For The GOP, It’s Time To Start Counting The Weeks, Months & Years Until 2016
capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~ JACOB WEISBERG
Props to Mitch Daniels for listening to his family and deciding they were more important than his party and that the prospect of non-stop proctology examinations by the news media and his opponents outweighed the glory of a presidential run.
But funny thing, when I took a quick spin around the political blogosphere this morning, I was struck by the almost total absence of Sarah Palin’s name as a take-seriously contender for the Republican nomination.
Palin’s stock, of course, has fallen as precipitously as Daniels’ had risen. Her approval ratings are in the toilet, no one takes her seriously except for the hardest of the hard-core Republican base, and news that she may have bought a house in North Scottsdale, Arizona, a more suitable home base than Wasilla for a presidential run, has gotten less attention than her daughter’s recent plastic surgery and new reality TV show.
Because almost no one takes seriously wannabes Michele Bachmann and Herb Cain, this leaves the rather unappetizing choice of Mitt Romney, who is raising buckets of campaign cash but is detested by the GOP’s ultra-conservative, and Tim Pawlenty, a lightweight who will have to cheat on his purity test to have a chance at the nomination.
Beyond the flame-outs, notably Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump, the paucity of take-seriously Republican candidates at this stage of the game is not surprising despite all the harrumphing among the punditocracy.
The biggest problems for Republicans are hiding in plain view:
* The need for wannabes to get their tickets punched by the hard-core base. This group is electoral disaster writ large — determinedly out of touch with Main Street, in deep denial about global warming, and unwilling to stop fighting culture wars over issues like abortion and gay marriage that stopped tripping most voters’ triggers years ago.
* Barack Obama, who is well on his way to earning a second term. Despite some missteps, the young president has delivered on much of his agenda, pulled the nation back from the economic brink, has been an able commander in chief, and has exhibited a kind of leadership and gravitas sorely lacking during the first eight years of the decade.
So what’s a Republican to do? Start counting the weeks, months and years until 2016.
3 Responses to “For The GOP, It’s Time To Start Counting The Weeks, Months & Years Until 2016”
I still like Mitt. I still think social conservatives and TP’ers will have a hard time voting for him. He is by far their best bet…he just has to survive the primaries.
Jimmy who (before 1976)?
It’s too early to write off the GOP, but obviously right now they are continuing to be dysfunctional.
Obama has yet to earn anything, Shaun, notably re-election; you misstate again. (Probably misinterpret what you are observing)
It makes sense to just have GOPers jockey for fame and the public reaction test right now, let Obama have 2012, and see how the economy goes, get ready to hit back in 2014 as well as in 2016.
The GOP could still win, if Obama is complacent and stupid this year or next year*, not working (again, he has yet to earn anything, much less re-election, counting on GOP failure to get it), taking the GOP for granted. Al Gore had the White House handed to him in 2000, running against a dysfunctional GOP that chose Bush as a desperation candidate**, and managed to lose it, in large part by turning off the public, notably at the debates, which Gore lost to, of all people, Dubya! (That gave the public the notion and the reassurance that Bush could win, after all, which he the did.)
* Amateurism, ineptitude by him and his administration turns off the (intelligent mainstream, at least) public, as well as being out-of-touch with reality and that US public; so is going too far left.
** Desperation: Don’t neglect the chance Jeb Bush will rescue the GOP (or be seen as doing this, at least). Could be in 2012, not just in 2016.