At least one side is looking forward to the primaries

January 30, 2007

I knew there was some discontent among conservatives over the 2008 field, but I’m amazed by the striking difference between Dems and Republicans as the campaign begins to unfold in earnest.

Red State recently looked at the GOP field and concluded, “They all suck.” RS added, “Let’s just admit it. Every one of the thus far announced Republican candidates for President sucks. From the lecherous adulterer to the egomaniacal nut job to the flip-flopping opportunist with the perfect hair to the guy who hates brown people to the guy we’ve never heard of to the guy who has a better chance of getting hit by a meteor while being consumed by a blue whale being struck by lightening.”

I consider myself fairly clued into Democratic politics and I haven’t heard anything close to this on the Dems’ side of the aisle. Indeed, it’s the exact opposite — Dems seem impressed with the top-notch candidates to choose from. The challenge isn’t to figure out how to get excited about a lackluster field; it’s to figure out which of several appealing candidates to support.

But for our friends in the GOP, a degree of depression seems to be setting in.

Contemplating the current field of Republican presidential candidates, Rush Limbaugh sounded like a man with malaise.

“To be honest with you, there’s nobody out there that revs me up,” he confessed to his audience of several million conservative sympathizers on his radio show last week, “so why should I pretend there is?”

Putting aside the fact that Limbaugh, by his own admission, routinely misleads his audience for GOP gain, the comment is telling: Republicans have been gearing up for this race for a long time, but you wouldn’t know it looking at the field.

What for much of the past year has been an undercurrent of grumbling on the right about the top tier of Republican contenders — Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani — is lately on the rise in both frequency and volume. Limbaugh’s sour note is the most striking of examples.

From consultants to bloggers to talk show hosts, there is a climate of suspicion — at times bordering on contempt — among conservative activists about their 2008 choices. […]

“The party is headed for the wilderness,” complained conservative publicist Craig Shirley, author of a book on Ronald Reagan’s insurgent 1976 campaign. “In some ways it’s a victim of its own successes, but it’s also been co-opted by folks from the inside with less than pure intentions: People who’ve come to party for power, money, access, celebrity.”

Some of this will pass, I suppose, once the Republican base rallies in opposition to whomever the Dems pick, and they embrace the GOP nominee as the one who’ll stop the Dems from retaking the White House, but it’s amazing how depressed the right is.

This environment could, in theory, create a genuine opening for party savior to come riding in on a white horse, but who’s waiting in the wings? Jeb Bush?

Republican depression is also known as “a moment of clarity.” They have a lot to be depressed about. They always have but ignored it before.

  • I’m struck by the contrast between this story and recent polls that appear to put top-tier Dem candidates in competition with “top-tier” GOP candidates and the races are often close, only a matter of a few points. Perhaps the methodology of polls done this early is way off but if all the GOP candidates suck how come they are often polling over 40% against Obama, Edwards, and Clinton?

  • This environment could, in theory, create a genuine opening for party savior to come riding in on a white horse, but who’s waiting in the wings? Jeb Bush?

    Condi! Please, oh please, let them cooerce Condi into a run.

  • Rian Mueller,

    Perhaps the methodology of polls done this early is way off…

    Polls this early are really only measuring name recognition. This is why, for instance, Guiliani polls so well.

  • Oh, duh. Answered my own question. All the GOP candidates are running to the middle this time, except McCain who used to be in the middle and is trying to run to the right, and Brownback whose candidacy is probably a joke. This sours their base against them.

  • “To be honest with you, there’s nobody out there that revs me up,”

    There, there Rushie. Have some more Viagra.

    but who’s waiting in the wings? Jeb Bush?

    Aaak! Hush your mouth CB.

    But here’s the problem for the comrades at RedState and “people” like Flush. What they want (another BushWit) is exactly what the sane portions of the country (70% and counting) won’t touch with a ten foot poll. They hate the idea of a president who isn’t as deranged as they are, he makes them feel special. Plus, I’m sure that not a few of the bed-wetting commies at RS are convinced that the moment Bush leaves the WH Osama bin Laden will ride up and chop off their heads.

    Who wants to bet they’ll begin floating the idea of eliminating term limits so BushPlug can have another go?

  • Typical chainsaw politics. Those bozos used the same playbook as a lot of CEOs used. Gut the company/party capital for short term gains while fooling the troops with predictions of long term glory, make the brand so toxic that no one with any shred of integrity or talent will want to work for them and then run like hell just before the whole thing goes to shit.

    “Jeb Bush?”
    Nope. Unless he disavows his family, I don’t see how anyone will vote for another Bush for a generation.

