And the GOP nominee will be … none of the above

Jeb.

Maybe we could just take the runner-up from the Democratic National Convention, and offer then to the GOPers as a “surrogate” conservative. That way, it won’t matter who wins in November—we’ll still have a Democrat in the WH….

We’ve known this from the start. One of them will probably emerge with the nomination but it won’t matter as whoever wins the democratic nomination will be the next president. But the current field of GOP yahoos is a tribute to how cancerous republican politics has become.

Talk about delusional. They blame everybody and everything thing for their miserable failures They simply refuse to see themselves as responsible for the current state of affairs and would continue to march the country right over the cliff and into the sea before admitting they are wrong on everything.

They are so corrupted they can’t even come up with a viable presidential candidate. I blame the Christian right neocon base for their party’s internal insanity. They are the ones violently condemning everything they disagree with…which is nearly everything rational.

The GOP is all booked up on fear crazy and fanatical condemnation. One shouldn’t light a match in their vicinity…they might blow.

As has been noted by earlier posts, we may be witnessing the end of the Republican Party. The religious-right seems determined to get a real, religiously ideal candidate. They thought they had one with Bush. They’ll probably drive moderate Repugs to the Democrats or cause them to abstain from the election. They won’t easily relinquish control of the party, they’re too well organized. Corporate manipulation of some of the center and center-right Dems, and the former’s lack of comfort with the religious-right may result in a permanent political realignment. It might become “God’s” party against the heathens and libertines, “God’s” party against the world of idolaters and false belief for several election cycles.

I’ve often wondered if the reason all of the GOP candidates are so hopeless is that the saner ones looked at the 2008 race and realized the GOP doesn’t have a chance. But then I try to think of who those saner ones might be, and I come up empty.

I am beginning to believe just like phoebes that the moron/thug party will draft Jeb.

I agree, and could it not be that the Republicans are not choosing a candidate through the primaries on purpose? If the Democrats settle on someone in the primaries but the Republicans don’t, the ‘Pugs will be able to attack the Democratic nominee from February 2008 on. Whereas if the Republicans go for a brokered convention in August 2008, the Democrats would not have a name to deal with until then.

I do think the powers that be in the Republican Party want Jeb Bush in the worst way, if only to continue to destroy all evidence of wrongdoing in his big brother’s administration.

How about the Sergeant from Beetle Bailey?

One can make the same argument for the Democratic field – that none of them can get the nomination. Everyone wants an electable candidate, but there doesn’t seem to be one in either party. How amazing is that? There is definite Bush fatigue in the land, and Jeb can’t get around that. Plus he would have to defend his brother’s record and he’s too smart for that. So forget Jeb until 2012.

It would seem this is a race made for an indepdendent, and would that ever be healthy. Bust up the uniparty-party monopoly we have now and form three or four new ones so that no one can get 270 votes in the Electoral College. That way we’ll get rid of that antidiluvian institution, finally, and force candidates to campaign in every state. A real shakeup would be healthy, but the power elite won’t let that happen. So I’ll go with Guiliani and Clinton as the candidates, with Guiliani being our next ‘president’. Never underestimate the morons who collectively are called the “American People”.

Ron Paul is the Republican Party’s only hope of winning. If you can’t see that you’re daft.

If Mickey Mouse ran against two Democrats, and the Walt Disney company was writing Mickey’s lines, then what we’d be hearing from him wouldn’t be too different from what we’d hear from one of the current Republican frontrunners, anyway, besides the personal details about their lives.

At least Mickey has the advantage of not being a thrice-married serial adulterer, or a Mormon. I think Mickey may have cross-dressed in one or two cartoons, though.

Yes, all the Republican candidates are terrible. Nonetheless, one of them will win Iowa. At that point, the media, eager for a horserace, will annoint whoever it is the winner and talk about his newfound “momentum” and “bounce”. If someone else wins the next event, so much the better for the horserace reportage. Whoever emerges as the frontrunner in the spring, the media will resolutely ignore his shortcomings, partly because IOKIYAR and partly to preserve the horserace paradigm past the conventions.

