Posted on 11/03/2011 11:15:35 AM PDT by presidio9
The Republican candidates for President may not pose much of a threat to Barack Obama.
The very best Halloween parade this year would feature all the Republicans trying to get their party’s presidential nomination.
At a time of debt and joblessness and so often hopelessness in this country, in a Foreclosure America where the President seems better at raising money than making very much for Americans, the question on Barack Obama ought to be this.
How can he possibly win a second term?
Only the way things are going with the Republicans, right up to Halloween 2011, and only a year out from the next election, you start to think a better question is, how can Obama lose?
Michele Bachmann was the front-runner for about five minutes, then Rick Perry was the front-runner, at least until Perry actually started talking, having all those nights in debates when you imagined him trying to answer brain-busters on “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?”
Now the front-runner, according to some polls, is Herman Cain when it isn’t Mitt Romney. You keep thinking that Romney is the only one on the stage who looks like an actual nominee, or the next President. But somehow he can’t shake Cain, the rich pizza guy who keeps giving everybody the kind of show that Ross Perot did until the aliens came for Perot.
Trick or treat.
I was talking to one of the city’s political powerbrokers the other day, one who backed Obama last time and now thinks he has failed miserably as President. And I asked the guy for a scenario where the Republicans lose next November, now that Obama is running on his record and not George W. Bush’s.
“If their candidate somehow becomes more of an issue than the economy,” he said.
Suddenly Cain is in a virtual dead heat with Romney in Iowa, and all that means, at least for the time being, is that the Republican Party, which has had all this time to fall for Romney, or at least get behind him, still hasn’t. It is why Cain, who has no chance to get the nomination, whatever the polls say, none, is treated like a serious contender for no other reason than the guy won’t go away.
There Cain was on “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer on Sunday morning, clarifying his position on abortion for what felt like the ninth time, as if it is something else that ought to be included in his loopy 9-9-9 tax plan. By the way? Here is all you have to know about that plan. Perry’s flat tax makes more sense.
“I am pro-life from conception, period,” Cain said.
Bob Schieffer then reminded Cain that he had previously made statements about how he was pro-life except in cases of rape and incest.
“Pro-life from conception, period,” Cain said again, and then said that anything people thought he said to the contrary had been taken out of context. But then that is Cain’s game. Or act. When he has to walk back from some quote he thinks could hurt him, the quote was either taken out of context, or he was just kidding around.
“Some people are getting used to my sense of humor,” he said, perhaps thinking that when he talks about building an electrified border fence to keep out illegal aliens he was being funnier than Dick Gregory.
Apparently it is supposed to be the fault of the gotcha media that he told CNN this past week that he didn’t think the government should be in the position of telling a woman whether or not to have an abortion in cases of rape or incest. On that day Cain said, “What I’m saying is it ultimately gets down to a choice that the family or mother has to make.”
Maybe it makes perfect sense that some of these candidates have gone to Donald Trump, star of “Celebrity Apprentice,” looking for an endorsement, like in the end Trump will decide between Romney and Cain the way he once had to decide between Trace Adkins and Piers Morgan.
There is a reason why real smart people I know think that the best possible opponent for Barack Obama isn’t a Republican at all. It is still Hillary Clinton, since there are enough Democrats out there who think they might have nominated the wrong person last time.
For now, we are left with the Republican field we have, which Romney should already be dominating but is not. For now, the guy who thinks he can take on Obama straight up is neck and neck with Herman Cain.
Trick or treat, Republican style. They re the best show this Halloween, by far. All of them thinking they re dressed up like Presidents. Even the parade in the Village can t beat that.
I thought it might be because 2006 and 2008 were Democrat years, but there are enough Republican Senators and Governors out there.
How come so few ran and those who did were so unimpressive?
Ronald Reagan would be apalled by how so many people on this website have picked their non-Romney candidate and spend all their time attacking all the others. Only libertarians deserve that treatment on this conservative website.
newt may be the best of the worst... but that is just a prime example of what I mean when I say this is the worst slate of candidates that the republicans have fielded in my lifetime. I guess I could hold my nose and vote for newt if I had to... but I would expect him to govern to the left of bush. Like Rush says... “The problem with Newt is Newt”.
LLS
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