  • The 17% of the electorate who are fundamentalist movement conservatives will ultimately determine many of the primaries and the nominee by turning out in greater numbers than other Republicans.

    I don’t see them coalescing behind the ping-pongerMcCain and certainly not a Mormon from Massachusetts or a New Yorker like Giuliani.

    At some point they’ll pick one of their own to rally behind, perhaps Huckabee. It’s hard to imagine how any Republican Presidential candidate will be electable, but a lightweight theocon from mid-America will really doom the Republicans to a huge national defeat.

  • Unless the Republicans straighten up and run someone like the Honorable Senator Chuck Hagel, their current field of candidates will remain a very “b” list of wantabees. ’08 will no doubt be filled with surprises when we finally get there. -Kevo

  • But let’s be honest, when GWB started his bid, we all laughed.
    He was a running joke on both sides, and look where we are now. So as much as I love them in a funk, things can go from good to bad in a Florida minute.

    Something like Cheney saying “what the hell” would put us in a super funk in 5 seconds flat.

  • taio – fortunately constitutional amendments take a while – at least more than two years, so it won’t work for dubya anyway. not that they would get enough states to go along, but……..

  • TAIOrange, There is no way the wingers will move to repeal term limits while Bill Clinton is still alive. Even with the thorough job they did trashing him, it would be almost impossible for him to lose if he were to run again.

  • But let’s be honest, when GWB started his bid, we all laughed.

    Not true. He was being touted as a serious contender for 2000 as far back as 1997. He had a reputation as a moderate who could get things done. That turned out be bunk, but it certainly isn’t true that all of us, or even most of us, laughed when he became a candidate.

  • I agree with #11, kevo. Hagel is the only one of them who has a chance because he doesn’t seem to be crazy or an oppertunist. He has always struck me as a patriot, so he probably has no chance.

  • Taio. They went through that about 3 years ago and they just couldn’t get over one little problem, Clinton. If it weren’t for their hatred/fear of Bill, they would have changed term limits long ago.

  • no – the only constitutional amendment that the Republicans want to repeal this time is the one that says that the President has to have been born in the USA. I’m sure they would *love* to get rid of that one…

    But it seems to me that even before the 2000 primary/caucus season started, the big corporated money had annointed Bush, and the rest was just for show – it was a foregone conclusion. Forget about the evangelicals and the wingnuts – the true power behind the GOP will always be the big money and the big money interests. Who of the current crop does corporate America like? – and there will be your nominee

  • It’s shocking, really. It was just 2.5 years ago at the party conventions that the media was crowing about the Republicans’ “bench strength” and about how thin the Democratic leadership was. The conventional wisdom was the the GOP had a whole generation of nationally viable candidates, and the Dems were going to have to spend a decade rebuilding their party.

    But two things bother me here:
    1. I don’t see Mr. RedState opining on Mike Huckabee. Watch out for him. The Right may end up loving him dearly.
    2. Conservatives may in the end start looking at the election like Dems did in ’92, compromising on key identity issues for the sake of the perception of “electability.” Which is why the GOP may suck it up and nominate McCain anyway.

    It also wouldn’t shock me in the least to see a Christian conservative third-party candidate emerge if the Republican nominee can’t sufficiently talk the code to the GOP social conservative base.

  • But let’s be honest, when GWB started his bid, we all laughed.
    He was a running joke on both sides, and look where we are now.

    Likewise George Allen and Rick Santorum, long touted as frontrunners, and look where they are now!

    From the lecherous adulterer to the egomaniacal nut job to the flip-flopping opportunist with the perfect hair to the guy who hates brown people to the guy we’ve never heard of to the guy who has a better chance of getting hit by a meteor while being consumed by a blue whale being struck by lightening.

    Using only this to go on, the winner sure sounds like “the guy who hates brown people”. Each of the others seems to have one or another undesirable quality, according to the speaker.

  • I can’t remember which poll CB highlighted (it was within the past two weeks) One of the questions asked for participant opinion of several well known political figures, including B. Clinton & Bush. Even I was surprised at the huge lead he had on ShrubWit. So yes, at least the saner ReThugs realize that No Term Limits = Bill Clinton 4 Life.

    While we all know any debate on term limits would be moot for Shrubya in 2008 (but not 2012) but we’re sane and understand how the law works. That’s why I wouldn’t put it past lackwits like RS and Freep to bring it up to go along with all the other pointless drivel. Plus, if memory serves, some ReThuglican aide floated the idea of repealling term limits late in St. Ron’s second term. Who knows. Maybe Bush will issue an executive order: “By order of me, the President; I, the President, shall remain the President until I, the President, Decide otherwise. Heh heh.”

  • Heh indeedy.