I remember the run-up to the ’72 election, when Nixon was comfortably ensconed in the Presidency, before anyone had ever heard of G. Gordon Liddy, this same sort of discussion came up about the Democrats. One pundit (I don’t remember who it was) characterized it as a struggle for “the poisoned chalice of the Democratic nomination.” I revere George McGovern, and I supported him for all I was worth, but he got the nomination mainly because none of the so-called mainstream candidates (those with access to a lot of money) wanted it badly enough.
. . . jim strain in san diego.

Let’s think outside the box here. Bloomberg/Hagel run as independents. Then it doesn’t matter which clown the Republicans nominate. Any of them would beat any of the Democrats. So, what the Republicans have to do is persuade Bloomberg/Hagel to run. Actually, they might win. Wouldn’t that be something?

The real quesiton is what is politics in the U.S. going to be like after the collapse of the Republican Party is complete and the U.S. is a one party state. Will the Democratic Party move the primaries to the summer so that the winner of the Democratic primary will not have so long to wait for the inaugural.

Also, after the Republican Party collpases, which blocs in the current Democratic Party will gain and which will lose. Also, what effect will all of the former Republican voters have when they start voting in the Democratic Primary?

I’ve been sensing that this particular post might be ripening on the vine.

The Huckster wouldn’t be doing as well as he is if the field wasn’t so weak. He’s no prize. To me, McCain is older than dirt for the task of running for and being president. But his combination of being fairly unweird and pretty uncorrupt at the same time may keep him afloat until he’s the guy. Maybe he’ll pick Petraeus to be his running mate.

Actually, if McCain picked the right running mate, (Jeb?, Petraeus), he might pick up steam. The Bush name is tainted but it’s taken an unbelievable amount of stupidity to finally have that impact. And the general consensus might be that of the visible, political Bush’s, George is the runt of the litter and it can only get better. There’s something about these white bread, patrician, nimrod Bush’s that America likes. They must see what they’d to be themselves which is pretty f’n sad.

No crystal ball on my table but I’m thinking McCain/????? in ’08.

Anne @ 22 vastly underestimates the following Ron Paul has across the entire country and across party lines. If enough people wake up and see the import of restoring the Constitution and reigning in the federal government, they will cast their votes for the good doctor.

Garrett Gebhardt @ 26 has it right.

TAiO, I used to believe (be afraid that) something like that scenario was likely, probably after another attack “forced” Bush to declare martial law. The exodux from the administration says otherwise, they wouldn’t all be abandoning ship if another 4+ years was imminent.

As for the huge internet Ron Paul groundswell, it hasn’t translated into the on the ground fight at all so far. Paul doesn’t stand a chance, for whatever reasons (most likely because being anti-Iraqwar is massively unpopular with the Republicans who are most likely to vote in primaries).

I’m waiting for the MSM to produce a treatise which portrays all the candidates (both parties) and their shortcomings. Hillary would be probably tarred with “more of the same,” and Giuliani would have the onus of heading a criminal enterprise, while Huckabee would be wearing the emperor’s new clothes (Wayne Dumond).

Aw, c’mon now Garrett—“If he makes it past the forces working against him?” Paul’s problem can be defined as twofold, in that (1) there’s this really big group of people who won’t buy his snake-oil shtick, and (2) there’s this really vocal, thuggish group of Paul groupies who think it’s really cool to bandy about the tubes and intimidate people with crap like “If you’re not with us, you’re the enemy!” Anyone who dares point out that Paul is a fringe-movement candidate gets kicked in the teeth with the Corporate Imperialist label. Intimidation will not work, once the voter is inside the safety of the polling booth. Intimidation is a guaranteed “no” vote

Ron Paul is, at best, a crap-shoot candidate. He can’t make it to the general election as a Republican, because his message is so out of touch with the GOPer platform. He’s trying to push a message that’s more in line with BlueDog Dems, and they’re a minority of the Democratic Party—and most Dems won’t touch him because of his GOPer heritage. No matter how you stack the numbers, he’s an also-ran in a three-horse race.

