesting issue. I can see why you would want that, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I quit the GOP earlier this year in protest and am now a registered "decline to state" voter -- i.e., independent without belonging to any party. If the GOP doesn't allow me to vote in the primaries with them, then I can't vote. In California, the Dems will allow independent voters to vote with them, as will most other parties. I wonder if that will matter in the primaries? What are your thoughts?
Note that not all non-GOP voters who vote with Republicans in the primaries are "liberal".
Huckabee has nothing else to do to earn a living but sell his hot air on the tube and radio..
He's not a total fool because he knows he would never win Senator in the state of Arkansas against Pryor or Lincoln.
He's finished.
sw
One of these three is not like the others...
One of these three doesn’t belong...
If the GOP doesn’t restrict primary voting the left can game the system. They did it with McCain, and will do it again if the opportunity presents itself.
Forget Romney or Jindal.
Sarah will choose the best person for VP for the U.S. when she runs for president.
Who are we to tell her what to do? She knows what has to be done better than we do.
I don't see how that could be true. The liberals were busy voting in their own very contentious primaries between Hillary and Obama. They didn't have time or interest in wasting their primary votes on our candidates. On the other hand, with Operation Chaos, a number of conservatives decided to switch parties in order to vote for Hillary in the Dem primaries in order to keep the long drawn out Hillary vs. Obama war going.
McCain became our candidate because Huckabee and Romney split the conservative vote between them and McCain came out as the dark horse. That's why so many people really hate Huckabee. They believe that without the Huckster, we would have had Romney instead of McCain. And they might be right in that. I withhold my judgement on this internecine fued between Huckabee and Romney because I supported Ron Paul though I knew that he would probably not win the nomination.
Another case of the media trying to choose the candidates.
Lets hear from everyone a year from now, and see what happens.
In the meantime, the GOP needs to do away with caucuses in favor of primaries, and all primaries should be CLOSED.
Jindal is a big-government Republican. It’s all been documented.
“The next successful Republican candidate for president (if there will ever be one) will be a man—a real man. That man will be a loyal American—especially on trade.”
LOL, Todd Palin probably won’t throw his hat into the ring. Maybe Joe “the plumber” will.
No, just the vast majority of them. Large numbers of Democrats register independent, especially in the Northeast, just for this sort of mischief.
I would vote for Palin or Jindal. With Romney I would vote for a third party conservative again.
Romney isn't a has been - he's a never was or will be.
Romney won't run, because he knows he cannot and will not win. Romney would never, could not ever become President.
Jindal/Palin is the Team to beat. And, hopefully, they'll be other great Conservatives in the mix to mix it up!
Whether or not liberals will game the system going forward is a good thing to debate. They might try it in 2012 when they already know that Obama will be their nominee. With their nominee locked up, they might try to do an "Operation Chaos" of their own.
Rasmussin: 11/7/08
91 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin.
65 percent of Republicans have a very favorable view of Palin.
8 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Palin.
3 percent of Republicans have a very unfavorable view of Palin.
64 percent of Republicans say Palin is their top choice for the GOP 2012 presidential nominee.
I like Palin, but my first pick is still Ducan Hunter.
Republicans are 30% of the electorate. What do independents think of her?
I didn't vote for Romney, but I do respect his leadership in things like turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics. He is the ultimate CEO, but the presidency isn't a Fortune 500 Company.
In that case I wish every state in the Union was run by a Minnie Pearl.
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