Huntsman strategist: If Palin and Limbaugh dominate, GOP 'headed for a blowout' in 2012

Washington Examiner ^ | 05/18/09 | Byron York

[redk]

The Republican strategist who helped Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman prepare for a possible presidential run says the Republican party is in for a devastating defeat if its guiding lights are Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. "If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," says strategist John Weaver, who advised Huntsman and was for years a close adviser to Sen. John McCain. "That's just the truth."

Huntsman, a favorite of GOP moderates, left the Republican presidential race last week after accepting President Obama's offer to become U.S. ambassador to China. Before that, Huntsman appeared to be working hard on preparations for 2012. "He had not made a decision to run for president, but he had made a decision to prepare to run," says Weaver. "We were probably a month away from announcing the formation of a political action committee, so we were pretty far down the road."

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

So because I don’t hold perfectly legal deferments made by young men in their late teens over 40 years ago against them for the rest of their lives, I’m not sufficiently thankful to the military. Sounds perfectly reasonable.

[carmody]

I held my nose and voted for McCain and yet Obama is President.

Obama is in there because the Republican party stands for a big giant tent filled with hundreds of ideas and priciples a few of which have something in common.

[Diogenesis]

Actually, Romney said he marched,
then Team Romney said maybe he did not, then as you post, much later, Romney nuanced his way "out". Too late.

The real point is what Team Romney did saying three women historians were wrong.

From where does the hatred of Team Romney for women come?

Is this the moment when the Romneys enjoy a family hallucination about marching with MLK.

"Mitt Romney Lies About Father ‘Marching With Martin Luther King, Jr.’"
"Mitt Romney has been caught in yet another lie.
Only yesterday Romney’s claim of not supporting Planned Parenthood abortion mills was abruptly smashed by a photograph surfacing of him at one of their fundraisers in 1994.
Today, it’s Romney’s claim that his father “marched with” famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
During his “I’m a Mormona but it doesn’t matter” speech, Mitt Romney claimed he saw his father,
George Romney, marching with MLK during a 1968 civil rights march through Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
It was a stirring account of the efforts of his father to show that the Romney family have always reached across ecumenical lines.
Only one little problem… it never happened."

---

"Mitt Romney went a step further in a 1978 interview with the Boston Herald.
Talking about the Mormon Church and racial discrimination, he said:
"My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit."
"Yesterday (12//07), Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom acknowledged that was not true.
"Mitt Romney did not march with Martin Luther King,"
he said in an e-mail statement to the Globe.

---

Against Myth Romney is 1:

"On Sunday, June 23, 1963, 125,000 people marched down Detroit's Woodward Avenue
to the Civic Center, in what was described at the time as the largest civil-rights demonstration in the nation's history.
According to the next day's account in the Holland Evening Sentinel,
the crowd at the Center "lustily booed," when representatives of Governor George W. Romney
read a proclamation declaring "Freedom March Day in Michigan." But Martin Luther King Jr. didn't fault Romney for his absence,
which the governor ascribed to his policy against public appearances on the Sabbath.
"At a news conference following the march . .
[King] refused to criticize Romney for not attending the demonstration," the Sentinel reported."

Against Myth Romney is 2:

Susan Englander, assistant editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, who is editing the King papers from that era,
says Myth Romney was untruthful, when she told the Globe yesterday:
"I researched this question, and indeed it is untrue that George Romney marched with [Dr.] King."

Against Myth Romney is 3:

"King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society,
and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published.
“I’m quite certain of that,” says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society"

---

Of course, RomneyBOTs continue to attack these educated women,
who have spoken the Truth about Myth Romney and venal, odious deeds.

QUESTION: Why all the hatred of women (eg. Gov. Palin, her children, these historians,
the GOP woman candidate who followed Romney and who was only endorsed by Romney **after** her loss)

[j.simmons]

What is your evidence of your assertion that Republican’s big tent philosophy was the downfall of McCain/Palin?

[meandog]

So because I don’t hold perfectly legal deferments made by young men in their late teens over 40 years ago against them for the rest of their lives, I’m not sufficiently thankful to the military. Sounds perfectly reasonable.

Certainly does, as you sarcastically referred to a man who spent nearly 5 years in a hell hole of a North Vietnamese prison being tortured as the " Great War Hero." Consequently, I can only presume that you prefer those who can talk the talk but have never walked the walk when it comes to actually shouldering arms in defense of this country.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Of course, one thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other. But shucking, jiving, straw men and misdirection is what you do, because you’re here to serve a political purpose.

Presume what you like. Anyone with rudimentary reading comprehension skills can see through your game like shrink wrap.

[TurtleUp]

Despite the fact that you and I both like Palin as a candidate, she'll never be the standard bearer to carry the fight to Obama in 2012 for the following reasons. She heads one of the least populated state in America. She was shown to be a political novice when it came to parrying critical barbs with the mainstream media. She was too (mis)defined by the caricature skits on SNL, Letterman, etc.