His net-based money boost will haunt him to pieces in a general election as well; his “legions” spat out a bunch of cash in an extremely-short timeframe, and some of the numbers I’m seeing crunched show that a lot of that money might be somewhat untrackable. If Paul wants to attend the big party next Fall, he’ll need a professional machine that can tabulate where the money cames from. He doesn’t have such a machine—and his semi-pro, bush-league following isn’t going to raise much money outside of their own pockets when they play the big bully role.

In short—Paul cannot go the distance with the machine he’s got. He’ll either burn up before the primaries are over, or he’ll limp into an independent bid with a following somewhere below double digits, and get pounded mercilessly. If he’s so anti-establishment, he should have abandoned “the good ship GOPer” some time back to bill himself as “truly independent.” But he didn’t—because when crunch-time came around, the GOPer label was still a useful tool to have in the toolbox.

THAT will haunt him, as well. He peddle himself as a GOPer until it’s beyond obvious that he cannot win the nomination—and then he’ll either do the honorable thing—and withdraw—or he’ll THEN try to present himself as “independent.” Lieberman already played that Trojan Horse—and, as everyone knows, a Trojan Horse only works once. GOPers will reject him out of hand, but Dems will remember what Lieberman did in Connecticut….

What is Ross Perot doing these days? I really liked his ears.

Perot, who is currently worth 4.4 billion dollars, is retired in his native Texas. His last public appearance was before the Texas state legislature in 2005 where he testified on the subjects of state-purchased laptops and electronic textbooks.

I think everyone is overlooking one asset that Huckabee has more than any of the others: his likeability.

Huckabee? Likable? There goes the “liberal” media again.

As with Bush, Huckabee is likable only to the extent that people believe media reporting about him being likable. There’s nothing likable about an monumentally bigoted authoritarian theocrat who lets rapist/murderers out of prison for shits and giggles. Huckabee is a thoroughly detestable human being, and anyone claiming otherwise isn’t paying attention. He’s as likable as syphilis. What he is is someone who’s charming to a press corp that will declare any two-dollar-whore willing to stroke its, er, ego “likable.”

Newt has polished his act. Book-Review on C-Span 2 is rerunning his 3 hour interview 2X a weekend. Don’t count him out considering the alternatives. He is eloquent, intelligent, and telegenic.

Countenance by Romney or Huckabee is hardly necessary. If Newt comes in halfway through, those boys are toast. Unless he decides he doesn’t want to run, given the difficulties in the general election, the nomination is his for the taking. He is the only candidate they have that can win.

Newt has a de facto organization, as has Gore. Newt doesnt have, and can never have, a substantial machine to defeat such as an opponent of Hillary has to face. Support, financial and electoral, that Huckabee & Romney have is soft. Remember we are not talking about true idealists. Newt can appeal to Republican delusions of what Reagan was about. Those turkeys can’t.

Hey Anne, thanks for posting the Primary schedule. I had forgotten all about the Wyoming caucuses. I think that Huckabee is going to cause some real trouble for both Giuliani and Romney in the early states. I could even see him stepping on Giuliani’s you-know-what in Florida, which Giuliania has thought all along would be his firewall and even stripped of half its delegates is still the single biggest prize in the Republican race among the pre-February states.

Dunno what kind of legs ol’ Huck might have beyond that. The number of states voting on Feb 5 is not going to be a very nurturing an environment for an underfunded late-bloomer with no nationwide organization in place, buzz or no buzz. But between Huckabee and McCain, the possibility of a brokered Republican convention is looking that much more real and the notion of Huckabee and perhaps Ron P as potential king-makers is just too delicious to even contemplate.