    Poor Republicrooks. It’s hard to find a palatable face for the party after the reaming they’ve given America for the last12 yrs. (even Americans can figure out who’s been screwing them over if you give them a decade to figure it out).

    I will love going to Red State every now and then and watching them eat their own, that’s what they’ll be doing until the corporate media can make the American people forget how bad the Republicrooks were and how badly they hated Bush.

    I hope seamus is right about the third-party perhaps coming out of wingnuttia, those of us who are smart will encourage just that…

    Dear ___,
    Please don’t listen to the Republican pollsters, listen to Jesus, who would want you to run for President. Now is not the time to compromise the precious principles of the Bible, now is the time for you to lead this grate nation out of the secular wilderness and ban abortion once and for all. There are MILLIONS of us who will support you if you split from the Republican party, which has sold us all down the river…

    Heh.

  • ***This environment could, in theory, create a genuine opening for party savior to come riding in on a white horse, but who’s waiting in the wings? Jeb Bush?***

    Well, it needs to be someone with Congressional experience; they won’t want another “cowboy governor” this time.

    It needs to be someone who’s a tradition fiscal-conservative, but has demonstrated tendencies toward leaning in favor of the occasional social issue.

    It really has to be someone who’s been at least an occasional thorn in Bush’s side—and it’s pretty much mandatory that it has to be someone with little or no ties to the Theocratic Reactionaries.

    It’s got to be someone who’s relatively free of K Street, Abramoff, DeLay, and the GOP “sleaze-factor” that overwhelmed the House during the 109th.

    And finally, it’ll need to be someone who’s succeeded in cleaning up a really big budget disaster—made by a Dem.

    One word, ladies and gentlemen: VOINOVICH.

  • They’re caught between the majority’s total repudiation of both their president and their policy agenda, and the ongoing fanatical loyalty of their nutzoid base to both. If you honor the former, you can’t get nominated; if you honor the latter, you might not crack 100 electoral votes.

    I am enjoying the irony around Jeb Bush, though. It’s probably true that if he had any other name, he’d be the man to beat. It’s undeniably true, however, that if Dubs had most any other name, his life potential would have topped at “shift manager of a Modell’s sporting goods store.” And probably a bad one at that.

    Suck on it, fellas…

  • After the 1988 presidential election, TV newscasters (members of the supposedly liberal media) wondered aloud whether the Democrats had been “marginalized” at the level of presidential politics. After those discussions, 1992 felt really good. Naturally, we heard no retractions of the 1988 comments.

    Whether in 2008 or several years down the road, the Republican party will have their day again. I am hopeful that it will be a different Republican party than the one we are up against today, but either way I am so totally loving this conversation in a petty getting even kind of way (and for a slight that most people have long since forgotten).

  • Aeolus

    …but a lightweight theocon from mid-America will really doom the Republicans to a huge national defeat.

    Gooooo Brownback!

  • ***This environment could, in theory, create a genuine opening for party savior to come riding in on a white horse, but who’s waiting in the wings? Jeb Bush?***

    Oh please sweet baby Jesus, let the GOP nominate another Bush on ’08

  • RedState, the Poster Boys for the failure of Home Schooling.

    I’m starting to think we might get lucky in 2008 and end up with a blowout so solid we can order them all to go back to the tent and play with the rattlesnakes as they roll in the sawdust.

    It’s amazing to watch allegedly “non-political” sites that are populated by large numbers of righties. Someone brings up the name George W. Bush and they all dump on him. As opposed to the way they all had public orgasms on “Mission Accomplished” day.

  • The GOP has a candidate to appeal to different factions. Unfortunately, the other factions distrust the candidate that appeals to the others. This distrust is bone deep and not easily overcome. I would hazard a guess that their primary fight is likely to be nasty – though that may be more in private – and risk alienating large groups withing their own party. Rove’s tactics to hit at the Democrats will now be used to hit other Republicans and the general nastiness that has been bred in to GOP politicians and operatives and directed at Democrats will now be used to other Repubicans. As you reap, so shall you sow; Hoisted by their own petard; etc.

    Of course since so many Republicans are sheep when it comes to party politics, they still might be able to pull off a candidate that is OK by most of their standards that those that lost out still may vote for (if for no other reason than they aren’t a Democrat).

  • Republican candidate RON PAUL…You won’t hear of him much yet in our media because they only promote the big 4 of the 2 parties…AKA Dr. NO or The constitutional guy in the senate. He is not on CFR he is against NAU, SPP,CFR agenda,BIG GOV. He stands for Americans liberties and our forefathers intent of the Constitution. Spend a day researching him he is for America. ronpaul2008.com

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