I disagree. Four years is a long time in politics. Look at Bush's approval ratings in September-December 2001 and again four years later. It's not a guarantee (nothing is), but Governor Palin has the opportunity to redefine herself over the next four years and to correctly define herself. If we reject every potential candidate who doesn't have ABC/MSNBC/CBS/CNN approval, we'll be left with nothing better than McCain. It's Palin's job (and ours) to make sure that she is correctly portrayed the next time around.

As much as I despise our mainstream media, I was shocked at how unprofessional they were with Palin, and I don't blame her for being caught off guard. The next time around won't be a surprise. Considering how low they set the bar for her, she should be able to exceed expectations every time she gives an interview. If she also communicates clearly, both what she believes and why, then she'll be unstoppable.

My ideal candidate now is Gen. David Petraeus.

I'll wait and see if he's interested and what positions he takes on non-military issues before I form an opinion on the General.

[gathersnomoss]

More noise. Why not bring back Bob Dole as McLame’s running mate? Same shiite, different day.

Let’s MOVE ON, folks. Conservatism rules!

[gwilhelm56]

From what I saw .. Anderson took away from Both carter and Reagan.
But, after Carter’s 4 years a trained chimpanzee could have beaten him...

REAGAN got44 states.. No matter the percentages that’s still a landslide.

Then I guess 1984 Reagan v. Mondale was a squeaker too???

[gwilhelm56]

**I’ll wait and see if he’s interested and what positions he takes on non-military issues before I form an opinion on the General.**

If I have to have a Military man... my vote is still on Colonel “STUCKONSTUPID”

[gwilhelm56]

**I’ll wait and see if he’s interested and what positions he takes on non-military issues before I form an opinion on the General.**

If I have to have a Military man... my vote is still on Colonel “STUCKONSTUPID”

[HailReagan78]

The fact that 45% of whites voted for Obama to begin with is the problem itself.

Deluding ourselves into thinking that anything more than 8 or 10% of blacks will vote GOP (without us switching our positions on affirmative action) is nuts.

Same with the Hispanic vote. The Rats are going to push amnesty again in the very near future, and will secure the vast majority of the Hispanic vote for the foreseeable future.

SO our only options would be to side with the dems on immigration and affirmative action, in the hopes of maybe getting an extra 5 points among Blacks and Hispanics....

Or stick to our principles and get the white vote up to 65% or so.

[techno]

So the GOP should play identity politics more than they have ever in the past and lose in a landslide in 2012 because voters prefer the real thing than Democrat Lite.

[Elsie]

Admitting that he didn't see the march with his own eyes, he said, "I 'saw' him in the figurative sense."

Yup!

He's a MORMON all right!

The march was 'revealed' to him!

[editor-surveyor]

Being behind the rear runner by a long distance seems to have made him believe that he’s in the lead?

[editor-surveyor]

"Y'see."

Yes, we see, he thinks that we should be the Dummacraps back bench.

[Big_Monkey]

"Or stick to our principles and get the white vote up to 65% or so.

In the last 40 years, only one candidate has even approached 65% with the white demographic. That was Reagan in 1984, a year in which he also garnered just over 58% of the popular a vote, feat that has only been exceeded a handful of times in the last 100 years. Before 1964, I'm not sure if polling data even captures a black vs white voting trend.

For the GOP (or any candidate for that matter) to get 65% of the white vote, they would probably have to get close to 57%(ish) of the total vote - a feat that would seem unlikely given the divisions that have prevailed in Presidential politics the last 38 or so years. Again, Reagan was the only President to get over 53% since 1972. Remember, since Eisenhower, it's just as likely that a President will be elected with a plurality of voters instead of a simple majority.

Simply stated, a campaign strategy that bases victory on achieving 60-65% support in the white demographic is likely a flawed strategy with a limited probability of success.

Unless the GOP can get back to 40% of the Latino vote (Bush was at 43% in 2004), winning another national election seems very, very unlikely for the foreseeable future.

[Diogenesis]

Why should RINOs not let the door hit them on the way out?

Answer:

"A political party cannot be all things to all people.
It must represent certain fundamental beliefs
 which must not be compromised to political expediency
or simply to swell its numbers."
--  President Ronald Reagan

"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party
 over to the traitors in the battle just ended.
We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged
 to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support.
Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates
wouldn’t make any sense at all.""
--  President Ronald Reagan

[Big_Monkey]

OK. And you directed this at me because....?

[cartoonistx]

Sounds like the stuff they said about Reagan in 1980 and we all know how that turned out. They said the same stuff about Reagan in 1984 and we also know how that turned out.

Unfortunately they also said it about Goldwater in '64. We may need to accept the fact that things have to get REALLY bad before Americans repent of their 2008 mistake!