Anyone interested in what Huckabee is really like face to face should
try
this funny (but it actually happened) column:
http://goupstate.us/index.php/lanefiller/2007/11/02/title_14

You gotta wonder how hard Santorum is working the back rooms of the party elite.

Steve: your post came up while I was writing mine. Agreed with what you say, but add the idea of his supporters — see Dave Neiwert for the background.

He really is being supported by every true neo-Nazi group in the country. I would rather have four more years of George the Idiot than Paul.

Ron Paul would merely slash taxes for social programs? What are you talking about? Ron Paul would slash taxes- period. His goal of eliminating the I.R.S. and replacing it with NOTHING sounds like it would lower everyone’s taxes, don’t you think?

Well, if you say Federal monies shouldn’t be employed for social programs, you’re rejecting New Dealism, which is fine but also thus rejecting Social Security – oh, wait- I guess you want to pick and choose which social programs you think are important.

“General Welfare” was not intended to mean “welfare state” and such is the contrast between the policies of Jefferson, Madison, Jackson and Cleveland and those of Franklin Roosevelt’s ilk. You’re stretching the meaning.

The Department of Education has done nothing to improve school standards in 27 years. Why should I or anyone else believe that it will do so now or that national standards are wholly desirable? Federal inculcation of desired standards leaves too much capacity for propagandizing children in the government interest. This is the problem with big government. Certainly it helps sometimes but the more you give, the more it takes. Patching the system won’t fix it, nor will assuming benevolence. As for NCLB, I can’t think of a Bush Administration policy that’s actually done real good in this country.

Now we get into Social Security and honor… Honor is a convenient way to play on emotions but it isn’t always rational. Assuming we keep the Social Security system, Ron Paul is the only candidate that has provided a clear way to save it. I know a lot of elderly folks who survive on that check so I’d be careful about describing it as “pocket change for that yearly Caribbean cruise.” As to where the money went, blaming retirees and the disabled for spending the money is like saying the Titanic sunk because it was a heavy ship. Take a look at where the Social Security money has gone – it’s been borrowed by the government to pay for endless war and whatever other projects they needed to make up the shortfall on. Note that those who borrowed it never paid it back. Ron Paul’s never voted to borrow any of that money and he would make sure that benefits were paid to those who need them while allowing people who wish to opt out that chance. Maybe you just haven’t been listening to his stance.

I don’t see any pandering except what you’re doing, which is misstating his policy positions and his legislative history. He doesn’t accept money from lobbyists. How can the man be bought when he’s received nothing in return? $0 of the money raised for his campaign is from lobbyists, according to FEC findings. Name another candidate that can claim this. As for the pork, that’s simple, althought you might find it hard to justify by your standards. He allows his constituents to add on community programs and other funding for his local district, then he votes against it, in line with his Constitutional beliefs. Why would he do this? He does not vote for them because he believes the spending isn’t authorized by the Constitution. However, knowing that his constituents are being essentially robbed of their tax money to the Federal government, it would be unfair to deny them the chance of bringing some of that money back home.

Where you’ve come up with your slanted conclusions, I don’t know. You state no facts, only personal attacks. There is no evidence to support anything you’ve stated. I have to wonder what candidate you DO support, given your dislike for the man that even John McCain referred to as “…the most honest man in Congress.”

By the way, Newt Gingrich would be a disaster. The man is a hard line neoconservative and FDR apologist, not a traditional conservative and certainly not the “answer” to Hillary Clinton.

How generous of you, Garrett, to deny the commonalities between “general welfare of the state” and “welfare state.” I suppose you, as with your elitist fellow Paulians, feel that those without the means to live should simply “die, and thus decrease the surplus population.” That concept alone would leave you in the exact same boat as the neocons that you and your ilk claim to not be—and yet, you are all identical when it comes to helping anyone other than yourselves.

How clairvoyant of you, Garrett, to further pronounce the need to eradicate IRS and replace it with nothing. That is pure poetry to the neocon mindset—the thing that they seek to promote most of all is that if less taxes equate to more revenue, then no taxes will result in unlimited revenue. Sorry—no sale here—and no backpedaling—your exact words are now recorded for all posterity; they can be defined as “Ron Paul Proposes to Bankrupt the Republic.”

Is there something wrong with an individual picking and choosing which programs to support? Or is the goal of Ron Paul and his followers to stifle dissent, individual choice, and the right to express one’s self? The Constitution gives me such a right, and neither you, nor Ron Paul, nor his virtual legions can eliminate that right—unless Ron Paul’s true goal is to, as I mentioned earlier, to “crucify the Constitution.

Now, let us examine your classic, neocn trick of cherry-picking.

***”I know a lot of elderly folks who survive on that check so I’d be careful about describing it as “pocket change for that yearly Caribbean cruise.”***

You choose to hide those who illicitly profit from the program by placing those who need the program most right up front. They become your “human shields.” I find myself actually needing to thank you for that, as you have now put “your candidate” on a par equal to Saddam Hussein prior to the run-up to the first Gulf War.

Using those in need as a prop to defend those not in need is also a form of cowardice, you know. Social Security is an insurance program. It should be used only if it’s needed. It isn’t something that should be refunded regardless of need—that would be like getting all your car-insurance premiums back, or the premiums to your homeowner’s policy.

FEC findings? The FEC has yet to receive one smidgen of information from Paul’s “money bomb” experiment. There’s a question as to whether anyone can actually document where those millions of dollars came from. “38,000 individual donors,” the storyline reads—and yet no one has provided a detailed list of who gave what, because the “outside-the-box” design didn’t take into consideration the legal requirement that someone would have to identify the source of each donation, because the collection method was both “organized and supervised.” If you and your fellow Paulians wish to promote the notion that these millions of Net dollars are lobbyist-free, then you’ll need to show where the money came from. The FEC is waiting for your telephone call….

Paul’s “constituents” cannot add anything to a bill; only the various members of the Congress can do that. To even suggest that a constituent—an individual represented by a member of Congress—has the legislative authority to add to a bill is beyond ludicrous, and does little more than to suggest your indomitable lack of knowledge on the subject. In short—only Congressman Paul could add “pork” for his constituency; adding it, and then voting against it, knowing that it will pass anyway, is no different than voting for it. thus, the Congressman’s actions are both two-faced and cowardly in nature.

And finally, Garrett—to quote John McCain—he of the weekly flip-flop—in defense of your candidate is an act of desperation comparable to Hitler marching old men and young boys into the streets of Berlin to fend off the Russian tanks in 1945. Fortunately for these United States of America, it will work about as well—and Ron Paul will never see the Presidency, let alone the GOP nomination. If you want to blame me, and others like me, for not bowing down to the alleged greatness of your candidate, then so be it. I’ll gladly take the credit….

I disagree with almost everyone.
Mitt Romney;’s flip-flopping won’t bother the Democrats much since his pro-choice, unioversal health care bent agrees with them well.

He’s slated to mop New Hampshire with the other guys and a media buy in after a decisive New3 Hampshire victory will make Huckabee a forgotten near miss.

As much as some wingnuts claim they’ll stay home for a Mormon candidate, Romney will remain viable because of crossover potential. Reagan came from ultra-lib California and if anything is less scary to a Democrat than California, it’s Masschusetts. Two of our loser nominees, Kerry and Dukakis came from there. Dems will go for Romney. You don’t have to like it, but living in denial is dangerous.

Nominate Hilary and you’ll see the wingnuts kiss and make up and then I dare say I favor Romney to win. Again, I’m not saying this is how I wish things were. I’m saying it’s how things ARE.

Obama and Edwards would make a horserace of it. Hil will hand things over to Mitt. Fortunately, we’ll still have a Democratic congress to keep him from giving in to the temptation of wooing the religious nuts for the 2012 campaign.

Seeya in November 2008 for my I-told-you-so.